Selfsufficientish.com

TheGoodEarth wrote:How much was the new pair of glasses? Can you claim on your home insurance?

I never thought of that! Belongings out of the home are often insured, good idea. Hope your son is ok, what a frustrating situation

Milims wrote:The thing is if it was a prosthetic limb or a hearing aid that was damaged then the school would readily take action - but these are sees as "only" glasses. However, they are as essential as a hearing aid etc to my son so they had to be dealt with immediately. We lost 6 hours of our family time, we had to inconvenience friends and we had to pay out money we could ill afford, but just because it's glasses it's not seen as that important.

its amazing ... wearing glasses is taken as the norm and not treated as any other "disability" ... My fella is like your son without them he is blind ...he cant see anything other than fuzzy mush and would not be able to move around without them but its ok for someone to poke fun at him or not be bothered if they knock them off...

Is he ok today ...

Thank you all for your advice and concern. My son is fine, he likes his new glasses! I contacted the school, spoke to the head of year/deputy head and told them what had happened and what we'd had to do. He was grateful that I'd brought it to their attention as it could have been much worse, especially as it happened right next to a road. He said that he would speak to the headmaster about it and have words with the kids.

Hi Milms

The same sort of thing happened to our son except a boy hit him with a loaded school bag, we informed the school, who basically dismissed it as rough play, however we arn't rich and my son requires special lenses, luckily we were able to get a duplicate frame and so we let it go and claimed insurance, but had there been no replace,ment frame it would have mean't an outlay of about 1000.00 and we most certainly would have asked the boys parents to pay up.

Children need to be taught that there are consequences for their actions

These things are such a tedious waste of time and so totally avoidable. I can understand why you want to make a fuss - no, I mean bring it to the school's attention to avoid further wasted time and money and, potentially, a nasty in jury - that is not "making a fuss".

If 'twere me, what I did next would depend on a few things. If I knew the family or knew of them and knew them to be reasonable people, I would probably make contact via the school explaining the lengths to which you had to go and the expense to which you were put as a result of this jolly little game. I say this as the full time stepmother of two teenagers - DH and I would be horrified if one of their little games had resulted in this for another family, and they might welcome the opportunity to teach their little oik a lesson. If the parents are the sort who don't care much then I would probably not go to them, but I would write to the school explaining the consequences of this game, and notifying them that if something similar happens again you'll be taking it very seriously and expecting the school to do the same. Sometimes you just have to swallow these things, but just the once. I would also want to know from DS whether the lad who jumped on him targets him in particular, or is known to be a bully, or whether it was a 100% genuine - if silly and needless - accident involving a perfectly decent lad.

All these things would inform what I did next. Btw, snowballs were banned at my school for exactly the reason PP mentioned - nasty moments with grit and eyes. It's a fine line though...