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As a parent, you’re likely used to receiving various forms, flyers, and notices from your child’s school. These papers often get a quick glance before being signed or discarded. However, one mom on TikTok, Lauren, received a form from her daughter’s school that caught her attention.
The form asked for personal details about her 13-year-old daughter’s birth, including the type of birth, gestation period, and specific details about her toddlerhood. This sparked outrage among commenters, who found the form invasive and reminiscent of scenarios from “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In response to the backlash, Lauren learned that the form was being sent to parents from multiple schools in the district and was not related to autism or specialized learning screenings. Despite this explanation, Lauren found the school’s response unsatisfactory and considered taking the matter to the local news.
Further investigation revealed that the school was incentivizing students to return the form with pizza parties and pajama days, creating a sense of competition between classrooms. Other parents in the district had received the same form and were equally concerned.
Lauren’s efforts to seek clarification from school officials led to dead ends, with many claiming ignorance or being unavailable. Eventually, the principal apologized for the form and promised to send out a letter advising families to disregard it.
This incident has sparked discussions about the decision-making processes in public school systems and the importance of questioning and scrutinizing the information sent home with children.
As a parent, you’re likely accustomed to a slew of forms, flyers, and notices coming home for you to review in your child’s backpack. More often than not, these papers probably get a glance before they’re signed or thrown in the trash, but one particular mom on TikTok received a paper from her daughter’s school that made her take a second look.
Lauren took to the internet to show a form that her daughter’s school had sent home asking for some very personal details about her 13-year-old and her birth. The mid-year survey wanted to know the type of birth Lauren had gone through all those years ago, her daughter’s gestation period, and oddly specific details about her child’s toddlerhood.
Commenters were equally outraged at the form, calling it invasive and even noting that it bordered on Handmaid’s Tale-level oddities. They encouraged her not to fill out the form, and to call the school and question them as to why the form was being sent out at all, and some even noted that this could be considered a privacy violation.
In a follow-up video, Lauren answered some of the commenters’ questions and updated them about what she’s learned about the form. She shared that she’d learned that the form was going to be sent home with children from multiple schools across the district, and has nothing to do with any autism or specialized learning screening.
In a second follow-up, Lauren went on to detail her call with the district nurse who she said gave very generic answers only stating that the school was filling out gaps that they had in their files. Lauren noted that she didn’t seem to know a lot about the form and questions, and that if she did, she apparently wasn’t willing to share.
Lauren later shared that her daughter’s school was incentivizing children to bring the filled-out form back to school with pizza parties and pajama days in competition with other classrooms. She’d even received messages from other concerned parents in the district who had received the same form from their own child’s school, and wanted answers for themselves.
It seems that Lauren has gotten to know everyone in the district via phone call, ending with the Health Services coordinator, who seemed to have no idea what Lauren was talking about. Needless to say, she is playing a never-ending game of telephone with everyone in the school district, but to no avail. So much so that commenters have told her to just show up, maybe then she would get some answers.
In a last-ditch effort of her crusade across the school district, Lauren was able to get in contact with her daughter’s principal who completely flipped the script. He was very apologetic about the form being sent out, saying he had no idea that it was being sent out and that he would be writing an apology letter telling families to disregard the form together.
After another series of “I don’t know”s from the principal and then the superintendent, Lauren was told that the head of health services, who may just be the only one that knows anything about this form, was out of town and on vacation for two weeks. She and her commenters agree that this opens up an interesting conversation about the people making decisions in public school systems, and the importance of having a healthy sense of skepticism, if not outright suspicion, about the things being sent home with their kids.