To ask this reception teacher to back down?

[kathryng90]

My son will be 5 in June. He is in reception. They are having a teddy bear picnic tomorrow. Text message yesterday warning parents 'bring your child's favourite bear to school'. My son loves his build a bear toothless dragon bear. He told his reception teacher how excited he was to bring this toy to school. He was sobbing as he came out of school and teacher said to me 'DS is sad as he has said he wants to bring toothless to school tomorrow. He can't. It's a teddy bear picnic not a dragon picnic. Our theme is goldilocks and the 3 bears not 3 dragons. Find a bear'

He is so upset, toothless is his favourite bear. I have suggested that we take toothless plus a teddy bear. AIBU to ask teacher to let toothless sit on desk and watch while bear joins in? Or am I undermining teacher? Another compromise? He's 4 ffs.....

SirChenjin,
Dragon > in the store cupboard until the end of the day.
Bear > supplied by the parent, as requested and as confirmed by teacher.
Child's disappointment > a problem for the parent who knew in advance what was required and decided to ignore it and send in the dragon anyway.

If teacher wants bear shaped soft toy for her tea party she needs to supply bear shaped soft toys for parents who have no intentions of shelling out for something like this. Said teacher also needs to a) be clearer in her instructions - bears of any type as opposed to favourite bears are required for the tea party for four year olds and b) develop a sense of perspective like other sensible teachers.

I hope the teacher never ever tries to do something so outside the curriculum again.

Really Sirchenjin? Next year, at World Book Day, what happens when Tarquin or Jocasta want to dress up as onions? What when it's Roman history day and one of them throws a strop because they've been told that dressing as a Mod is not Roman attire? Or when mummy has no intentions of shelling out for an old sheet toga?

The sense of perspective required needs to come from the OP. She needs to pick her battles and teach her child the value of respecting a reasonable request from a teacher. As a pp said, it should come to no more than, "But I want to take dragon", "Well you can't so let's pick a teddy to take. Now, what shall we have for tea".

Oh, and the "back down " in the OP's OP says everything about their aggressive stance.

Well, I bet the teacher got a shock today with all the different animals that came in today for the teddy bears' picnic. At least a couple of bunnies, maybe a tiger or two, a penguin perhaps and a few more different animals. And, yes, a dragon.

Not everyone has a teddy "bear" at home.

It is perfectly possible to have a favourite soft toy that is not a bear and to also have teddy bears. The instruction to bring your favourite bear therefore means the bear you like best, not your favourite soft toy which is a dragon.
Stunned at the number who insist bear or teddy also refers to any cuddly toy and that everyone knows this when many have posted that bear means bear and bear only.

What happens meissen?

Why, the world will stop spinning and implode of course

Yes, I suspect that the picnic will have been attended by a whole rsft of animals. Hopefully they all had a lovely time, as they do at other schools up and down the land.

There's obviously a language thing going on here. OP, and some others on the thread, read "teddy bear" to mean any soft toy; other people (including the teacher, I presume) mean it to be a soft toy that is specifically bear shaped. It's not unreasonable to have the first interpretation (although I was not aware of it before this thread! I would have assumed bear-shaped as well). I don't always hoover with a Hoover, for example. There's lots of words in English where the specific has come to mean a generality. It looks like this one is only part-way there yet...

So it's not that a kid heard "bring a bear" and decided "I'd rather bring a dragon" and got upset when told he had to obey the rules. A kid heard "bring your favourite soft cuddly toy" and got all excited about bringing his favourite soft cuddly toy (a "dragon bear" as his Mum calls it...). Then all of sudden he's told he can't do the thing he's all excited about, and doesn't understand what he did wrong. Given that some adults on this thread seem to have trouble understanding that there could be different understandings of "teddy bear" surely we can't expect a 4yo to realise that, "oh, she was using language differently than me and Mum. It's not that I was wrong and am being punished, it was just a misunderstanding". Of course he won't! This should have been handled with much more sensitivity by the teacher.

I am curious to see how many other kids show up with non-bear bears today.

SoldierBear Oh, I always make the distinction of teddy bear versus soft toy, myself. But as someone who has been irritatingly pedantic to all and sundry, I am well aware that when other people say bear/teddy it's a quick catch-all for cuddly toy. It's painful, but I cope. It's like people calling dogs/cats it; they don't actually mean that the dog or cat is an asexual being.

