Reply to Do teachers ever get it wrong with discipline?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm able to read people pretty well and I can  tell when a teacher just doesn't like my kid.  I wouldn't punish, just say be kind.  I also wouldn't go back and try to correct the record.  There is no point.  I find this a ridiculous overreaction for first grade.[/quote]

+1, sometimes teachers just don't mesh with a kid.

To me the red flag would the teacher saying your DD thinks she's smarter than other kids. That's a weird assessment for a teacher to make of a 6/7 year old-- kids this age are trying stuff out to see what works, mimicking behaviors they see in the world (at home, yes, but at school, in movies, etc.) and it's a very rare kid who would have some kind of inborn arrogance at this age. You might see a kid who boasts more than other kids, though boasting is really common in 1st graders.

Anyway, calling another child mean deserves a conversation about name calling and labelling and that's it. It's not ideal behavior but it's also not some horrible mistake that requires severe punishment.[/quote]

Op here. Thanks so much for the responses. My post probably wasn’t clear. The teacher said my daughter engaged in “mean girl behavior” in this specific incident. She said she was making fun of another student and went on in a way that seemed to ascribe really malicious intent and that it’s part of a pattern, which I have never seen in my kid and found highly concerning.

I talked to my child and what she says happened was not that. I have never known her to lie about this kind of thing so I want to believe her but obviously I wasn’t there. I have not let her off the hook at all but am wondering what if anything I need to do to better understand what is going on. If she is picking on other kids or is arrogant, I am horrified and want to correct that but I am not sure that’s happening. I think this has upset me so much because of anything we very actively to parent her in the other direction so it feels like a huge failure. [/quote]

I would assume your DD was unkind and definitely talk to her about teasing/bullying, let her know that even if other kids are doing, you expect better than that from her, and to consider how she'd feel if kids were treating her or her brother that way. I don't think she needs a punishment beyond those for conversations.

I would disregard the teacher comment about your kid being arrogant or a "mean girl." That's the teacher editorializing and especially if it doesn't align with what you've observed, I'd ignore it. Labelling kids in that way, especially at this age, is counterproductive. And if the teacher's doing it, you need to counter it at home, not go along with it. I tell my DD stuff like "I know you are a kind and thoughtful person" and if she misbehaves "I know this is not the person you want to be." I want to create space for her to be the best version of herself, and that means a narrative where misbehavior is a mistake you can address and then move on from, not a reflection of something "wrong" with her, as this teacher seems to imply.

But also try to give the teacher some grace, she might just be tired or overwhelmed, and be forgetting that sometimes 1st graders mess up, it doesn't mean they're bad kids. When my DD had a teacher who wanted to label her this way, she was an inexperienced teacher. I think that played a role. [/quote]

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