to think some parents are in denial

[stressedteacher]

Not sure if I should post, I have name changed so nobody will know it is me (not that anyone here knows me personally anyway.)

I am a teacher, I teach Nursery / reception (Dcs age 3 to 5).
Yesterday afternoon, a boy who I shall call X was at the new TA's table. He got up and tried to run I said he musn't as we were doing work and so on.
I turned round and he did it againg the TA said that he had to sit down or he would be in the cool down corner. He said 'No way' and tried to run. TA took him to the corner and explained why he was there. TA then had to leave, so I got him from the corner, I explained why he was there he said sorry. However because he had been in the corner he has to move his picture into the 5 min board which shows he has 5 minute off his toy time on friday. He burst into tears at this.
It was the end of the day, the afterschool picked him up and he was still a little teary so I explained what had happened.

He was dropped off by his GP this morning who just nodded. X was fine he said sorry to the TA (of his own free will) and was his normal self for the rest of the day. At pick up his mum was the last to collect him. She stormed into the class and asked to have a word. She said I had over-reacted about her X's behaviour and I was picking on her Dc for no reason and so on. When she had collected her Dc yesterday the afterschool took her to one side and explained what happened. When she asked her Dc, he got all teary and said he wasn't doing anything and as she kept asking him he was saying I don't know.
So she was taking it up with me and I explained about 6 times what happened. Eventually she calmed down , she called X over and he said sheepishly that he did know what happened but he didn't want a telling off. His mum was all cuddly with him saying she would 'never tell him off'.
This all took about an hour.
I understand as parents we don't always want to think of our Dcs as having mis-behaved. But I don't need to have parents storming up to me because they think I am picking on darling little X or B or Y.
I have Dcs that I needed to pick up , so I was late for getting them which then throws the night time routine behind.

I except that I may be being unreasonable as I have had a bit of a stressful day anyway. But are do some people really not see that Dcs do understand things and they will try to get off without being yelled at by parents.
So aibu?

At ds1's school the Reception class purposely has a different discipline policy from the rest of the school to take account of their age. They follow the 'golden ruls' like the rest of the school but have a traffic light system and lose 5 min of their daily golden time if their card gets to red.

For the rest of the school, 5 min of Friday's Golden time is lost if you get a purple ticket (equivalent to OP's cool down corner, I suppose).

I think it is silly to have a 1 size fits all policy for ages 3+ and actually the Early Years teachers should point this out. The point of a policy is to improve behaviour surely, and punishing a young child on Friday for something done days before is hardly going to do that.

None of which stops parents being delusional about their children's behaviour and yes 1 hour of complaining in this instant was v. ott.

She did not overreact, boringnickname - she followed school policy.

Would you be happy if your child's education was being disrupted because some child thought it was OK to run round the classroom ignoring the teacher's instructions? Not forgetting the fact that if one child is allowed to get away with disruptive behaviour, then there will be plenty of others who will follow suit, and then the teacher will be utterly unable to teach.

For me, one of the most important things that a child learns in Reception is how to learn in school - how to behave within a classroom and in lessons so that everyone gets the full benefit of the teaching - this child needs to learn that.

And I am utterly aghast at the fact that his mum has TOLD him that she will never tell him off! Is he never ever going to do anything unacceptable? I doubt it - I have three teenagers of my own, and I do not believe that the 'Perfect child' exists. Every child displays unacceptable behaviour, and sometimes you need to tell them off about it. And punish them appropriately too.

However, I do agree that, for this age-group, a delayed punishment might not be such a good thing. When mine were at primary school, I don't think they started losing 'Golden Time' (Friday special playtime/toy time) until they were in year 1.

But this was nursery was it not? not school, dont they educate through PLAY at nursery. If this was reception, then yes, he should be made to sit down, but i dont like the whole thing of having to be humuliated either

YADNBU - yes loads of parents are totally in denial about their kids and they can't see beyond their own child. I say this as a pre-school practitioner.

