The school allowed his daughter to make the gift!
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Picture this: Trent Howard, a dad from Perth, Australia, was in for a wild ride when his six-year-old bundle of joy brought home a Father’s Day gift that was supposed to lift his spirits. Little did he know, this “gift” would leave him downright flabbergasted!
What was this unusual present, you ask? Well, it was none other than a printed activity dice. Yeah, you heard that right, a dice! But this wasn’t your ordinary dice; it was designed to turn even the gloomiest days into a laugh-fest.
Each side of the die had a food or item suggestion meant to put a smile on Trent’s face. For example, one side suggested a banana “for the days when you have gone round the bend.”
However imagine Trent’s astonishment when he rolled the dice and saw a suggestion that left him absolutely gobsmacked: “A bullet to take when all else fails.” Wait, what? That’s right, his precious daughter’s gift was suggesting he resort to firearms when life got tough! Shocking, right?
This Converted School Bus Will Blow Your Mind
Understandably outraged, the Howard family didn’t take this lightly. They complained to the school, arguing that this “gift” promoted the wrong kind of thinking. Trent Howard spoke to 9News and said, “To create this and distribute this, disgusting. ‘If you’ve had enough, shoot yourself,’ what else [could that be interpreted to] say? I have a weird sense of humor, [but] that’s not part of any sense of humor to anybody.”
Even Trent’s wife, Renea, was baffled. She explained that a teacher had told her it was meant to be a joke. But she wasn’t buying it: “They wanted to be funny, that was my interpretation of what the teacher had said to me. It wasn’t funny. It’s really not appropriate for kids to be given that kind of topic in a joking manner without any support around it.”
The Department of Education didn’t mince words either, acknowledging that this activity was “clearly not thought through” and “showed a serious lack of judgment.” Oops!
The school quickly issued an apology and vowed never to pull such a stunt again.
Trent Howard, summing up the situation with a dash of wisdom, said, “We need change everywhere. In this society. We have suicide in our families. It’s not cool. It needs to stop.” He’s absolutely right!
Psychologists, like the Perth-born expert Bailey Bosch, have also chimed in. She reminds us all that kids can be quite literal and might not fully understand what’s distressing them. And let’s not forget that adults can be triggered by certain words too, like “bullets” or “death.”
A bizarre Father’s Day gift gone wrong! The lesson? Let’s be mindful of the words and messages we share with kids and remember that sometimes humor can miss the mark by a mile.
