Mom livid over daughter's math teacher restricting students' bathroom privilege garners support

Tough love from teachers may sometimes be essential in shaping children's behavior, but there is a limit. No parent wants to witness or hear of tyranny in their child's classroom. Time and again, parents take to the internet to call out inconsiderate teachers who portray no concern for students when dictating a classroom rule. Earlier this September, a mom, Seets–who is better known as @MamaSitaa__ on X–posted about the weird and thoughtless rule her daughter's math teacher imposed on the students. The teacher wanted to restrict the children from taking frequent bathroom breaks and enforced an extremely strict rule for the same.

In her post, the mom wrote, "My daughter's math teacher has a rule that they only get one bathroom pass per week." While this, by itself, seems unfair to many children who may have health concerns, the teacher made it more complicated by connecting it with extra credits. "If they don't use it, they get academic extra credit," the mom added. To think how much pressure this would be on the students who desperately want to attend to their nature's call while also being worried about those "extra credits" is upsetting.  "I am livid. But my daughter is mad that I want to email the teacher and CC the principal. Am I wrong here?" the mom asked the internet.

Her post went viral on X with over 16 million views in just five days. One might guess that the mom's perspective would've been appreciated by many, but no. She received backlash to some extent through personal messages for criticizing her daughter's math teacher's rule. One teacher retaliated against Seets through a personal message that said, "Extra credit is exactly that- extra. That bathroom rule isn't harming anyone's grade because nobody should be reliant on a few points just to make up their grade. Try being a teacher for a day and come up with a better solution for managing chronic bathroom-visit abusers." 

The mom also received another scornful message for "chastising" a teacher who imposed a "cool rule." However, Seets had something important to tell teachers who were offended by her post. "If you have issues of students chronically avoiding your class, it's you. It's your teaching, your attitude. Be a kinder person, find new ways to connect and engage, and kids will want to stay," she mentioned in the thread. "For the record, we love teachers! Probably the most underpaid, underappreciated professions. This is only the second issue we've ever had, but it's a big one and I'm not letting it go and so many educators on here agree with me," she added.

The internet, however, completely sided with the mom and understood her frustration. "Some kids may have a medical condition, seems like this policy would be unfair to them," said @estamujergringa. "No, holding your bladder is actually very bad for you and can lead to long-term issues with incontinence," pointed out @Kyla_Lacey. "There are going to be kids who feel the need to perform to the rules to prove that they have worth and in doing so, they might be unintentionally harming themselves (UTIs, dehydration, etc). Your daughter might not understand, but this is horrid on so many levels," added @repgirlypop.