When teaching young children, you have to accept that they’re not going to be able to read Shakespeare at three-years old. If you want your child to be advanced, it is best to challenge them but not overwhelm them. If you have them reading books that a bit beyond their reading level, then you’ll help them stretch their vocabulary and their reading abilities. This will make a big difference for them as you continue to do it. And similarly you need to accept that kids will be kids. Three and four year old children will not act with complete discipline. They want to run around and explore. Everything is still so new to them. And you’d expect your child’s preschool to understand that children develop at their own pace. Well one mom received a strange letter from her child’s school. And now she is exposing them on social media.
As part of the October 2017 newsletter, the preschool sent out the following letter to make sure the parents knew their strict rules. Because students have shown up to school with unhealthy lunches, the school took it upon itself to tell parents how to feed their children.
The letter began with a slap in the face to the parents, accusing them of not disciplining the children at home:
“We made it through a really tough first month with tears, attitudes, unwillingness, not listening, not obeying the rules and especially, too much talking and not enough sitting in seats when asked to. We work on this every day at school, but we need help from home, too. We realize kids don’t want to sit and would rather talk and play when they want to; but that’s not how school works.”
The school then reminded parents why preschool was so important.
“Preschool is preparation to go on to “big” school and these things are important there, too. We simply can’t say that our kids don’t like coloring and sitting still because Kindergarten and first grade have a lot of coloring. Please, work five or ten minutes each day with your child on this and you’ll see improvement. We have seen improvement with several kids already. We realize it’s a fast paced world and parents work, but the adults in the house have to be in charge and help the kids to understand this. Please, talk to your child about the importance of sharing, not fighting, keeping their hands to themselves, and learning to get along with each other. Remind them that once we pick up the toys that we don’t get them back out again, because we are done playing and going on to learning fun things.”
Many internet readers were shocked that the school had this reaction. Children who are three or four usually exhibit this kind of behavior. It is not like it is out of the ordinary. On the contrary, it is business as usual for children this age.
Do you think the school is overreacting or should the parents learn to discipline their children at home?
