What To Do When Someone Passes Gas In Class: Teacher Tips For Awkward, Embarrassing Classroom Moments
The fluorescent lights in my 4th grade classroom were already humming by 10:15 last spring, and I was tracing fraction equivalents on the whiteboard when the first hint of a smell hit. A boy in the back row sniffed loudly, then turned to his neighbor and snickered. “Ew, what is that?” Another kid coughed dramatically, and soon half the class was shifting in their seats, eyes darting around to spot the culprit. I followed their gaze to Mia, a quiet 9-year-old who sat in the front row, always brought homemade carrot muffins for snack, and whose mom had emailed me a month earlier about her new IBS diagnosis. Her face was bright pink, and she’d pulled her shoulders all the way up to her ears, like if she made herself smaller she’d disappear.
I thought back to when I was a first-year teacher, eight years earlier. A similar thing happened, I froze, pretended I didn’t smell anything, and the teasing went on for three days. The kid ended up eating lunch in the nurse’s office for the rest of the semester. Another time I tried to joke it off, said “Well, we all do it,” and scanned the room with a smile, which only made the quiet kid in the corner even more red. This time, I didn’t freeze, didn’t scan the room for who did it. I just capped my marker, wiped my hand on my jeans, and walked to the window. “Man, this room got stuffy fast after back-to-back math periods,” I said, swinging the sash all the way open. A breeze blew a stack of worksheets off the corner desk, and a few kids laughed at that. “Let’s take a two-minute stretch break while the air clears, yeah? Everyone up.” I led them through a couple quick shoulder rolls and a silly little dance I’d learned from a previous class, and by the time we sat back down, the smell was gone, and no one was talking about it anymore.
After the bell rang for recess, Mia hung back by my desk, twisting the strap of her backpack. “It was me,” she mumbled, staring at her shoes. “I’m sorry. My tummy’s been weird since I started eating more veggies. I tried to hold it.” I pulled out a chair for her to sit, and told her there was nothing to be sorry for. Bodies do what bodies do, I said, and I’d already talked to her mom about setting up a rule: any time her tummy feels off, she can get up to go to the bathroom or get a drink without even raising her hand. No explanation needed. She nodded, a little bit of color came back to her face, then ran out to recess.
A few days later, her mom emailed me to say that before that day, Mia had been holding it all day long every school day, and would come home with terrible stomach aches that left her curled up on the couch for hours. After we talked, she stopped holding it, and the aches got way better. That’s when it hit me that this tiny, silly, embarrassing thing no one talks about is actually a big deal for kids. It’s not just a gross joke to brush off. For kids with digestive issues, food intolerances, anxiety that messes with their stomach, or even just a kid who had an extra bean-filled lunch, this is something that can shape how they feel about school for years.
I’ve talked to a lot of new teachers and parents about this over the years, and the biggest mistake I see people make is drawing attention to the individual. It doesn’t matter if you know who it was, calling it out or asking for confirmation or joking about it in front of the whole class sticks with a kid. I had a former student find me on Facebook a couple years ago, she’s 22 now, and she said she still remembers her 5th grade teacher making her stand in the hallway until the smell went away. She still avoids eating in public more than she has to, because of that one moment.
The concrete steps I always share are simple, no fancy plans needed. If you’re in the classroom, don’t single anyone out. Blame the room, open a window, take a quick break, and move on. If kids start calling out names, just shut it down with one line: “Everyone has body stuff, we don’t need to talk about that. Let’s get back to what we’re doing.” If it keeps going, pull the teasing kid aside later, don’t do it in front of everyone, and tell them straight that teasing someone for this is cruel, and it stops. If you’re a parent, and your kid comes home upset because they had an accident or got teased, don’t brush it off by saying “it’s no big deal.” It is a big deal to them. Start with “That sounds so embarrassing, I’d feel awful too.” Then work out a plan with their teacher: let your kid leave the room any time they need to, no questions asked. If your kid has a chronic digestive issue, tell the teacher privately, that way we don’t accidentally put them in a position to be shamed.
For parents of kids who get teased for someone else’s gas, it’s also good to talk about it at home. Just mention that everyone has body moments they don’t plan, and laughing at someone for that hurts way more than people think. It’s a small, easy way to cut down on teasing before it starts.
Last week, it happened again. We were going over permission slips for the zoo field trip, and the smell drifted across the room half way through my speech. A couple kids snickered, eyes starting to dart. I just grabbed my stack of permission slips, said “Hey, this room’s a little stuffy, let’s go talk about this in the hall while it airs out.” We all filed out, went over the reminders about bringing a sack lunch and not feeding the goats, and filed back in two minutes later. No one mentioned it.
Ed school never teaches you how to handle this kind of thing. It’s not on any state curriculum, it’s not part of any parent training webinar. It’s just one of those messy, human little moments that come up when you get a group of kids in a room together. I don’t handle every awkward moment perfectly, but so far, keeping a kid’s dignity first before anything else has worked out better than any other trick I’ve tried. Most days, that’s enough.
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