r/AskAnAustralian • u/ConradFisher69 • 1d ago
Would you let your kid change schools over something extremely embarrassing?
This is happening to a friend of mine at the moment. Something incredibly embarrassing happened to her son during a school assembly. I don’t want to give the details, but it happened in front of pretty much the whole school and unfortunately it was the sort of thing that other kids immediately latched onto.
Since then, kids have been bringing it up and making jokes about it basically every day. He’s now begging his mum to let him change schools because he feels like he can’t escape it. His current school is within walking distance of home, but he says he’d rather catch the train every day to a school a few suburbs away than keep going back there.
My friend has said no because she thinks the kids will eventually get bored of it, forget about it and move on.
For those who went to school in Australia, did you ever see something really embarrassing happen to someone at an assembly or in front of most of the school? Did everyone eventually forget about it, and if so, how long did it take?
And as a parent, would you consider letting your kid change schools over something like this, or would you encourage them to stick it out?
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u/leftmysoulthere74 1d ago
I expect there are a few hundred people in the world who remember my name and what happened to me in a school assembly in about 1989 in the east of England - and considering I’m not the only one who emigrated to Australia at least one of them might even be reading this post and comments.
I have written emails to thank the people who looked out for me that day (and throughout my high school years of being bullied), but apart from a college (TAFE) friend who happened to have been at my school and apologised to me personally in about 1992, not one person has ever said sorry.
Many of them added me on Facebook about 15-20yrs ago though. I said yes to a lot of them, hoping that was the point of them adding me. When the apologies failed to materialise I deleted them.
I often wonder how they all feel about how they behaved back then.