A mother recently asked the Reddit community whether she was right in standing up to a teacher who was using her daughter as a “behavior buffer” for a boy in class during a school trip.
The woman explained that her 9-year-old daughter was going to a nearby water park with her class. She knows how much she loves the water, so she was confused when her daughter “came home crying a few days ago and told me she didn’t want to go,” the woman said.
Like any good parent, she asked her why but she wouldn’t say, “because she thought I’d think she’s a bad person,” the mom explained.
When the woman finally coaxed it out of her daughter, she told her that her teacher had “forced her” to “buddy up” with a boy in her class during the trip.
“She was to ride the bus with him to and from the trip, eat lunch with him, and go on all the rides with him instead of spending time with her friends,” the woman said.
The little girl said that nobody liked the boy “because he whines whenever they have to do work and picks his nose and wipes boogers everywhere,”
Oh, dear.
The mom was horrified because the teacher had forced her daughter to do such a thing and because “she had made her believe she was a bad person for not wanting to.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time the teacher had used her “soft-spoken, intelligent older daughter as a behavior buffer,” she said.
She feels the teacher is “too comfortable enforcing archaic gender roles on her kids and forcing girls to do unpaid emotional labor for the sake of the boys.”
So the woman immediately sent the teacher an email condemning her actions. However, the teacher insisted that her daughter should buddy up with the boy if she wanted to go on the trip.
The mom wasn’t having it. She informed the teacher that her daughter would not be attending and then immediately booked VIP tickets to the water park on the same day the class was going so she could spend time with her own friends.
But that wasn’t enough. Other moms in the class got wind of the teacher’s action and pulled their kids out of the trip too.
“In total, eight kids out of a class of 20 canceled the trip,” she said.
This was an unexpected turn of events, and the mom got an email from the teacher. She said that because half the class wasn’t going, they’d have to raise the cost, or none of the remaining students could go.
The teacher practically begged the mom to let her daughter go on the trip, and she wanted her to tell the other parents to let their kids go too. The teacher further promised that she wouldn’t make her daughter do anything she didn’t want to do.
However, the mom stood her ground and wouldn’t let her daughter go on the trip. Her husband thinks she’s being petty and that the teacher clearly feels bad about what she did. He thinks the mom should let the girl go as his wife has already gotten her way.
“He asked me if I really wanted to deprive the children of what they’ve been waiting for all year,” she said.
So the mom asked the Reddit community for their thoughts, and they all agreed with her actions.
One said, “NTA. I’d stick with a simple “Sorry. I’ve already committed to and paid for my own arrangements for that date now.”
Another said, “I agree with this. OP’s husband is wrong in his assertion the teacher feels bad. She feels bad that her plan to use OP’s daughter backfired so spectacularly, and she now looks as if she can’t manage even the basics of a field trip.”
Do you think the mom is exaggerating?
Source: Reddit
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