Melbourne mum, Leanne knew her son was struggling with his pencil grip, but she had no idea the lengths his teacher would go to teach him. Leanne shares her story with journalist, Shona Hendley.

My six-year-old son, *Oliver has never loved anything that involved sitting still and using pencils to draw or write letters or numbers.

I knew that this may be an issue as he went into Prep at primary school, but I thought it would be something that was easily overcome and nothing too great of a concern.

When we had our first parent-teacher conference toward the end of term one though, Oliver’s teacher explained that he was having difficulty with writing and that although it was only early days, he really needed to work on holding his pencil correctly - he needed to use the "tripod grip."

According to her, Oliver was not holding his pencil with the tripod grip, which was exacerbating the issue and preventing him from improving.

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After this, we bought him one of those rubber pencil grips in order to help him put his fingers in the right positions but when he took it with him to school the teacher said that it would be better for him to learn how to hold the pencil without this, so he wasn’t able to use it in class.

At the time I thought this was a bit tough, I mean he was only five at this point in time and obviously was trying, but I figured she knew best when it came to this area, so I let it be.

After another term, I could see that Oliver still hadn’t mastered it, and the teacher also mentioned it again in passing at school pick-up one time. I told her we were working on it at home but would try to do more.

Clearly, we didn’t do enough because a few weeks into this term, Oliver came home and told me that his teacher had sticky taped the pencil to his hand so he would hold it the right way.

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“She said it would make it easy, but it was embarrassing,” he told me.

I think I just looked at Oliver in silence for about a minute because he followed up by saying, “Mum, did you hear me?”

While I did indeed hear him, I had no idea what to reply. I was absolutely gob-smacked at what Oliver had just told me, that I couldn’t figure out words to say.

Eventually, I came back into the land of the living and followed up by asking Oliver some questions. I didn't think he was lying because he rarely ever does, but this whole situation seemed so absolutely absurd that I didn’t want to believe it.

That’s when he told me that she used some brown “fat tape” which I am assuming was masking tape, and that as she taped it around his hand and the pencil, the kids in his class just stared at him.

While some laughed, others just stared, probably as confused as I was about what was happening.

Then after the writing task, they were doing, she peeled the tape off in a way that he said “didn’t hurt at all” which made me think that this was not her first time using this method.

After I heard this detail, I was 99 percent sure that Oliver was telling me the truth but I wanted to confirm.

I sent his teacher an email asking about what had happened. She replied saying it was correct and that she had in fact done this on other occasions, with other kids and it “worked well.”

I couldn’t believe it. I told her that it wasn’t right, that this was something that may have been done back in the day when it was seen as OK to hit students, but not now.

I decided to take the matter further and I rang the school and spoke with the principal. She followed up by saying she had spoken with the teacher and that it wouldn’t happen again but that was it, nothing else would be done.

I don’t want to be one of those super annoying parents who get involved in every decision but seriously, taping a pencil to a six-year-old’s hand? That is just not OK.

I am just glad next year, Oliver will have someone else teaching him, someone who will hopefully be using teaching methods from this century and not think that taping pencils to kids’ hands is the effective way to teach them how to hold a pencil correctly.

*Name changed for privacy reasons.