BB FANS

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

A school has banned pupils from making Mother's Day cards – in case it upsets any children who do not have mothers.

Headteacher Helen Starkey said she took the decision to protect 'a significant number of children' at Johnstown Primary in Carmarthen, South-West Wales.

While 95 per cent of the 357 pupils at the school lived with their mothers, making cards had been banned to avoid offending the other five per cent, Mrs Starkey added.

Metro

How is this kind of lunacy allowed?

Oh well, there goes my Fathers Day pressie

The world is going slowly mad! My son's school phoned me last week to say he'd fallen and had badly scraped his elbow and it had dirt in it. They weren't confident that they could clean it properly so I had to go and get him and take him to the doctors to get it cleaned! Now I'm lucky in that I work 2 minutes from the school but had I been miles away I wouldn't have been a happy bunny! When we got there the nurse took off his dressing and we both said "is that it?!" It seems that the schools are so scared of upsetting people and being sued these days.

As long as you signed the 'Accident Book' the school is covered.

It is getting really stupid but because of the 'WE WANT LOTS OF MONEY' attitude of some parents I can fully understand the schools rules.

It all starts in America and works its way here eventually.

just chucking a different viewpoint on this, but if there was a kid in the school who had recently lost his mother, it may have been sensible to have put the annual mothers day card making on hold for a year. Not saying that's what happened, but there's usually always a different story behind the Daily Mail style headlines

when my kids were at pre-school,mothers day was cancelled cos one of the little girls had just lost her mum and it was felt insensitive.

At school,we make for neither parents day,tho was astonished to find covering foundation class Friday, making valentines cards was one of the tasks for the day

Good point NM. I think often school decisions can be misjudged simply because those outside don't know the full story behind a decision.

What's wrong with making a valentine card? My children make them every year at school either for a friend or parent or relative or something. I have kept all mine I think it's quite sweet.

I agree that it all goes a bit far because everyone is terrified of getting sued. For example my son got a splinter in his finger and I had to be called to remove it. Thankfully I work there and on site. First aid boxes are not allowed tweezers now I believe.

The thing that really galls me *gets on soap box* is that hypothetically if my daughter needed an asprin for a headache she would be refused. However if she needed confidential advice on getting an abortion and didn't want me to know about it she would probably get it

*climbs down from soap box*

BB
there's a big difference between the two. As someone who's been in that situation many times over, there's a huge difference between offering advice to someone and actually prescribing them medication. We do tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to medical issues these days - mostly because that the people (like myself) who have to deal with these matters have no medical training whatsoever.

The days of the school nurse being on site 5 days a week is long gone. Given that kids are usually most people's most precious thing (and rightly so), they can quite understandably get quite irate when medical decisions are being taken by people with no medical knowledge.

As for the abortion advice, well when I've found myself in that situation, I've usually been the one person that the student can speak to who doesn't have a vested interest. That can be particuarly beneficial to a student who is probably sick and tired of being told what to do by everyone who knows about it. That said, I've always encouraged in the strongest possible way that the students discuss with parents when they haven't known about it, and I wouldn't dream of being one of these teachers who'd arrange the abortion for the student behind everyone else's back.

I am not sure I agree with the making of Mother's day cards being *banned*. I've often been in the situation where the father issue is a very sensitive one for some kids, but not so much mothers. A way round it is to have a drawing and writing table for smaller children, and a similar idea for older kids that is set up all year round. Inspectors don't like everyone making an identical card at any time, so it's possible to provide materials for card/letter making, and let kids make what they choose to make themselves. I've tried that out with my class over the past few years, and it's been a success. They love designing and making cards for all sorts of occasions.

As for the medication issue - well, we've had lots of times when parents have tried to sue our school over the most minor of injuries, etc, so I put the blame for this with opportunist parents. The sooner we get rid of the compensation culture the better. It should be impossible to sue for anything other than life altering injuries, such as ending up in a wheelchair.

Teaching unions have advised us not to touch children at all. So if a reception kid has a toilet type accident, and can't clean up alone, you have to send for the mother now. When I started teaching, I would have dealt with that myself (possibly with another adult present, right enough). And we used to get parents to write in notes about medication for their child, but it's in a busy classroom it's often the case that the teacher forgets to give an antibiotic, or whatever. So we took the decision to make parents come in to give them, or else time doses out of school hours. We will give asthma medication for those who need it, and can't use it themselves, and we will use epipens, etc, for children who would die before an ambulance/parent could come to school, though.