APS - elementary boys out of control?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This may be true, but I also think it’s a cop out. I have 2 elementary boys. They are both kind, respectful and would never behave that way even at their craziest. Neither would their friends. 95 percent of their class is the same. So why does the 5 percent (or less) get to ruin it for everyone? It seems like “the pandemic was so hard” is the new “boys will be boys”. Throw up your hands and shake your head. I call BS.

Maybe those kids were abused while home for the past year and away from school. Maybe they lost a patent or other relative to COVID. Maybe a caregiver lost a job and the child went to bed hungry and is now facing eviction. So many kids have experienced real trauma leaving deep scars over the past year.

Be grateful your kids are not among them.

Yeah, no. I know some kids who are acting out. We are in what DCUM terms a “nice neighborhood”, highly desirable school pyramid with two parent families who have been teleworking the entire time. Possibly they went to bed hungry in their $1.5 million dollar house, but I highly doubt it. Conversations with their parents have been on how hard it is for their boys not to do sports. They are literally in the Arlington pipeline to become UMC entitled white males. Using this excuse for them minimizes the actual trauma other children have experienced.

There are no highly desirable school pyramids in Arlington.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

[Anonymous]

There really are no consequences for disruptive children in elementary school. I worked in one for five years and was so bothered by what I saw. The students who were repeatedly sent to the principals office never change their behavior. They knew there were no consequences at home and never had the motivation to change. Teachers were in advertently punish the good kids by making them sit next to the troublemakers year after year. If I had worked in an elementary school when my children were still that age, I definitely would have told them.

[Anonymous]

Pardon my typos above. My phone hates my fat fingers :p

[Anonymous]

I meant I definitely would have pulled them from their local elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Here is what I observed in an elementary school in APS.

Kids who parents did not respond or do anything about these behaviors, the principal really ripped into the kids and honestly probably terrified them into submission. Is this great? Don't know. I'm sure some of you will say it's terrible. But it seemed to kind of work.

The other thing I've seen admins do is make the kid sit in the office pretty much all day. If I'm a principal and they are missing instruction and fall behind at that point...oh well. At some point they have to move on and do what's right for the greater good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

I can't tell you how many parents I've had to call through my personal phone number or Google Voice numbers to get parents who kept refusing phone calls from the school number when it came time to talk about their children's behavior.

I guess this is a wake up call about how much "parenting" was being done in the classroom if things have fallen off this badly after a year and a half at home

[Anonymous]

I haven’t read the whole thread. But at our APS school, they eat lunch outside, and I haven’t heard of any problems like this.

[Anonymous]

I have heard of this at my elementary but we are homeschooling now.

So yes it’s a thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

There are also tons of behaviors that only show up in the classroom. It's really hard to parent-away issues when you aren't present and they don't come up in other settings.

--parent of a 5 yo who (pre-pandemic) got in trouble several times daily for all of kindergarten for pushing with another kid over being near the front of the line and no amount of talking about it at home or consequences made any impact. Some behaviors really have to be dealt with in the moment by the present adult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

There are also tons of behaviors that only show up in the classroom. It's really hard to parent-away issues when you aren't present and they don't come up in other settings.

--parent of a 5 yo who (pre-pandemic) got in trouble several times daily for all of kindergarten for pushing with another kid over being near the front of the line and no amount of talking about it at home or consequences made any impact. Some behaviors really have to be dealt with in the moment by the present adult.

The best thing a parent can do it teach (and MODEL) respect for authority figures. So many of the problems we see are a result of kids not respecting adults. While a kid may not push someone at home, if they are told not to do it at school and are ignoring the staff, it's not just environment. The student needs to learn respectful behaviors at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

There are also tons of behaviors that only show up in the classroom. It's really hard to parent-away issues when you aren't present and they don't come up in other settings.

--parent of a 5 yo who (pre-pandemic) got in trouble several times daily for all of kindergarten for pushing with another kid over being near the front of the line and no amount of talking about it at home or consequences made any impact. Some behaviors really have to be dealt with in the moment by the present adult.