Sound common sense from LeQueen. The DCs that will get on well in life are the ones that realise that you need different behaviour in different places and are adaptable. It does no harm to know that they might be able to wind mum around their little finger but that if Miss x says not to run she means it.
I would love to see some of you manage 20 children at once, it would be survival of the fittest and the quiet easy going ones would be overlooked.
Life isn't fair-and it never will be,however much a protective mother tries to make it fair.
When you choose a nursery you need to ask the right questions. The 5minute board must have been plain to see on a visit s o if you didn't like the method it was the wrong nursery for you.

You know those parents you were talking about OP...

Don't know if YABU or not because I still can't get past the fact you wrote 'DCs'.
Is it 'childs' or 'childrens' that you have?

i have worked in preschools and studied children's play
there are more appropriate ways of dealing with minor incidences like this. when using such over zealous punishments where the punishment far outweighs the "crime"you can see the anger, the sense of injustice in the child's face...not a good way for them to start out life in the education system..viewing the teacher as a punisher rather than a person who guides them. Pre-school is not compulsory education. it is meant to develop skills through free play and introduce them to the education system with a sense of "if you work well you will achieve"...not "you will get punished for moving"

it is much more appropriate to have a nuturing approach to bring out good behaviour

How long have you been a teacher? The longer you have to deal with this type of behaviour (from the grown-ups), the thicker your skin will become and you really won't let it bother you. YADNBU. How kind of you to spend one hour dealing with it!

To repeat YADNBU.

Blubbery - she was following school policy. Yes, we can disagree with that policy, but as a teacher, she has to follow policy (whilst obviously being free to discuss changing that policy with the headteacher).

I agree that children do need to be given the ethos of 'if you work well, you will achieve' but I think that that can co-exist alongside the notion of 'if you repeatedly disobey the teacher, there will be consequences'.

My children have known from before school age that certain actions had consequences - the consequences change as they get older, but I firmly believe that it is my job to teach them that if you do wrong, you get punished. It's a very important life-lesson - and surely a child who has never had a negative consequence for an action/bad behaviour, is going to get a horrible shock when they are adults and have to realise that the law isn't going to praise them for doing the right thing but will punish them for doing wrong, however unfair they or their mum think that is.

I am glad that my children have mainly been in classes where the teachers have had good discipline and control - I would far rather that a skilled teacher was spending their time imparting their knowledge to my children and their classmates than spending their time doing crowd control - and imo, that is what would happen if there were no punishments/negative consequences for bad behaviour in school.

lequeen bless his little cottons

One of the best pieces of advice I received when pregnant was that a parent cannnot change the world to make it suit their child, far better to teach your child how to navigate the world.

I have to say that my flabber is utterly gasted at the thought of a parent who would rock up to their adult child's place of work, to try to insist that their lickle precious needs more holiday allocation!

YADNBU in what you did. Children need good discipline in place, both at home and school.

YABVU for blabbing it all over NM's, lets hope the mum doesn't recognize the situation and report you for being very unprofessional.

LeQueen - I think I did OK as a parent then - though I clearly failed on the 'use the loo (fairly) neatly' part - all three boys had aim that was best described as approximate, well into their teens. I always look before I sit down. Always.

Surely giving him time out was enough? Why did he have to have two punishments?

I think YAB a bit U. He's only little.

DCs are going to find it very difficult to cope with adult life if they haven't managed to get over minor difficulties and disappointments from early on. It probably isn't the way that I would deal with it but calling it 'humiliation' is rather strong. He must have known the system- he chose to do the wrong thing and he knew the consequences. Next time he will maybe choose the 'right' way-but at least he knows where he stands.It is far less confusing than a parent cuddling him for bad behaviour and telling him she won't tell him off. On a bad day she might well tell him off.

I don't get it, LeQ - I really don't. They have a handy pointing thing to wee through, so how hard can it be to direct the wee into what is, after all, a pretty big hole.

When I was at nursery we had a naughty chair. I was humiliated like this for being 'naughty'.
It affected my confidence for the rest of my time at school. Please do not treat children like this.
If you treated any of my DC like this I would react like the mum, although agree this is not the right approach.

You are both unreasonable.

Apparently the foreskin can throw your aim out. Or so I am told....

Wo betide any teacher who comes on MN - you will never, never be in the right......

grammar, spelling, discipline. You are a target. Lie and say you're a traffic warden, you would be more popular...