Julie Jay: Children should not be shielded from their mistakes or ours
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I recently received a DM from a former student, informing me that I had reported him and his friend to his year head in first year for calling me a name that, let’s say, would hardly be described as a term of endearment.
‘You were wrong,’ he wrote. ‘I didn’t call you that.’ It was so rare that I attempted to channel disciplinarian in the classroom that I immediately recalled the incident, because I could honestly count on one hand the number of times I ever followed through on anything.
Though some parents and teachers might view themselves as virtually infallible, in terms of providing eye-witness accounts of shenanigans, I am somebody whose starting point always consists of: ‘I’m probably wrong here, but.’
As such, for me to have been that certain I’d been called a name, I would have considered it irrefutable.
My version of events notwithstanding, the fact this person was DMing me seven years after the fact would surely substantiate his claim that he was innocent of the charge levelled against him in first year.
Despite feeling, at that moment in time, fully sure that I had heard what I thought I did, I was most likely totally wrong in my interpretation, and I would be lying if I said reading his message had not made me sink into my shag carpet with cringe and wince at the self-righteousness of my former self.
Although he didn’t offer any evidence as to why I had been incorrect in my judgment, the fact he would take the time so long after the fact to get in touch would suggest I had been — perish the thought — wrong.
I recall this incident because it was unusual for me to report anything in the classroom to somebody higher up the food chain.
I also remember it because of his mother’s reaction. While many parents would have insisted that their child would never be capable of doing anything of the sort, this mother was 100% supportive of me.
She could not have been more unequivocal in her stance that such behaviour was unacceptable.
Reading this message seven years after the fact reminded me that our words matter, as parents and teachers.
Any action we take in a young person’s life can have consequences far beyond what we could conceive, and that is why we try so hard, always, to say and do the right thing.
But the reality is that we will get stuff wrong as grown-ups and make the wrong choice, but it’s how we respond to our gaffes that counts.
If I get short and snappy with my four-year-old son, Ted, I will always apologise. And I don’t know if that’s the right or wrong way to do things.
Still, I think there’s no point feigning infallibility when I rarely get the date right, let alone the chronology of events resulting in a mysteriously spilt two-litre carton of milk.
Similarly, maybe part of our responsibility as parents is to prepare our children for adults making mistakes, and the inevitability of such.
Perhaps part of being a parent is also teaching our children how to respond to the gaffes of others, and giving people grace when they make mistakes — even teachers.
I swore I wouldn’t be one of those parents who would automatically side with their child, no matter the circumstance.
After all, I would espouse to anyone who would listen that school is all about resilience and preparing them for the real world, where things won’t always go their way.
I’d love to say I’d acquired this perspective, having graduated from life’s school of hard knocks, but I attained this mindset by osmosis, having shared a staffroom with inspirational PE teacher Fiona Corcoran, who captained the Irish rugby team to a World Cup final.
To be fair, this was also the same year I dislocated my arm while putting on my coat, so she wasn’t the only one with a sports injury.
Yet the older I get, the more I realise that the lengths I went to as a young teacher to appease doting parents was doing neither myself nor the child any favours in the long run.
The reality is that life isn’t always smooth sailing for young people, and by overly protecting them, we are not doing our duty to prepare them for NCT tests and direct debits.
I now know what that mother was doing all those years ago when she automatically had my back, no questions asked.
She was trying to prepare her son for the real world, a world where, sometimes, people get stuff wrong and where we have no choice but to accept the fallibility of people.
Already, my ability to be Switzerland when it comes to my child has been put to the test by parents in the playground, when Ted has helped himself to a toy car he has found lying around unattended or when he has spotted a Spiderman bag he feels would look better on him than its current owner.
Of course, when these parents point out the obvious — i.e. Ted’s fun personality doesn’t absolve him from respecting the basic rules of mine versus yours — my immediate reaction is indignation.
But then I remember Ted is made of me and his dad, neither of whom is perfect (despite the latter’s claims), so he will occasionally be wrong.
Not often, but he will. And when that does happen, it’s about having his back, but only so far as it serves him, and not if it involves an interest in Formula 1. Because on that subject, nobody can be neutral.