The best thing a parent can do it teach (and MODEL) respect for authority figures. So many of the problems we see are a result of kids not respecting adults. While a kid may not push someone at home, if they are told not to do it at school and are ignoring the staff, it's not just environment. The student needs to learn respectful behaviors at home.

I mean, do you think PP is letting her kid swear at her or something? The fact is that a parent can be perfect but have a kid who still does dumb things at school. You can’t just shift the blame like this, and really it might be nobody’s fault. Sometimes kids are just defiant in spite of everybody’s best efforts. No need to point fingers. We all just need to do our best and show the kids love.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

There are also tons of behaviors that only show up in the classroom. It's really hard to parent-away issues when you aren't present and they don't come up in other settings.

--parent of a 5 yo who (pre-pandemic) got in trouble several times daily for all of kindergarten for pushing with another kid over being near the front of the line and no amount of talking about it at home or consequences made any impact. Some behaviors really have to be dealt with in the moment by the present adult.

Then you have not found the right consequence, either positive or negative. Look, I have a kid who can be very defiant and gets in trouble. I get it. Either your kid has some kind of issue where they can't physically control themselves, in which case get it diagnosed, documented, and get support in place. OR your kid is just getting away with it and you're not doing enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Actually parenting and disciplining your children is amazing.

More people should try it.

YES

My kid is homeschooled right now so this whole thing isn’t an issue with me. But in defense of parents, this is unlikely to be all their fault. Unless they have massively changed since the pandemic, the parenting that was working before is now not preventing this behavior. The pandemic is the only variable we have so I think this is yet another impact of covid that we have to navigate. Parents need to figure that out but remember that it is harder than before because parents too are in the middle of a mental health crisis. And then a lot of it is kids just doing what their peers do so it’s possible that no amount of good parenting is going to stop a kid from acting this way if all the other kids keep doing it.

There are also tons of behaviors that only show up in the classroom. It's really hard to parent-away issues when you aren't present and they don't come up in other settings.

--parent of a 5 yo who (pre-pandemic) got in trouble several times daily for all of kindergarten for pushing with another kid over being near the front of the line and no amount of talking about it at home or consequences made any impact. Some behaviors really have to be dealt with in the moment by the present adult.

The best thing a parent can do it teach (and MODEL) respect for authority figures. So many of the problems we see are a result of kids not respecting adults. While a kid may not push someone at home, if they are told not to do it at school and are ignoring the staff, it's not just environment. The student needs to learn respectful behaviors at home.

I mean, do you think PP is letting her kid swear at her or something? The fact is that a parent can be perfect but have a kid who still does dumb things at school. You can’t just shift the blame like this, and really it might be nobody’s fault. Sometimes kids are just defiant in spite of everybody’s best efforts. No need to point fingers. We all just need to do our best and show the kids love.

You can love the kid and still show them that actions have consequences. Those consequences have to be appropriately tailored, but making excuses for a kid who is disruptive to their own and others' learning isn't showing them love. It's teaching them to be blind to their own faults, which will only cause them more pain in the long run.

Parenting matters, but schools can't just throw up their hands and say "well the parents aren't helping at home, so I guess we can't do anything about it." If the behavior continues, they need to do something different.

If it turns out that home stuff like abuse and neglect is underpinning it, the schools need to connect the kid to the right social services, but they still need to make clear that inappropriate behavior is still inappropriate behavior. Just imagine the kind of message a kid gets when they hear "well your home life is tough so I guess we won't hold you to the same standards as everyone else". Furthermore, if they are hurting other kids or disrupting their learning, the fact that the kid is coming from a tough environment doesn't change those harms. That's the difference between understanding and permissiveness. If the only message they get is permissiveness, you're setting that kid up to fail.

It's not always easy to say to a kid "I have these expectations of you because I love/understand/appreciate you, and because I think you can meet them." But that's what the job calls for.