my life as a crocheter & knitter & working mom

Friday, March 02, 2007

of arans and little boys


Here are the biggest sleeves ever. Seriously, why are they so darn wide? I've finished two complete repeats. Two more and I start the raglan shaping. It's all downhill from there. I think I'm right on track to finish by next Friday. I'd show you, but I've used up my blogger picture posting rations for the week. Ha! I got it to work. Ironic, thought that the pic is so small!

I have to call Billy's lead teacher (which is a bit of a misnomer). We got progress reports last night. And, although he's doing well in most of his "academic" and motor skills (we have to work on drawing circles and the potty), he's not doing well with the emotional and social skills. Seems he's still throwing tantrums and being rude to the teachers (yelling back at the mostly). He's disturbing everyone else's naptime (gee, his not sleeping during the day explains why he's so bratty at night) and, most worrisome, he's not sharing and has started hitting and pushing his classmates. So, we have to come in to speak with her. I spoke with him a couple of times last night and twice this morning about sharing and cooperating with his teachers, blah blah blah.

I know I'm his mom and I bear responsibility for this situation, but short of lecturing the three-year-old, how am I supposed to address this situation? I'm never with him in a room with 18 other kids (Hubby gives them the benefit of the doubt that not all kids assigned to the room are there all the time). If he talks back to me, I sit him in a chair and leave him. My options are very different from what they have at school and if he's disruptive at home? He's only disturbing me and Hubby.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pawn this off on them, I just don't know what to do. I don't know what effect my unmedicated state has had on his behavior at school or Hubby's working late so much.

Part of me doesn't want him to be some little stepford child always blindly doing what the authorities tell him to do. But, then again, he's only 3 and doesn't know how to make good choices all the time.

Fortunately, Hubby's so wrung out about work, he couldn't get into his normal over-reaction frenzy about this last night.

2 comments:

Rae said...

Hey, I'm totally in your boat. With a DD who's in daycare from about 7:30 AM to 6 PM, they get the majority of her waking time. As awful as it sounds, they ARE raising her in many respects. Does it bother me? Well, I guess, in some ways because the daycare doesn't espouse the same approach and values I do, but, well, I'd have no hair if I raised her 24/7.

So while I do agree that you as parent have to guide your child, at 3 your kid is a product of his environment. As a professional in education, with some professional experience (I worked with pre-K profs at Columbia University), the daycare workers have an obligation to look at how they treat the other children, how the model, etc. Education is actually pretty complicated; way over my head.

But this doesn't actually help you as a parent who has to respond to the teachers. With that, I'm completely and utterly useless. Apologies.

Amy Lane said...

I think (and this is only me--remember, I piss people off on a regular basis so feel free to ignore me...) that sometimes little kids react badly to overly structured day care. When you're home with him, he gets some one on one time, and some play by himself time and he's good with that. Maybe he's not ready to be pre-pre school yet. Maybe he needs a little time to be a kid...

My husband and I had (sort of) this discussion about the Cave Troll. When he's in an overly structured situation (like gymnastics) he does what we call his 'potato face'--he's all eyes and no initiative. He's very smart and knows his ABC's, and, technically, he'll be (in Cali, at least) of age to be in pre-school next year...but he does that 'potato face'--we don't think he's emotionally ready for pre-school. We decided to keep him in his current day care situation.

It's hard--there's a push--structure structure structure--education education education--make sure they know everything as soon as possible. But three is still a baby, really. He may not be ready to do things like share and communicate well with authority and all that other stuff. I watch Cave Troll lose his entire personality when faced with too much authority and I think, "It's up to me--I'm going to have to resist this push."

Part of it is experience too. We pushed my older daughter into school--she was a september baby, in most states she wouldn't have been old enough for pre-k, but here the cut off is in December. And every year since she was practically a toddler, we've had to scrape her off the floor during the first quarter of the school year. That's one of our major regrets as parents--she would have been a happier child if we'd resisted that push.

Hope all this helped--I didn't mean to inundate you with comments--but we've all been there. Any mother who's had a child throw a public tantrum (me? Friday? Were you there with the rest of North America?) has been in your shoes.