Stark Contrast

Did you ever notice a stark contrast between the child you presented to a school, and the child a school has presented back to you? Many of e-mails I have received asking me to blog about early child hood “teachers gone wild” or shall we say parents accusing teachers of instigating bullying among children, profanity, and discriminatory practices – all just to make their [parents] lives, and the lives of their children miserable.

I have one word which I hope would propel parents into finding a more suitable environment for their child, and that is INSTINCT. Parents we urge you to please rely on your basic parental instinct to remove your child from an environment which promotes socially unacceptable, sub culture behavior for young children. We also plead with you to expose any teacher/school for what should be deemed as child abuse. My e-mail inbox is inundated with parents indicating that their child tells them an account of what occurred in school, and the child’s teacher portrays no recollection of the event; or a teacher convincing a child that she/he did not experience, see, or hear what the child just reported to the teacher during the moment of occurrence, even though the teacher witnessed the event also. Pay attention to such a signal, and act accordingly in the best interest of your child including and not limited to finding a new school. Early childhood care provides should not be allowed to take misguiding children as a sport, and parents we urge you not to fail your child or yourself by ignoring warning signs.

On the other hand, I have a pal who is an early childhood educator, and when engaging in this topic shortly before my blog, she expressed concern that unacceptable behavior displayed in the class room, if not corrected by the teacher, will lead parents to believe that teachers are responsible and/or promoting unacceptable behavior. So my pal aims to correct unacceptable behavior as fast as she can to avoid the element of suspicion being placed on her school. Good strategy . . . parents is this strategy deployed at your child’s school?

Should you notice a very different child from your own, returning home to you after school, ask your child’s teacher what if any corrective measures are being taken to ensure that the values you send your child with, are not being eroded. And if you already have an older child, it's not to late to implement corrective measures. However, in addition to facilitating your way through school administrators, you may need to work on eroding peer pressure, if the topic of peer pressure was not addressed during the early childhood years.

As always, you can email us at brigittiw@yahoo.com for further discussion and/or a more personalized response. BWrightParents