A dinner lady has pulled out my child's tooth, am I overreacting?

globetraveller

New thread coming-
I asked a question about my child's tooth, how can I stop everyone overreacting?





Would put the ROTFL smilie on but can't get any of them to work.

beautiful_ravens

Maybe the daughter told the story differently to how it really happened.
Ive had no end of crossed wires due to my kids not explaining things the way adults would, and then eventually getting to the bottom of an almost completely different story.

Mojisola

Person_one wrote: »

So why ask, if the answer makes no difference to your opinion?

Because I still don't think concussion is a likely result of the kind of head bumps described.

One extreme example of a child who possibly had a genetic weakness in her veins and when no-one knew how severe the original bump was wasn't likely to make me change my opinion.

DevilsAdvocate1

carlamarie wrote: »

Allowing my daughter to have a drink of water whilst at the same time as having a wobbly tooth is NOT a life or death situation.

I don't think you can know this, as you weren't there. My youngest son has swallowed two teeth so far. The first one we did not even know was loose - he woke up one morning and it had gone!

Certainly knowing how fast his teeth come out I would be worried if it was wobbling that if he had a drink it would come all the way out and be swallowed. In fact, he just lost one last week and again we did not even know it was wobbly when he went out with his grandparents. But he came home with it wrapped in some tissue and very pleased with himself.

How would you have felt if she had had a drink and had swallowed the tooth?

Person_one

Mojisola wrote: »

Because I still don't think concussion is a likely result of the kind of head bumps described.

One extreme example of a child who possibly had a genetic weakness in her veins and when no-one knew how severe the original bump was wasn't likely to make me change my opinion.

That was the first example on the first page of Google.

Its rare that seemingly minor head injuries have serious consequences, but not as rare as you might like to believe. That doesn't mean you have to change your opinion about school first aid/health and safety or anything else, but the answer to your question is still 'yes'.

Gra76

GobbledyGook wrote: »

Part of the reason for that is that parents expect their kids to be supervised every second of the day and go ape if they get hurt. Also children are used to being supervised and they often don't know their own limits because they are so used to being told how high to go, to be careful etc.

They forget completely that when they/we were at school the janitor kept a rough eye on everyone in the playground and that was that. The school don't have the staff to be all over every kid.

The schools can't win either. If they use classroom assistants to cover the playground then parents kick off when they aren't in the class straight after break/lunch (forgetting they are entitled to breaks) and yet the budget for lots of playground staff simply isn't there.

I wouldn't be a school HT (not that I'm qualified anyway :rotfl:) for all the money in the world. Way too much time now spent managing parents than helping educate the children.

I think you'll find the vast majority of parents don't 'go ape' if their kids get hurt at school. The vast majority of parents understand that kids will be kids and that when there's a large group of them running around occassionally they will run into each other. Accidents happen, it's part of growing up.

I'm not sure what's more worrying, that you think all parents are out to 'get' teachers, or that you tried to justify stopping kids doing what kids do. Parents dislike the 'system', not the people in it.

I left school in the early 90's and there were always 3 or 4 teachers in the playground on playground duty. The caretakers were busy doing other things. I'd be very surprised if that has changed since.

jellyhead

pollypenny wrote: »

Yet another storm in a tea cup! Silly woman, the dinner lady was helping your child!

It's unusual for the new tooth to be showing as soon as the milk tooth comes out. Most kids have helped it along anyway, with wiggles and pulls. And most kids have gaps for weeks, if not months.

Remember that old song, 'All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth'?

MIL sang that to my son but he had FIVE teeth missing :rotfl: Two of them had fallen out while he was in reception class, so almost 6 months previously. They all fell out naturally with no bangs, knocks or pulling but the adult teeth took forever to come through. So if OP is still reading this (unlikely now though) it doesn't necessarily mean that if the adult tooth isn't there, the baby tooth wasn't ready to come out.

He swallowed his second tooth while eating a roast potato. We laughed, and the tooth fairy put a pound on the toilet cistern.

jellyhead

duchy wrote: »

Odds are if you complain (even informally) she WILL lose her job.
In your shoes I would be looking at the intention and from how you've described it and because the child wasn't upset I personally wouldn't complain even informally. If the child was upset it would make a difference though.

Same here. If the dinner lady was nice and the child wasn't distressed then I wouldn't say anything - but if she was stern, told my child to stop crying, etc. (he is a drama llama and would panic if there was blood) then I'd have preferred for him to be sent to the first aider. I would not expect a phone call, but would most likely get a bump note as standard. As long as whoever dealt with it told him he'd be fine, with a smile, it's fine.

Personally I couldn't bear to put my hand in another child's mouth, and would always send them to the first aider - I don't like teeth! And I wouldn't want a dinner lady to put her hands in my mouth, I'd prefer somebody wearing gloves to do it - but it's more of an 'ewww' thing than something to complain about.

Because my youngest is so dramatic, it's possible that a dinner lady who knew him well might decide that dealing with him quickly and getting it over with would be better than sending him to the office and giving him more time to flap and panic, and work himself up so much by crying that he'd vomit and have to be sent home.

He's got much better as he's got older, but if this had happened in reception year he'd have been very anxious, so I'd want to know that the dinner lady was calm and nice.

FBaby

Surely it is a positive step that OP decided to come here for advice before deciding whether to express her feelings to the school and then being able to rationalise these feelings after reading responses? Good on you OP for taking that step. I'd more parents did the same wherever they got good advice from we wouldn't be here discussing the over dramatisation of parents over minor issues.

Toothsmith

carlamarie wrote: »

We, as parents encourage the to kids to leave their teeth until they are almost disconnected from the gum. Then they have the 'joy' of pulling that last little bit and the new tooth is sat there waiting.

I encourage my patients to start wobbling their bably teeth right from when they feel them go loose.

They go loose because the adult tooth is moving up into place, and sometimes the baby tooth, particularly if a child holds on to it as long as they can, can start to get in the way a bit, and sometimes even deflect the adult tooth a bit.

This isn't that important, as a deflected adult tooth soon moves back into the right position by the action of the lips or the tongue on it.

Also though, the gum can get quite inflamed, and sometimes sore under a too-wobbly loose tooth, and also, if left too long, baby back teeth can break up into sharp little shards.

It sounds to me like this is probably what happened to your daughter.

As to whether the dinnerlady did the 'right' thing - I think she did. But the risk-averse society we live in at the moment could easily make a big song and dance about it.

Bottom line though - encourage kids to wobble out their own baby teeth as soon as they can.