Is the Principals office the standard "time out" for a Kindergartner who is not abusive or violent?

[Anonymous]

The OP is really irking me. Everyone was just trying to help and give an honest opinion. Her primary question, as stated in her first post and in the title was "Is the Principals office the standard "time out" for a Kindergartner who is not abusive or violent?"

Many of us answered "Yes" or at least indicated that it was an acceptable punishment for a child who is disrupting the class. But apparently that wasn't the answer the OP wanted to hear. So, we're the stressed out, crazy ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, alot has happened since I last posted. I figured some of you might need some resolution since you all seemed so stressed.I have in fact never been stressed this entire time. I was just asking a question.

But to summarize, Yes, principal confirmed she yelled at my daughter. And slammed her table. She did so, she said, because when the teacher arrived with her, holding her by the hand, my daughter 'was looking around acting like she wasnt bothered by being brought to me".

She confirmed that she said to my daughter that she had heard she did not want to participate in a reading segment, and the principal said that by the end of her telling her that "she wouldnt have that" my daughter was crying. She further went on to state that after my daughter "realized this was the big time" (as indicated by her crying) and was made to sit and eat her lunch alone in the hallway that "she was in a better place".

My daughter was in fact teased socially about a boy who decided randomly to display affection for her at lunch, which she was embarassed by, and the other kids teased her about as confirmed by her teacher. What teacher didnt know is that one of those students in class has been (because of that incident) muttering under her breath at her that she is embarassing and refusing to sit next to her at reading time.

This is what led to my daughter not wanting to participate in the instance that was then dealt with as it was dealt with.

Not that most of you appear to care about facts or details, but that is where all the important issues reside in life in general. The full details, not just parts.

Thank goodness for me and my daughter, I am a parent who holds her accountable for her actions and also considers the greater context of the situation, This is what adults must do in adult life. Simply judging off the bat without gathering facts is risky business.

Again, all I wanted to know is why a timeout is not standard use instead of principals office for a disruption of this kind (sitting it out) as opposed to yelling or that kind of thing which would of course be impossible to deal with any other way but removal. My daughter would never get away with disruption of any kind under my watch and she knows it. Why? Because I have a real clear system of consequences that is consistent. So, does it make sense a good kid goes bad for no reason

Not having a consistent set of consequences for a kid who fails to participate, which, by the principals admission is commonplace, is problematic. Also, failing to take the few minutes required to actually ask a kid why they dont want to participate is failing to gain information that could be useful in determining an appropriate course of action.

But again, Im talking to the wrong crowd. The montessori director I met with today didnt have any problem understanding what was happening, and thought the response by the principal and teacher was inappropriate, as did my educator friends. So, to each his own I suppose. I take more the middle ground which is: my daughter should not disrupt, but one has to note why she is disrupting and how. That is every parents responsibility. But first they have to be told its happening.

Have a nice day. And calm the heck down everyone! Drink a glass of wine and stop judging and assuming everyone else shares your stress. I feel great now that I know the parameters I am dealing with. Your judgements honestly dont affect the bottom line at all, but I do appreciate you sharing them with me, really, I have learned a lot.

OK who will have the last word here- its your competition!

aww, OP, you said you werne't checking back and you did! I'm confused by your inappropriate expectations... I think I'm going to sit here on the floor and refuse to move.

[Anonymous]

I agree 8:17. I'm thinking this child has a pretty good model for defiance in the face of not having things go her way. OP received very reasonable (especially by the standards of DCUM) responses, but it wasn't the echo chamber she was expecting/hoping for so she went from 0 to super defensive in the space of a couple of comments. This thread turned into OP digging her heels in, sticking her fingers in her ears and yelling la la la about opinions she asked for. Gotta say, I'm not surprised that her child is having a hard time being redirected at school.

And OP is apparently taking the advice offered by a couple of posters on here and going to Montessori now, but she continues to post about how misguided and unhelpful everyone is after she threatened many many posts ago to take her ball and go home.

[Anonymous]

Yep, watch out Montessori parents!

Coming Soon to your DC's School : DASHINGLY DEFIANT OP and her EQUALLY DEFIANT DD!

[Anonymous]

OP, you're a few pennies short of a dollar, and by a few, I mean about 99. I can only imagine the massive chaos that follows in your wake every day.

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering whether there aren't just one or two parents (probably MCPS employees) responding back to the OP. There is no excuse for a principal, teacher, or staff member to yell at a Kindergarten or 1st grade child. Its questionable whether sending a young child to the principal's office the first month is even appropriate. If it is done as punishment, i.e. the principal's office is set up as a punitive negative place to go then this is very wrong. I also think its cruel to make a young child eat her lunch in the hallway alone.

If any of this happened to your child, I'm sure you would be furious. I would be furious, escalating a formal complaint through the school board, and considering other options if our ES handled things this way.

