Can my adult son sue his private prep school for loss of earnings?

[Yespresh]

I have a video from 2001 where his private prep school teacher talks about my son’s poor behaviour for 15 minutes. She discusses him in depth and his exceptional academic abilities but poor social skills and general behaviour and inattentiveness and laughs at his running skills (lack of). Roll on 21 years later. My son struggled at A levels, dropped out of Uni, was depressed and extremely unhappy and not practicing self care. He put on large amounts of weight, started to gamble and spend money he didn't have after leaving the confines of primary and secondary education.

After writing about him on Mumsnet a year ago someone mentioned he might have ADHD. We then started to look into this and he does indeed have severe inattentive ADHD and is now on 70mg of Elvanse a day. This person changed my son’s life.

The reason for suing the school would be the clear behaviour from the teacher talking about my son and his issues but never offering any resolution or possible reasons for his behaviour. His ‘wilderness years’ were between the ages of 18 and 26. If he had managed to stay at Uni he would have had a business degree at the age of 21. So he would sue for loss of earnings between 21 and 26 years old due to negligence.

Any thoughts?

@bythemillpond

Highly unlikely.

It sounds like the school did raise the possibility of SEN.

Ask a solicitor. Be prepared for raucous laughter.

Teachers are not medical experts and they certainly shouldn't be diagnosing medical conditions. They get enough flack on here for even suggesting a child might be neuro non- typical!

Why sue the prep school?
Why not sue his parents instead for failing to pick up on his medical need?

Why didn't you notice the issues yourself? This video is 20 years old - did you notice nothing yourself in two decades?

Why do you have a video of a teacher? Did you obtain permission to record them?

Yes permission was granted and the teacher knew it was recording as mentioned in the video as my husband was unable to attend. I think he slipped through the SEN net as he is academically extremely bright. The teacher at no point during the meeting mentioned him having SEN.

When our son was growing up we knew children with ADHD but these were children who didnt sleep, ran around a lot and tried to climb the furniture. Our son’s is completely different and I was never aware there are different types of ADHD

What makes you think the prep teacher would be?
Did you raise any concerns with any of the other teachers he came into contact with in the intervening years, there must have been dozens! How about any medical professionals, wouldn't they have been better equipped to diagnose? You appear to have picked this poor teacher as your scapegoat because you have kept a video for 20 years😲. Yet you yourself didn't explore any possibilities until a random stranger on the internet picked it up!

Honestly, you are clutching at straws and deluded!

If the school mentioned DS’s poor social skills, inattentiveness and poor gross motor skills (running) they did mention potential SEN.

Not what you asked but has he been assessed for ASD too? Exceptional academic skills but poor social skills describes my ds with ASD to a tee. You also mention poor self care - do you mean hygiene? because if so then that is also a typical teen with ASD.
You also mention poor running skills - did he fall over a lot? Was he clumsy? not great with a knife and fork? Terrible hand writing? Because he could be ticking boxes for dyspraxia too.
It sounds like a lot but all these conditions are linked and it's not unusual to have more than one, ds has ASD and dyspraxia.

I wonder why you didn't speak to anyone about all these issues if you were aware of them? Why didn't you see your GP about it? Teachers have generally got better at picking up on these things but a lot still gets missed and this happened over 20 years ago. I don't think you will get anywhere by suing the school.

Thank you all. I agree with you but my daughter was appalled when she came across the video by accident.

He def has other issues too. It is so sad that the academically gifted child we once had never achieved his potential.

You want him to try and sue a teacher because of your neglectful parenting. I really have heard it all now.