There is no fury quite like that of a mama bear, so sometimes we moms need a sanity check. One mother turned to Reddit for just that after she has a run-in with her son's teacher. It related to an incident that happened at his birthday party over the weekend involving students from his classroom who were bullying him.
The mother of the 9-year-old boy with autism explained his school has an "invite all policy" for birthday parties, so his entire class was invited.
She went on to explain that because of the policy, her son had to invite three boys from his classroom who had been giving him hard time about his autism. The mom quickly called the parents of those boys and alerted them to the problem, asking that they chat with their sons before the party to keep their antics in check so her son didn't end up upset on his big day. Two out of the three moms apologized and promised to talk to their kids, but the third vehemently denied her "perfect angel son" would ever do anything like that. Eventually, the mom wore her down and she agreed to talk with her son.
The day of the party arrived, and within 30 minutes, the mom saw the three boys talking to her son.
The mom explained that she noticed the boy with the defensive mom was doing all of the talking while the other two stood there, She waited, watching in case they were apologizing, but her son abruptly burst into tears.
She sprang into action, asking any parents who were still there if any of the three kids were theirs and, if so, could they take their kids and leave. Although two boys left the party immediately grounded, the defensive mom left with a heinous departure.
"[The] defensive mom also left but not before calling my son a 'r-tard' and saying her kid didn't want to come anyway."
The mom explained that she got a call from her son's teacher and was asked to come in, figuring the defensive mom wanted to talk about the incident.
Instead, the teacher reminded her about the invite-all policy and the idea of stopping kids from feeling excluded — but she kicked out three kids.
"Over the phone I tell her that they were bullying my kid," the mom explained. "She says 'and you as an adult felt the appropriate response was to bully them?' I responded that as they reduced my son to tears I felt it was appropriate to ask them to leave. Teacher then says not to be surprised when my son is excluded from something."
The mom, who is also a teacher, was genuinely confused about what to do next.
"A solid 50% of me wants to go in there and ask why the [expletive] these kids were allowed to bully my son but he still has to include them and the other half of me is saying I need to calm down… if I spoke to any parent like that I'd be out of a job, so I am genuinely unsure about my next move."
The general consensus seemed to be a hearty: OH NO they didn't!
"You have every right to be angry and every right to go in and ask for a meeting," encouraged one reader. "The teacher was completely out of line."
Other parents noted that the mom was doing her son a disservice in trying to be "nice," to the teacher if she chose not to say something.
"I've met some great teachers, and some who are genuinely bad at their jobs," commented one user. "Rug-sweeping behavior by parents and administration does nothing aside from letting more kids get overlooked and bullied in the future. It's about the kids, not the teacher — most likely they'll be retrained or have this problem addressed by their boss anyways and not go straight to firing unless they've acted really inappropriately. If they do get fired, it's because they acted in a way that their boss felt warranted it, not because of the person who said something."
A few others noted that the "invite everyone" policy was utterly problematic for this very reason.
"The school has no right to dictate what ANY parent does in regards to a child's celebrations outside the school environment" wrote another commenter. "Ban bringing invites to school, fine, but no way would I ever indulge a 'rule' like that. If a kid wants a party with five guests, then five are all that get invited. The school can posture all they like; those rules are unenforceable."
Ultimately, the mom updated the post and shared she decided to talk to the head of the school.
"I kept my cool. He said that what she'd said [the teacher] was unacceptable and he'd talk to her and I have a meeting with him, the teacher and the mother of the other boy and deal with this."
It sounds like the mom made the right call in standing up for her boy — and hopefully the bullying stops here.
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