A mother is asking if she’s in the right after a teacher demanded her son create a family tree for his biological family.
Adoption can sometimes be tricky for families to talk about, and the circumstances surrounding a family’s choice to adopt is generally considered a private affair. One mother is asking the Internet if she was in the wrong for the way she reacted to a teacher’s assignment that was given to her adopted son that asked him for information on his biological family rather than his adopted one.
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The story was shared by the student’s mother on Reddit, who asked if she was out of line for her reaction.
“My husband (42m) and I (37f) first met our son’s (17m) history teacher at his open house, he is very clearly not our biological child. I am black and my husband has dark black hair while our son is white as a ghost and very blonde, she didn’t bring up him being adopted, some teachers did, so I assumed it wasn’t an interesting topic for her,” she said .
“In the class as a part of a ‘getting to know you’ assignment she asked the kids to do a family tree and specifically singled out my son and told him to do his biological family instead of us.”
“He told us about it and said he wasn’t going to listen and just do us and his siblings (one biological to him, one also adopted, and the other biologically ours). He came to us a few days later saying he had been going back in forth with the teacher because she gave him a 1/20 for not doing his bio family.”
She writes that the teacher then contacted her and “calls my son a liar because he ‘misquoted’ her by saying she said ‘real family’ when she really said ‘biological family.'”
The mother replied that she didn’t want to “play semantics with her” and wrote “that she was a stupid [expletive] for saying that he didn’t follow instructions when no where does it state on the assignment instructions that it had to biological family she even said that people could include their pets, that’s not a biological family member. To me, he has no obligation to oblige by rules that only apply to him and serve no one any benefit.”
The comments were torn on whether the mom overreacted or not.
“The language you used did nothing to help your son’s position. You have a right to be mad, but if the teacher is acting in an unacceptable way she needs to be reprimanded through the school’s disciplinary system. This means reporting her behaviour to a superior. No-one is going to take a complaint from you seriously if she has written evidence of you swearing at her and calling her names,” one commenter wrote .
However, others felt her language was justified.
“I assume the teacher didn’t ask every student to identify whether they were adopted, whether they were the result of a sperm donor, egg donor, surrogate mother, the result of an affair, etc. No, she’s singled out your son because he is visibly adopted. Please bring this to the principal right away: her behavior is highly inappropriate and a teacher should never be in the business of dictating to their students who “counts” as family,” another added .
What do you think? Was she in the wrong for swearing? Let us know in the comments!
