A father was left horrified after receiving a Father's Day gift his six-year-old daughter had made at school, which appeared to hold a very dark message.
The Father's Day gift had been made by the student at Connolly Primary School in Perth, Australia, depicting a dice with different suggestions of what to do if they were having a bad day.
Among them were: "Banana - For the days when you have gone round the bend", "Frog - For the times when you need to jump to it", and: "Mintie - Take when you have experienced one of those 'moments'".
So far, so innocent - but the final side of the dice had a far more troubling message. Alongside a picture of a bullet were the words: "Bullet - Take when all else fails."
Howard was understandably left furious that his six-year-old daughter had been given the template which appeared to allude to suicide and voiced his disgust.
He told 9News: "To create this and distribute this, disgusting. If you’ve had enough, shoot yourself, what else does it say."
Howard added: "I have a weird sense of humor, [but] that’s not part of any sense of humor to anybody."
The family complained to Connolly Primary School, and Howard's wife Renea added that she believed the teacher had intended the gift to be a joke, telling the news outlet: "They wanted it to be funny, that was my interpretation of what the teacher had said to me - she was wanting to be funny.
"It wasn't funny."
Psychologist Bailey Bosch also told 9News that the misguided 'joke' could have very serious implications for the child as well as the parent, explaining: "Children can take things very literally, it can play on their minds, they might not have the language to articulate what’s distressing them.
"And let's also remember that there's adults around that could be completely triggered by some words such as 'bullets', 'death', etc."
The WA Department of Education said in a statement that the school had apologized to parents following the "serious lack of judgment."
Deputy Director General Melesha Sands told NCA NewsWire: "While I understand the activity related to confectionary, it was clearly not thought through and should never have happened.
"The school has since apologized to parents and will not be repeating this activity in future. The principal has also apologized directly to a parent who put in a complaint.
"I’d like to also apologize to parents and reiterate this activity was not appropriate for students, which has been discussed with the school."
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