Parents refusing to follow school rules....

[AgeX]

Hello, first post so please go easy!

My youngest child is in primary school. She is 7 years old. I've been a member of the parents Whatsapp group since it was set up and have noticed the parents appear to be extremely against following rules set by the school.

They will discuss en masse and decide what the school uniform should be on any given day despite reminders being sent by the school. An example of this is on Thursday of this week the children are having photographs taken and a reminder message was sent out to all parents to advise that school uniform was required. A number of the parents have taken it upon themselves to advise the WhatsApp group that their children will be wearing PE kit and they don't care for the rules and will be disregarding/ignoring the reminder.

Now what their children wear is their own choice but I will send my child in school uniform and I know she will come home from school asking why everyone was in PE kit despite it not being a dedicated PE day. She's quite sensitive and will think she is in the wrong because the majority are dressed differently than her.

I know it is trivial in the grand scheme of things but term has only started and this is the second occasion in which my child is almost the odd one out.

I suppose I just don't know how to approach the situation? My older child is also in primary school and we have not encountered issues such as these at all so it's all new to me!

Sorry you are approaching this from the wrong end.

Trying to change behaviour of a group of people to make your daughter more comfortable is pretty futile exercise. This isn’t a bullying scenario where this would be the absolute only way forward. Plus it reinforces to her that her feelings are ruled by external factors (this is called external locus of control)

you need to focus on what you/she can control: your own actions. And you need to focus on building her confidence and being able to ignore those who break the rules. All your energy you are about to pour into trying to change this group of adults is better spent on your daughter.

let the school deal with the rule breakers, it isn’t your fight

Exactly this! 👏👏👏👏

We’ve had similar in our school where a vocal group of parents in the WhatsApp chat are basically loudly refusing to follow the school rules for various reasons, and mostly they do follow through.

My daughter followed all rules about equipment/uniform until this year (year 4) when I have allowed to her to take a backpack rather than a book bag. This is mainly because the book bag needed replacing a couple of times a year because of poor quality alongside the fact that 3/4 of her class were happily taking in backpacks with no consequences and had been for years.

This is so weird.

Yeah it is a pain to wear uniform on a PE day but it is one day. Just let them do PE in their shirt and stick a pair of shorts in their bag/under their clothes.

Not sure why some parents cause such a hassle with this type of thing. Are they bored and looking for drama?

Its the same in the WhatsApp group for my DC's class. Same few mums moaning about the school rules all the time... No coincidence that their the ones whose kids are always in trouble at school, being sent out of class for being disruptive etc.
One moans all the time about the homework... A small number of words to spell each week then write a sentence incorporating them.... "My X isn't doing that...", "I can't make him...".. "He's gonna kick off if he has to do homework..." How about take some responsibility for your damn kids or don't have them?! Rant over.

But having no uniform does increase bullying especially as the child gets older. I personally prefer a uniform. I wish I had a work uniform. It makes life easier there’s not debates each days about who’s wearing what. Uniform on and that’s that’s

Bullying wasn’t an issue at DT’s non uniform school in London nor at their cousins in US, France or Belgium. No one cared what you wore - it was a non issue. Jeans and hoodies or shorts and T-shirt were standard. Saved me a fortune with no school uniform to buy - they wore the same clothes at school, evenings, weekends and holidays

It can be a problem when brands or labels become an issue

We I live in the north of England this would not happen. My 8 year DS had already started with the brands he wont he won’t wear and he’ll only were specific Nike or ON trainers!! Mean while I am walking in clothes I owned before he was born

They weren’t an issue - DT’s no different from other teenagers and had some brands but the majority of the time it was regular jeans and hoodies (often bought on holiday as they liked the colour/design).

What clothes you wore for school wasn’t a topic for discussion. Time not wasted on it.

DT’s didn’t get a choice whilst I was buying their clothes. Because they could wear what they liked every day, it wasn’t important as opposed to uniform schools where a special non uniform day seems to be treated like a fashion show - ridiculous!
How much time gets wasted by schools monitoring whether students are wearing the correct school uniform!

My mother is like those parents and their children will be aware of it.

There is no reason for their attitudes other-than lack of respect for other people and rules in general My mother resents be told what she can and can’t do and thinks she knows best.

At school I used to try to be friendly to the rule following children as there was none at home.

She used to say to us ‘ would you jump off a cliff if everyone else did?’

Distill confidence in your daughter now. The rule breakers are not always right.

Far easier for parents, and saves so much time in the morning having a school uniform. My children are now both in sixth form and takes ages every morning for them to decide what to wear, and make sure they are wearing similar outfits!