OP _ I would suggest that you clearly document what the principal told you and file a formal complaint concerning the yelling and being forced to eat in the hall alone. I would also include very specific points of how the teacher and principal is not only being dismissive of your child being bullied and excluded by other kids.

[Anonymous]

OP, you need to talk to your DD and tell her to listen to the teacher. At the start of the year, the kids need to see that the teacher is in control, so that the rest of the kids don't follow suit and misbehave. I think taking the kid to the principal's office was extreme, but now I'm sure your DD will listen to the teacher.

[Anonymous]

9:29 here. Also, the principal might not have yelled. I've heard a few times different kids say that a teacher yelled, when actually the teacher just raised his/her voice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree 8:17. I'm thinking this child has a pretty good model for defiance in the face of not having things go her way. OP received very reasonable (especially by the standards of DCUM) responses, but it wasn't the echo chamber she was expecting/hoping for so she went from 0 to super defensive in the space of a couple of comments. This thread turned into OP digging her heels in, sticking her fingers in her ears and yelling la la la about opinions she asked for. Gotta say, I'm not surprised that her child is having a hard time being redirected at school.

And OP is apparently taking the advice offered by a couple of posters on here and going to Montessori now, but she continues to post about how misguided and unhelpful everyone is after she threatened many many posts ago to take her ball and go home.

This in bold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering whether there aren't just one or two parents (probably MCPS employees) responding back to the OP. There is no excuse for a principal, teacher, or staff member to yell at a Kindergarten or 1st grade child. Its questionable whether sending a young child to the principal's office the first month is even appropriate. If it is done as punishment, i.e. the principal's office is set up as a punitive negative place to go then this is very wrong. I also think its cruel to make a young child eat her lunch in the hallway alone.

If any of this happened to your child, I'm sure you would be furious. I would be furious, escalating a formal complaint through the school board, and considering other options if our ES handled things this way.

OP _ I would suggest that you clearly document what the principal told you and file a formal complaint concerning the yelling and being forced to eat in the hall alone. I would also include very specific points of how the teacher and principal is not only being dismissive of your child being bullied and excluded by other kids.

Ok....and at what point should the OP focus her energy on her own child's behavior? Because whether she ends up moving DD or not, DD's behavior needs to change as she moves forward in school.

[Anonymous]

I have posted prior and am not an MCPS employee. In fact, I live in Fairfax. I just feel that with the advantage of distance I can clearly see the real situation and I do not think it is the child. Our children watch us closely and model our behavior. That is truly how they learn. If this parent is this strung tight and this defensive over this, the poor little girl is going to become just as anxious too as she grows and matures. OP, breath and take a moment to really see the big picture. You are working so hard to "advocate" for your child but you may, in the end, actually be damaging her. I know that is of course not what you want to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering whether there aren't just one or two parents (probably MCPS employees) responding back to the OP. There is no excuse for a principal, teacher, or staff member to yell at a Kindergarten or 1st grade child. Its questionable whether sending a young child to the principal's office the first month is even appropriate. If it is done as punishment, i.e. the principal's office is set up as a punitive negative place to go then this is very wrong. I also think its cruel to make a young child eat her lunch in the hallway alone.

If any of this happened to your child, I'm sure you would be furious. I would be furious, escalating a formal complaint through the school board, and considering other options if our ES handled things this way.

OP _ I would suggest that you clearly document what the principal told you and file a formal complaint concerning the yelling and being forced to eat in the hall alone. I would also include very specific points of how the teacher and principal is not only being dismissive of your child being bullied and excluded by other kids.

Not an MCPS employee. If a principal really was banging the table and yelling at a 5 year old to scare her into compliance and then putting her in lunchtime solitary as a shaming measure, then yes, I would agree that was really inappropriate. Problem is it is impossible to believe OP about any of her interactions with the school at this point. Look at her complete misinterpretation of the initial comments she got on this post (I was not one of those posters, I was the one who suggested going Montessori or progressive if she really did not think her daughter should have been made to leave the task she was engaged in). OP received honest responses from people and somehow managed to turn it into a sideshow about how awful people were to her on these boards, how idiotic everyone is for making assumptions about the incident, and then pulled the childish "I'm leaving" bit and of course kept following the thread and couldn't refrain from posting some more. I find it very hard to trust that OP would be an accurate historian of anything as her interpretation of what happened in this thread (and the lovely aggressive you people all suck move with the subsequent Boot Camp thread) provides some pretty compelling evidence that OP is going to create mountains out of molehills if there is drama to be had.

I'm sure OPs intentions regarding her child are good. It the rare parent who isn't trying to do right by their kid. But reading the now 3 threads OP has posted about this, I'm way more concerned about what this child is getting from OP's reaction to all this than I am about her being sent to the principal for disruptive behavior. If this has OP this worked up, there is no way this isn't stressing the kid out. A school change might be a good thing if your educational philosophy is in opposition to a traditional model OP, but the way you frame this on the other thread you're essentially putting this school in time out from your child for a year with plans to possibly send her back for 1st, at which point nothing will have changed. That makes zero sense to me. If this principal is really as out of line as you say she admitted to being, then why would you withdraw your child and then send her back? I can see withdrawing permanently or trying to get some changes made at the school via this poster's suggestion, but your reaction here sounds like the "take my ball and go home" mentioned before only now DD is the ball.

