u/ConradFisher69

I’m not talking about kids who occasionally make jokes. I’m talking about those who constantly disrupt lessons and feel the need to be the centre of attention. From my own personal experience, this behaviour is often dismissed as harmless fun when it could be masking deeper emotional or behavioural issues. Constantly seeking attention through humour isn’t necessarily a sign of a happy or confident child. I think parents should take this behaviour more seriously rather than simply laughing it off.

This thought came to me while I was bored, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. This happens to me surprisingly often when I’m driving somewhere unfamiliar. I know my turn is coming up, so I’m slowing down and looking for the street, but I haven’t figured out whether I need to turn left or right yet.

The logic seems pretty natural to me. A blinking left light means “I’m going to turn left”, and a blinking right light means “I’m going to turn right”. So both blinking at the same time should mean “I’m going to turn, but I haven’t figured out which direction yet”.

I know hazard lights already have an established meaning, but this seems like a genuinely useful additional one. Left means left, right means right, both means undecided.

When I’m reversing, turning the steering wheel feels completely unintuitive. If I want the back of the car to go left, I have to turn the wheel left, even though my brain is thinking about where the front of the car is swinging. I think cars should automatically reverse the steering controls when you put them in reverse. Turn the wheel right, the back of the car goes left. Turn it left, the back goes right.

Basically, the steering wheel should control the direction the front of the car moves, regardless of whether you’re going forwards or backwards. Yes, everyone would have to relearn how to reverse. But after that, I genuinely think it would be more intuitive.

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?