<p>I believe you, songman. Good on you for fielding that tough conversation.</p>
<p>My motto is “Never say never–it could happen to your kids”.</p>
<p>REALLY glad to hear that you are seeking professional help for your daughter. </p>
<p>Since the teacher did NOT respect your request to cease contact, you need to make the request in writing (email) with a copy to the headmaster, (using calm, factual language).</p>
<p>Good luck. Here’s a cyber hug from all of us out here in CC land…</p>
<p>Songman, you have handled this situation with grace and strength. It sounds like good counseling will help strengthen bonds between your daughter, you & your wife. It’s great to hear that there was no physical contact.</p>
<p>It can be a minefield for teachers sometimes, especially if a student gets a “crush” on him/her. Those hormones are sometimes tough to deal with and sometimes it can be tough to decide how to gracefully extricate oneself from a crush without overly bruising feelings, but I’m sure there are other teachers who can be mentors for such situations.</p>
<p>I agree it would be good if the school were tactfully and factually told, so they could counsel the teacher on how to defuse these situations in the future while maintainting his reputation & the student’s dignity & relationship with the student’s family (a tough balance).</p>
<p>Songman, Im so glad to hear that your family is back on the road to normalcy. Your first priority is attending to your daughter making sure shes okay, emotionally and mentally, making sure that whatever was missing in her life that led her to fill it with a relationship with teacher gets replaced by something positive, making sure that channels of communication between her and you are improved. </p>
<p>This teacher, however, needs some disciplinary action and fast. Your daughter is a 14 year old girl, impressionable, impetuous, innocent. He is not only an adult but an adult who is paid to interact with children in a responsible manner. She didnt harass him. They had an inappropriate relationship and the fault, legal or social, is 90% HIS. This is especially worrisome since he continued to contact her after he told you he wouldnt. In other words, you tested his good will and he flunked!</p>
<p>There is simply no way to justify this behavior in a teacher. I can understand that you want to avoid confrontation and put this situation behind you, but you need to reflect a bit and do the right thing concerning this guy, just as you did with your daughter. </p>
<p>Defininitely hand the problem over to the school. If their response is inadequate, then you may have to rachet up the pressure. You might think about getting a lawyer to write a letter on your behalf. That usually jolts them into action. Personally, I think this guy deserves to lose his job, now.</p>
<p>And dont feel guilty about missing signals. The smarter the kids, the better they are in pulling the wool over their parents eyes. It happens to most of us. In the end you did catch on and you did act appropriately. So good for you for trusting your parents intuition.</p>
<p>Songman:</p>
<p>Thank you for updating us. I’m so glad that your D does not seem distraught and is willing to take your advice to go counseling. Glad, too, that you and your wife are on the same wavelength! The best news, for me, is that your family is close again. I agree that the teacher acted inappropriately and that you need to report his behavior to the school.</p>
<p>Songman,
Thank you for the update. I hope you’ll follow through on seeking counseling. There’s also a good chance that you still haven’t heard the full story from your D. That’s not because she’s any kind of a bad kid. It’s just that she’s probably embarassed about what happened. There also may be other aspects of the contact, including on the teacher’s part, that she doesn’t want to talk about for fear of getting the teacher in trouble.</p>
<p>Please, please talk to the teacher’s supervisor and put your complaint in writing. As others have said, what happened was not your D’s fault. It’s normal for kids to have crushes on teachers. It’s not normal for the teachers to fail to set limits, to contact the child, or to contact the child after the child’s parents have asked contact to cease.</p>
<p>The teacher is not at all an innocent party here. If you don’t speak up to his supervisors, he may continue to take advantage of other naive children. In my opinion, the teacher doesn’t need a mentor: The teacher needs to lose his job because he can’t be trusted to behave appropriately with his students. You gave him every opportunity to act in an appropriate way and then he sneaked around by contacting your D behind your back. There is no excuse for that. That also indicates that more is going on that your D has thus far told you.</p>
<p>Also, please don’t think of your daughter as having lived some kind of pathological double life. Usually teens and children do things and think things that their parents would never imagine they would think or do. That’s why it’s important for us to help protect them from the consequences of their following through on their naive ideas and plans.</p>
<p>This computer age allows children to do things and to be exposed to dangers that were very unlikely when we were young. Consequently, I suggest not only forbidding your D from using the computer when you’re not in the room, but I suggest that you prevent your D from using the computer when you’re not in the room. Put the computer in a place that your D can’t access or take away the keyboard when you are not home or are in bed.</p>
<p>Himom, I think you have a good perspective on this and I support your approach. </p>
<p>Songman, coming to strangers doesn’t always get you a non emotional response. Each of us has histories to share, some with teachers, ministers or priests, who have done terrible things and some of us with innocent people whose reputations were ruined by the suppostitions, and wags of ignorant gossip, but it is rare that someone’s experience is not tinted by emotion. Good luck with your family.</p>