Dad say it's 'sexist' to make daughter apologize for male bullies in her class.
AITA for telling my kids teacher that my child does not owe the substitute an apology and won't be giving one?
My daughter (12) is in middle school and had a substitute teacher last week. According to my daughter, there were some kids in the class who were especially difficult towards the sub. It was bad enough that the sub took down all their names and sent most of them to the principal's office.
When the regular teacher, Mrs. P, came back the next day she saw the report with the names the sub took down and told the entire class to write an apology letter to the sub to be collected the next day.
The kids that were mean to the sub needed to write about their poor behavior, the kids who didn't do anything were told to write an apology for not stepping in and standing up to the 'bullies' on behalf of the teacher.
My daughter showed me her letter and it basically read 'I'm not sure why I'm writing this, I'm not sorry about anything because I didn't do anything wrong and it's not my responsibility to defend the teacher against students because she has all the power'.
I told her to hand it in and made an appointment with the principal and teacher. At the meeting, I explained what happened to the principal and my child's response.
I said that I expected that she not get into trouble for it or have issues come from it because I believe she is correct. Mrs. P asked why I thought this was acceptable.
I explained that it's not a child's responsibility to stop other kids in class from acting up since not only does it make my child a target for those kids once the sub leaves but it's not her job to manage and regulate the emotions of her classmates, particularly since it's against someone who is in a position of authority.
By staying out of it, she didn't escalate the situation by involving herself in something she wasn't a part of and possibly making it worse. My child has a responsibility to tell a teacher about bullying, but when it's the teacher being bullied what do they expect her to do?
I felt like it was also worth mentioning that all the children acting up were boys, so they were expecting the girls to do the emotional labor for the boys by what? Chastising them for misbehaving in class? And then apologizing, like not doing that emotional labor was wrong.
The principal agreed with me and told me not to worry about it but the teacher has been difficult ever since.
I was sure that I was right but a few friends think I'm wrong for taking it to the principal and more than one has said I didn't have to imply that it was a sexism issue.
The biggest thing that has me doubting myself is that I was discussing with a friend that my child stands up to bullies when it comes to other kids being bullied, it's who she's always been and I'm proud of that.
My friend called me a hypocrite for encouraging her to stand up to bullies for other kids but not for a teacher. I don't feel like the two are the same and can't be compared. So, AITA?
Here is what readers had to say:
NTA. Honestly the letter writing for not stepping in is excessive and ineffective. The only way another student standing up to the bullies would make any difference is if that student had social power. If not, the first student to do so would become a target.
NTA. If an adult couldn't stop the bullies, what did they expect a kid to do? The principal was the reasonable one here. If you can I'd talk to the principal again about how the teacher is still treating your child and maybe transfer to another teacher if possible.
That’s some damn good parenting, OP! Well done! NTA
It seems like the regular teacher is a bigger problem than the sub.
Hmm. I can see this from all sides. I think you escalated to the principal too hastily. Chances are - the classroom teacher probably didn’t care what the “good” kids wrote about, and gave the topic as a reflective piece to think about bullying in general.
But the classroom teacher only knows which kids were named and sent to the office - but chances are, a lot more of them were behaving poorly but the classroom teacher has no way to know who was really involved and who wasn’t.
Assigning this to everyone as a consequence was really the only thing she could do. Saying “everyone except X Y and Z has to do this” would be giving a chance for culprits to get away without consequence (reinforcing their sneakiness) or could make the good kids targets for retaliation.
I’m a teacher. I don’t think I would have assigned it quite the same way (I can’t imagine myself telling the kids to think about how to stand up to their peers bullying an adult), but I can see myself having the whole class write a letter because frankly if I wasn’t there I don’t accurately know who was involved.
I wouldn’t have cared at all if a student wrote a letter like your daughter did - my thoughts on that letter would have been “yep that’s fair, I’m sorry you got stuck having a shitty day too”.
If I had a parent decide to make an appointment with the principal before the kid even handed in the letter? Internally I’d be questioning how much of a bully the parent might be if they’re so offended at a class consequence since I am not clairvoyant and can’t tell with 100% accuracy who participated in the bad behaviour.
Sometimes a class consequence is all that we can do. I also think your insinuations about sexism aren’t fair or likely accurate - it may have been boys sent to the office, but it doesn’t mean it was only the boys being assholes to the sub. Based on what you’ve shared, I’d really be internally wondering what sort of messages you’ve been teaching your own kid.
That said - if the assignment really was “how should a kid stop their peers from bullying an adult” then I’d be questioning that too. Personally, I would have waited to see the teacher’s response before going to the principal.
Typically the process should be: 1) Student deals with something themselves. 2) Parent addresses teacher directly when an issue isn’t resolving. 3) Parent addresses admin after contact with teacher hasn’t been successful.
You went straight to 3 and escalated a situation before it needed to. Maybe it would have needed it. Maybe not.
The OP then added a helpful tidbit that explains why they were so insistent on resolving this issue responsibly.
This actually makes me feel a lot better so thank you. My daughter is autistic so it's hard to teach her how to navigate social situations on a normal day, much less ones where the teacher is so against her.
The friend that said I'm teaching her it's ok to stand up for some and not others is another parent of a child in the spectrum and I look to her for advice a lot so I was really worried I was teaching her the wrong thing here.
Comments continued and people shared how this story resinated with them:
MxMirdan (a long, but interesting answer)
I’m finally being tested for neurodivergence now as I’m approaching 40. But the complete honesty and ingenuousness of your daughter’s essay reminded me so much of my own early years where I would be told I did something wrong — and the something wrong that I did was point out how batsh*t crazy the “normal” behavior was.
Your daughter is right. The substitute teacher did not have control of the class, and apparently did not take action with administration to exercise their authority to discipline and take control of the class. As a result, the students who wanted to learn lost instructional time.
The substitute left specific notes of misbehaving students so the teacher could deal with it on her return. The teacher decided that it was an “everybody problem” and her solution was to punish everybody.
Except, there’s no way to know that if your daughter or other students in the class started trying to stop the misbehaving students, that it wouldn’t have devolved into the kids raising their voices at each other.
I’ve seen it happen when a teacher is using “wait time” to quiet a class. 2-3 kids keep goofing off, and a quiet kid who wants to learn says “stop. She’s waiting.”
Which then causes the goof offs to escalate and bring more people in, and then some of the other quiet kids get annoyed and start saying “why do you always have to be like this? You know what Mrs. P expects!”
And the whole thing devolves with the kids who are trying to quiet the goofballs getting in the same trouble as the goofballs, because “they aren’t the teacher and should have left to to the adult to deal with.”
At which point, the neurodivergent child says, “I tried that, but the adult didn’t do anything and I wanted to learn/go to recess/go to music.” And then gets in trouble for being disrespectful.
Basically, a terrible sub is the worst possible situation for a neurodivergent child — because it’s a situation in which the social order they are learning and depend on has completely broken down.
If they try to “help,” they’re disrespecting the adult’s authority and being a buttinsky know-it-all, and get targeted by their classmates. If they stay out of it, they’re a bystander and as guilty as those who are actively disrupting and get disciplined by the adults.
While this is true of neurotypical students as well, the injustice of it typically strikes ND folks much more deeply because they are trying to learn social rules and they’ve been put into an unwinnable situation where none of the normal rules apply.
Your daughter spoke truth to power because she’s been taught that truth is a good thing. Power often doesn’t like Truth being pushed in its face, and uses every excuse in the book to discount Truth. Thank you for backing her up.