When your child isn’t playing nice.
Posted
June 30, 2009 at
8:43 pm by
Trish
This morning we had parent/teacher interviews with both the girls’ teachers. I wont reveal the details of the discussions obviously but I will say that there is an issue with one of our children that is of some concern and we will be monitoring things closely, as will her teacher.
One of our kids is not playing nicely with some of her fellow students. She is doing well academically, but there are some shenanigans going on during the recess and lunch breaks that need to be addressed quickly.
My younger brother struggled to get along with some of his peers, and his troubles were exacerbated by a general lack of interest in school and a sometimes difficult relationship with his teachers (who were not at all curious about why he might not like school so they just stuck him in the corner and told him to be quiet… thank goodness modern education allows for different learning styles in students… but I digress).
My parents were strong advocates for my brother, and I can remember their frustration with The System’s inability to cater to his specific but not unreasonable needs. I think it’s just the perfect happy ending that my brother married a brilliant school teacher and thus restored his faith in teachers and education in general. But at the time, I can remember them being very upset that his behaviour was causing disruption in the classroom; I’m sure they must have felt torn between their concern for his well-being and their concern for the experience of the other kids.
I’m still digressing.
The point is, it is quite confronting to be told that your child is behaving in a way that a) might effect another child’s enjoyment of school, and b) would almost certainly raise the hackles of the parents of that effected child. I know, because my kids have been the target of some fairly unsavoury behaviour in the past and nothing makes my blood boil quite like it. Can’t these parents control their child? What kinds of lessons are they teaching them at home if this is the way they behave at school?
Gulp.
Some of the same behaviours ARE being played out at home, and we tackle it head-on when we see it happening. Perhaps naively, we had no idea it was carrying on in the playground. The teacher was nervous to talk to us about it, no doubt worried that we might react with shock and disbelief and try to blame the other kids. No, we were pretty calm about it. Perhaps not really all that surprised. So we have promised to talk to our daughter about it, and we will check in with her teacher every week to see if there has been any improvement.
I have complained about the dreadful behaviour of other children at our daughters’ school - to other parents, to the Principal - and really all I ever wanted was some reassurance that the behaviour was being managed, that the offending child’s parents were involved, and that the school was employing an effective long-term strategy to not only help that child to learn how to get along with the other kids, but that the other kids (the ‘victims’) were being empowered to stand up for themselves as well. Our goal in this instance is to help our daughter see that this particular manifestation of her very strong leadership tendencies is discouraged, and that she channel that energy in a positive way.
Gosh, this parenting thing is really tough sometimes.
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3 Responses to “When your child isn’t playing nice.”
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1. mully
July 1, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
Trish: I noticed with my own kids that when there was something going on at home, it seemed to play out at school and vice versa.
Children are very adept at signal sending. Often they dont have the skills to verbalize their feelings. Actually, they often dont even recognize their feelings, let alone be able to tell someone about them, so they “act out”.
We’ve all seen this in our own kids and in other’s kids.
Whatever it was that was causing the behavior, be it at school, or at home, I did find that if we projected a united front, the teacher and my husband and myself, we usually were able to break thru the wall and find out what was wrong and work toward getting it fixed.
My 3rd child, a boy, was an absolute hellion. He was one of 18 kindergartners in a class of 24 kids AND the teacher had just graduated from college so this was her first teaching assignment.
He was regularly sent to the principal’s office for timeouts and it wasnt unusual for his teacher to phone me, after school, to tell me about his latest antic or attempt to disrupt the class.
I was beside myself with worry, because in my mind, I figured if he was this bad at only 5, God help us when he got older.
We made it thru kindergarten and when he entered first grade, I requested a conference with his teacher. She, of course, had his record from kindergarten and knew that he was going to be a handful.
Between she and I (and really much more to her credit), he actually flourished that year. He settled down and began learning and wasnt nearly as much of a troublemaker as we had seen the year before.
Getting together with his first grade teacher and talking things over with her, was the wisest move I could have made. I honestly think it changed his life at that point.
2. mully
July 1, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
Sorry, that should have read….”he was one of 18 kindergartner BOYS in a class of 24 kids”
3. Lauren
July 1, 2009 @ 5:49 pm
I have to agree with Mully about home influence, but I am in no way inferring that this is occuring with your daughter, Trish.
I am close to a situation with a child, strong willed, outspoken and, well, bossy, who went to school and came home every single day with a note from the teacher. I didn’t believe it was every day until her mother showed me the child’s homework folder and the many, many pleas from the teacher for help. As it turned out, the child was being manipulated, groomed, if you will, to question all authority but one - the grandmother, of all people. The grandmother was a narcissist in the truest sense and she wanted complete control of her grandchild, but the parents were unwilling to relinquish. So, in their “alone” time together, the child was instructed on how to misbehave to garner attention (even the negative kind) and sworn to secrecy. It was one of the most sick forms of abuse I’ve ever witnessed.
After the child begged her parents not to leave her alone with her grandmother, and the parents, naturally, began to question her, it all came pouring out. She wasn’t a bad kid at all! She was just trying to please her Mimi who had made all kinds of promises and told all kinds of “secrets,” including the one that she loved her the most, more than the parents, more than anyone ever would, and she required the child’s complete devotion.
After cutting off unsupervised visitation with the grandmother, the child began to thrive in school and is now entering 7th grade and doing very, very well. She respects boundaries and the property of others . . . and she comes to her parents when something doesn’t “seem right” to her. However, it took a full two years for her to recover and not feel as though she was a disappointment to her Mimi.
Then again, it could be that your daughter is exceptionally bright and is just testing her limits. (?)