My children's favourites at four weren't teddies, but they took them, with great, great, great excitement to the teddy bear's picnic. No-one said a word, and until I saw this thread, I'd never considered anyone would. The obvious intent of the event is to engage the children in school and learning through involving their favourite toys, not to penalise the various four year olds who became hugely attached to something that isn't an actual bear. It was the highlight of the year for each one, and I thought that was its mission accomplished? Why would any teacher decide to structure the activity so it could potentially only engage the interest and delight of the small children who had grown up with a bear?

Just take a teddy bear. Surely there are more important things to worry about!? Like, how well the teacher teaches. How she probably spends hours assessing the children after school and working out their next steps. How she's there when need help. How she wants to make the curriculum exciting by holding a picnic, which is a lovely idea.

The thing is, this is a school activity for which a specification has been made i.e. bears. I agree the teacher has handled it less than ideally, I agree it is a fun activity. But it is also a school activity and as such will have been planned and structured and have to have specific learning aims and some sort of direction. This isn't playgroup, or nursery or Rainbows - so saying your child turned up to one of those teddy bear picnics with a ten foot T Rex is irrelevant. At school rising five year olds are expected to understand that there are certain requirements made of them, to listen to instructions and be able to follow them. They are learning that not everything in life will always go your way, and that sometimes you will be disappointed, sometimes they have to accept no, and sometimes you just have to suck it up and get on with it.

These are learning experiences and they can be hard. But you do your child no favours if you deny them the learning experience - you just set them up for furture disappointment if they think they can always come to you and get you to override what the teacher has required.

Some battles with school are worth fighting, where there is real distress or injustice, save your energy for them, because if you kick up over 'my child is crying because he can't get his own way' you will be labelled as a difficult nuisance and when it comes to something important you will not be taken seriously.

Frankly your child is being asked to sit with an alternative cuddly toy for a short period of time, he still has his favourite toys at home he can play with any time. It is NOT the end of the world - don;t encourage him to think that it is - he's learning to make judgements about what is important and what is not and to gain perspective, it is far kinder and more helpful to him to say 'Oh well miss X says she wants bears not dragons, Toothless is dragon so he'll have to stay at home this time. Lets find a bear you can take instead.' than to make a big OTT deal about it and prolong his upset. Help him see it for the slightly disappointing but in no way devastating event that it is.

catgirl excellent.

Sleeponeday - I take your point about most of those World Book Day costumes - but 'Where's Wally?' is a book, and Wally is a book character - it is a book without words, but still a book. I am not sure it's fair to lump him in with characters who were film characters first, before the spin-off books appeared.

I think it is a shame that this little boy is so sad about this - and I have a certain sympathy with the use of 'Bear' to mean 'All Cuddly Toys' - but I also think that, as the teacher has said 'no' to Toothless going in, the OP should be kindly and gently managing her son's upset, and helping him see why it would be a better idea to take in a teddy bear.

also murmuration excellent explanation of why it IS, actually, a big deal. And yes it will be very interesting to see who turns up with a giant plastic Elsa doll etc instead.

I've never heard of any old stuffed animal being called a teddy bear so I think YABU, sorry!

It's awful to see them upset when they're little and if I'd been the teacher I'd probably have caved honestly. But I think deliberately encouraging your child to flout the rules is bad form.

Oh passive aggressive emoticons. How pretty.

What happens, Sirchenjin, are all the things mentioned by PP's. Loss of respect for the teacher. Loss of goodwill and being "THAT parent". Loss of an opportunity to teach a child that he can't always do as he pleases in a school setting. Little Johnny being upset when the teacher retains the aims of the lessons she's been providing each week and puts the dragon in a cupboard, an avoidable problem if the OP wasn't so intent on challenging her. Little Johnny being led to think that if he doesn't want to obey he need not and mummy will prevent him from having to, which only works up to a point. Then he gets a bit of a shock.

Longer term, entitled adulthood, if the OP's remark about getting the teacher to "back down" so her prince can have his way is anything to go by.

"Back down"! Pfft!

Has the op been back this morning to say what she sent her DS in with?

Yes, absolutely petty - something as petty as the wrong shaped bear for a picnic deserves such a response. In fact, have another to leave you in no doubt how I feel about the histrionics.

I can't think what is educational about a teddy bears picnic. Maybe suggest she does something more constructive or if its a bit of fun then......... let the kids have fun?

Stupid woman, confirms why we shouldn't be sending 4 year olds to school.

Sirchenjin I said how PRETTY, not how petty.

:)

So you did! What is it about the you find pretty?

Surely it would be better not to take toothless in if he is a favourite, my 5yo would understand taking something else in so that toothless doesn't get lost

Tell them it's a post op Trans-species bear and to leave it out of the party would be discrimination.

Name calling a 4 year old you've never met "princey" !? What the hell is wrong with some of these posters?