‘Why are you asking this? She’s 13’: Mom can’t believe the health questionnaire her school asked her daughter
A mom is calling out her kids' school district for sending out a wildly invasive health questionnaire.
In the viral video, which has more than 3 million views on TikTok, Lauren (@lauren1xoxo) explained that her 13-year-old daughter gave her a school health questionnaire to fill out that needed to be taken back to school "immediately."
Lauren thought it was a bit weird since it was the middle of the year and it's not like her daughter had just signed up for a sport. When Lauren started reading the form she was stunned.
They were asking questions like whether Lauren had a vaginal delivery or C-section if she had pregnancy complications, how old her daughter was when she first sat up, and how old her daughter we when she was potty trained.
"Why are you asking this? She's 13. She's almost 14," Lauren pointed out.
She said she'd understand if this form was for preschool or kindergarten, but it makes no sense to have this info for a teenager.
"But why do you need to know about my teenagers, infancy and toddlerhood? It just makes no sense to me," Lauren said.
@lauren1xoxo Why do they need to know all of this? I’m baffled… #momsoftiktok #school #health #question #weird #pregnancy #birth #teachersoftiktok #nurse #why #viral #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #fypシ ♬ original sound - GrungeKitty
In a two-part follow-up video, which also went viral, Lauren addressed the most common questions and assumptions she got. While people assumed that Lauren lived in a red state like Florida or Texas, both known for doing controversial things in schools, she shared that she's actually in Washington state.
Others reasoned that maybe her daughter was being evaluated for an assisted learning program or resources, but on top of Lauren knowing her child wasn't being evaluated for this, she pointed out that it wasn't just her child and a handful of others who got the form. When she called the school they told her that every child in the district—from elementary to high school—got the same form.
Lauren also raised concerns about potential ramifications if the school improperly stored the paperwork with her medical information or aren't careful with who can access the information. There's also a question of how the information is being used.
There was a red flag in the fine print of the form that said office staff are instructed to tell the school nurse if any student answered yes to the questions.
"That would be getting into that really iffy HIPPA territory because that means that some other member of office staff or whether they put together a committee to have it reviewed ... is looking over this medical form, making a yes pile and a no pile, and then giving it to the nurse ... which I find really suspicious," Lauren said.
Lauren first tried to get in contact with the school nurse who said they also thought the form was strange and had no idea why it was being passed out. So she transferred Lauren to the head nurse who had a series of "pre-rehearsed, almost like corporate sounding answers."
The head nurse told her the form was to fill in gaps in the students' files, and that the questions Lauren flagged were optional (though the form doesn't state that).
Lauren did reach out to the district's health services coordinator but no one has answered the phone when she called or called her back.
"I'm absolutely not gonna fill this out. I'm not gonna send it back. They're not getting that information about me. They're not getting that information about my daughter."
The Daily Dot reached out to Lauren for comment via TikTok direct message.
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