DS is almost 3. In parents meeting today, his teacher told us we should ‘tone it down’ with him, as he speaks too much like an adult and we should let him be a child while he can. I was surprised at this, and wasn’t sure what she meant. We don’t feel that we speak to him like an adult, but we don’t treat him like he’s stupid either. He’s actually quite smart, knows a lot of different car names, dinosaur names and reptile names as these are his favourite things.
I don’t really underwhat she is getting at. She didn’t do too well at clarifying - it’s not that he swears or anything apparently, or talks about anything inappropriate -we certainly don’t swear or talk about things inappropriate to his age in front of him. Her example was the way that when you tell him not to do something, he replies “I said yes!” in response to an adult telling him “I said NO.” However all sorts of things were flying through my head, as this comment didn’t really make things more clear for me. For instance, he is an only child who spends more time around adults than children - maybe she means he speak down to other children as if they are stupid, maybe he doesn’t know how to talk to kids his own age??? Maybe he sees adults as equals and talks as if he is another adult - thus the rude answering back - but then why would she not just say he is rude and backchats? This teacher is usually easy to talk to and I feel that if he is rude she would just say so.
Hubby seemed to immediately uunderstand what she was on about, and when I asked him, he said she means that we tell our son off too sharply/angrily and he repeats this in the classroom like he is an adult in charge, rather than another child.
Eg, rather than quietly taking him aside as saying “no, we don’t do that” we yell “NO! Don’t do that! I said no!”, and he is repeating this angry authoritative tone (“well I said yes!”) and acting like a bossy know it all. I don’t feel we speak to DS like this at all and was quite hurt/sure this wasn’t what she meant. I mean, maybe when we are at the end of our tether, but in general I feel I speak calmly to our son.
My first instinct was that she meant that we should be using baby words with him ‘ta’, ‘mama’, ‘dada’ etc which I think is ridiculous and the very idea was a bit stunning as he is nearly three and can name all 151 1st generation Pokemon so he’s clearly smart enough to talk properly. But somehow I dont think that’s what she meant either.
I think her example just confused matters, so if someone said to you ‘so and so’s son acts too adult’ (and assuming they didn’t mean swearing or knowing about adult topics like sex or whatever), what would you think they meant?
I’ve always been proud at how we speak to our son - he knows good manners and we speak to him like the smart little kid he is, instead of giving him half arsed baby talk or ignoring his questions, but even so we do talk to him as a child, not like he’s an adult. So confused.....