Unflippingbelievable!

****warning***** rant coming up!
You know as a parent, you want the best for your children......and you bring them up to know what is right and what is wrong. You encourage them to go to school, do their best....you drum into them the importance of going to school, not skiving off and wasting their opportunities to learn as much as they can. You buy them the uniform they need ( as set by the school rules).....and they wear it....every day ( even though they are not keen on parts of it maybe, but they wear it anyway cos that's the rules!!!!)......
I bet you are thinking this is leading to me ranting about one of our girls getting in trouble for skiving or uniform abuse right???????
WRONG!!!!
At the weekend Lauren developed a horrendous, multi-layered blister on her toe, it was really awful, horribly deep and incredibly painful bless her. So, because the only footwear she could wear that was not excrutiatingly painful was either a pair of flip flops ( totally unsuitable or safe for school) or her black trainers, I allowed her to wear her trainers to school yesterday....WITH an accompanying note explaining that I had given MY permission for her to wear them as it was the ONLY footwear that meant she could actually walk in with the painful injury that she had....and that it would hopefully only be for 2 to 3 days at most....( I was doing the responsible thing.....right????)
so you can imagine my amazement, that rapidly turned to disbelief and then ANGER when about an hour after school started I received a phonecall from the Head of House, telling me that the Principal of the college wanted to exclude Lauren from college because she was wearing trainers, even though she had read the letter I sent, it was against school rules and that was it! I asked if she was winding me up....of course the answer was no! They really did want to exclude her!!! I argued the point, said what sort of a mother would I have been if I had kept her at home for 3 days because of a blister????? I thought I had done the responsible thing making sure she still went to school. So eventually the Head said that Lauren could maybe sit in her office for the days that she needed to wear the trainers and do her class work in there, in confinement......well that was like waving a red rag at a bull! I was livid and told her EXACTLY what I thought about their suggestion and then pointed out that Lauren has always been a very concientious (sp?) student, who regularly attended school AND wore the correct uniform, also the fact that they were black trainers.....NOT bright white or in your face fluorescant orange, like some of the ones you get, nope, good old black ones. That she is wearing them because of a temporary painful disability, a medical problem and NOT just because she fancied it for a change.
'Well it is still against the school policy' I was told.
Ok, I replied, so get the Principal to call me then and I will tell her EXACTLY my thoughts about the school policy....oh yes and whilst we are at it, how about the fact that the education authority are obviously always promoting the importance of children going to school( which I fully support) and are very hot on catching the ones who play truant and they like to fine the parents of kids who do not attend school, yet they are happy to exclude a child, whose only misdemeanor is that she has worn some black trainers which then allowed her to attend school in the least amount of pain.

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20 mins later I get a call back from the head of house again saying she has spoken to the Principle, told her how I felt about it ( yeah RIGHT!!!! I bet she diluted it a LOT) and that they have decided that it IS in fact a medical problem that has caused this situation to happen( no shit sherlock!!!) so Lauren can indeed wear the trainers for 2 or 3 days if it helps and she won't be excluded.....
and then the line was quiet....I guess this was where I was supposed to shout Hurrah...and sound grateful????? Jeeeeeeezzzzz!!!!!!
ok, so rant over.....thanks for listening/reading and if you got this far...I hope you don't have blisters on your eyeballs.


Anyway....enough of all that, I have uploaded a few pics....that I should have done several days ago :(. on Oct 1st , our beautiful daughter, Lauren, turned 16 years old! Really not sure where those years have gone, they seem to have flown past. All I do know is that we have watched her grow from a beautiful, happy, bright little girl into a gorgeous, wonderful, warm, kind hearted, compassionate young woman, who we are very, very proud of.
So a belated Happy 16th Birthday to you Lauren, our gorgeous girly.....and I will leave you with a few photos through those 16 years..

One of her first cuddles with her Nanna, at only a couple of days old.

Aged 2 and happy to pose. LOL

Aged 3 and with such a wonderful smile and BIIIIIG personality


Becoming a very special Big Sister at 4 and half.xxx


Just after starting at school in the infants, aged 5

and jumping forward to now........beautiful, confident and 16 years old.....
Hmmmmmm, sometimes I guess they just never grow up....and she has had a good teacher as you can see LOL

Enjoy being 16 Sweetheart...xxxxx we love you so much....xxxxxx