Think how much easier it would be for teachers if parents worked with them rather than against.

Read the OP, it's a whatsapp parent group that has stupid people in it trying to undermine the school rules.

This started bc of COVID and has just continued.

Yes I saw that. I find it hard to believe all 29 other children have parents that are on board with undermining the school rules. Especially when it comes to not looking smart on photo day.

If that situation is actually happening I'd be asking the school if they actually care seeing as they aren't doing anything about the 29 kids wearing pe kit every day why should the op set her child up to be the odd one just for feel good points. And no this is not comparable to peer pressure and smoking crack as a teenager before someone says it.

Personally if I was a head teacher I'd be making all the kids in pe kit put on smelly old clothes out of lost property for the photo 😏 that's what my pe teacher did when we forgot our kits haha.

She's 7. Just tell her about the other parents and the thread and how bonkers they all are. Then she'll.kno why they wore their p.e kit.
At least your kids photo will look nice. As for the other kids. Teachers are banging their heads against the wall s it's always the parents that are the problem.

This. I was bullied for a few things I wore (even though there was nothing wrong with them, it was just something else for other kids to target) My mum was widowed when I was 2 and she couldn't afford all of the branded stuff the other parents could buy.
Personally I'm glad kids wear uniform for this reason, that way I only have to worry about the coat and bag 🤣

Imagine little Johnny dressed head to toe in Ted Baker, Burberry, Versace etc getting covered in paint and rolling around the school yard - because this is EXACTLY what would happen.
And it does when we have non uniform days. I do have one particular child in mind from my school, who regularly comes in with such things, I daresay there would be quite a few complaints if they were getting the wear and tear a uniform does.

This isn’t the only rule parents don’t follow though is it? We have parents arguing that a detention isn’t happening as their child didn’t mean to hit etc. It is exhausting having to argue with what feels like people who are determined they are always right despite the evidence to the contrary and the only people in school.
Staff have had enough and I’m not surprised when they leave tbh. I still enjoy being with children enough to put up with it but will take early retirement before I begin to hate it.

Just to add it is a minority of parents but they are the loudest and draining.

What do you mean, 'odd'? It's odd to think children look cute in uniform? I'm sure many will agree with me that they do, hence all of the 'in front of the door pics on back to school day. Just because a school you know doesn't have uniform doesn't mean that everyone else is 'odd', if a school doesn't want a uniform then that's up to them, we all have the option to choose whichever school we wish, (and before someone comes at me about the limited places in special settings, that's not what I'm referring to) no need to resort to attacking someone's opinion.
My daughter DID look damn cute in her school pics wearing her school uniform, that's not odd at all.

It’s an odd view to think that children need to be wearing a formal school uniform to look nice on their class photos. My DT’s looked nice and really cute in their school photos in jeans and a T-shirt.

You seem to have taken offence at my opinion that children look cute in their school photos with uniform on, because your children don't wear uniform? (Sorry I dont know what DT means, please correct me if I'm wrong about the relationship) I would think they looked cute in whatever they were wearing, if that was the policy of the school. They could be wearing princess dresses for all I care, but the purpose is to capture the child in a snapshot of their time at school, and if that means wearing the uniform that the parents have signed up for then that's what I would be expecting. If you don't wear a uniform for school then you will look just as cute as those who do.
Nowhere in my post did I say that uniform is more cute than non uniform, but if the expectation of the school is for the children to wear uniform then that's what they should be wearing. Parents know what they sign up for, if they don't like it they can go to a school that doesn't wear one.
Personally I liked my daughter wearing one, it all went in the wash at the weekend and saved her good clothes from getting covered in paint, whiteboard marker and school dinner. I would have sent her to the same school if they didn't wear uniform, but as she got older I know it would have been hard with the branded stuff they seem to gear towards! Peer pressure can be hard.

While I do approve of uniform (if it's comfy and not draconian) it's not fair to say that parents sign up for it and can go elsewhere if unhappy - the vast majority of UK parents really have no choice, since all the schools have a uniform.

I do like PE kit days (not for school photo day) esp at secondary. I used to hate getting changed at school and we were invariably late for the next lesson and got shouted at, like it was our fault the PE teacher gave us 3 minutes to change and get across to the opposite side of the school!

Lots of schools don't have sufficient storage space for pe kits so kids lug them around all day and I remember my own boys having an expensive rugby top nicked. PE kit days are much easier.

At the school I work in, if they turned up in PE kit on photo day we'd either ring home and get them to send uniform in or, if it didn't arrive, find a couple of spare shirts/school jumpers and make them all take turns wearing them for upper body only photos!