[Anonymous]

OP, ignore those noisy DCUMers who want to re-live their middle school days by bullying others online (since they can't get away with it in person). I think you're right that the principal was out of line, and that a good teacher should be able to manage a single sit-in by a kindergartner without resorting to high drama. Really. Move your child to a better place and don't look back; be glad you have the choice.

[Anonymous]

Even IF she came from a montessori (or montessori-like) setting, she should know that different rules apply to different educational settings. My daughter came from a montessori and entered a very traditional setting. She adjusted just fine. My son, however, will be held back a year b/c he clearly is not ready for that transition.

I think your child is probably what kids were like in the 70s - ready for school but ready for a 1/2 day session where academics were not the focus. Unfortunately, they pound you with academics in K these days. So even though your daughter may be smart, socially she may not be ready. You can hold her back in K; I've seen parents do that. But that route can often backfire for some kids.

If most of the kids are falling into line, then your child is the problem. I'm not saying the system is great by any means, but sadly, she's the outlier. And the school has to follow through on its rules.

Anonymous wrote:I hesitate to say what school I am referring to here, because this school is practically revered in MC.

My DD is almost six. She is smart, creative, with a sophisticated sense of humor. After initial excitement about school, running there the entire way on the first day, she has met great disappointment and heartache. I am trying to pull back here and take a long term view, but the signs are a bit iffy at this point

To her credit the teacher with whom I have been communicating is catching on that she is not aware that DD is being teased, and that is being in turn punished for standing up for herself as opposed to "being a tattletale". She is also thinking carefully about regrouping kids as needed to make class flow and allow everyone to have the best possible experience.

What she didnt know is that DD came from a preschool that had centers from which you could freely choose on any given day. There were three to four teachers in the class for a similar class size as hers (18). It was not entirely loose, with lots of routines, but the centers and engagement activities were free choice.

Well, not so here, and understandably DD doesnt understand. And when she didnt want to go to one center wanting instead to go to another, she felt taunted by the other kids (she is very sensitive, so no doubt the whole class didnt taunt her, but all it would really take is one). So she sat down and refused to move.

The teacher said she initially gave her a moment of time to do this, but then did the countdown and took her to the Principals office. There, according to my daughter, who is very aware of the difference between talking and yelling, said she was yelled at by the Principal. I asked DD if she was crying and she said yes. She was then made to eat lunch by herself in the hallway. All this because she sat down and refused to participate.

So I communicated with her teacher and wanted to know how I could find out more about this conversation the principal had with my daughter. I also talked on the phone with the teacher and let her know some of what she was missing. She said she was glad I told her, etc. She said that when DD sat down she was impeding the learning time of the other students, "because they are all looking at her" and had to be removed. I gotta tell ya, I dont quite see that as true at all. So it appears being sent to the Principals office is now the standard time out room. The yelling part I address today in a meeting with the principal, who called me on the way home from her cell phone while driving to address the question I had posed to the teacher. However, I told her a meeting would be a better choice. No doubt this is what she was hoping to avoid. I'll let her do all the talking and see what can be deduced from what she says.

My main thought is this: in a normal system of consequences, those consequences are understood and explained. In this case, administering this severe of a punishment comes as a surprise to ME. And to DD as well who had no idea this was going to take place. Also, while I get that the teacher cant spend a lot of time on each student, I am failing to understand the complete lack of strategy as to what to do with a kid who doesn't just do what they are told the first time. I was told she needs to be told "repeatedly" to do things like stand in line, etc, and that her refusal to participate was "ratcheting it up". But kids don't do things they are told for a whole host of reasons and treating non participation as exactly the same as disobedience misses the bigger picture needed to actually solve the problem.

This is a teacher with 15 years experience at this school, probably more elsewhere. The Principal is also experienced.

Thoughts on any of this?

I should mention that a friend of mine who is a veteran teacher of the DCPS in some of the worst schools said this sounded "a little hard", especially given the school we are talking about.

Thanks.
-T

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, ignore those noisy DCUMers who want to re-live their middle school days by bullying others online (since they can't get away with it in person). I think you're right that the principal was out of line, and that a good teacher should be able to manage a single sit-in by a kindergartner without resorting to high drama. Really. Move your child to a better place and don't look back; be glad you have the choice.

She'll still face the same problems. Her child is not as mature as the others, and it shows. They all grow at different rates, and while a kid may be super smart, there's no guarantee that socially, s/he can keep up, which ultimately affects performance.

She should have been held back in pre-K.