Reply to Private school keeps asking which holidays we celebrate

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why is it any of their business? I casually mentioned we don't celebrate Christmas and the teacher freaked out and asked why I didn't fill out the form correctly. I told her the school didn't need to know this information because we didn't expect the teacher to do anything differently. The director of the school then emailed me that I "need to fill out the form and not leave that information blank". They are mad about this and I think it ridiculous. [/quote]

Our school asked if we had any special celebrations/traditions. We left it blank. We are Jewish and celebrate Jewish holidays but also have a tree and give Xmas presents (long story). Nothing super notable. I’ve experienced antisemitism throughout my life so am not very open about my religion. [/quote]

Op here. We have decided to unenroll our son from this school beginning now. We have already experienced similar and I don't want to feel like I need to be ashamed of our background just because it's not "American". The Halloween thing was so strange because the parade lasted 10 minutes. He didn't dress up but he did attend school that day. For the parade, I didn't want both kids (the eldest goes to public school) attending due to security. There are mass shootings every other day in the US. I do live in fear when it comes to crowds. We still go out but big events I try to avoid. We attended the hay ride pumpkin patch trip and Thanksgiving show. Our son had a birthday party at school. We have tried our best to participate. I don't think this is the norm but a lot of families will have both mom and dad attend field trips..There are even a few families that always come with mom and dad for drop off and pick up. I doubt they are going to sue us for the tuition. I'm not going to send him back in January. He can go the the YMCA childcare with his babysitter for social interaction. He's not interested in a lot of the academic stuff at preschool anyway.

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This stuff gets a lot better in public school, OP, as it sounds like you already know from having an older child. There will be plenty of kids who don't participate, or have different backgrounds, and the administrators take it in stride. I volunteered in my first grader's classroom for their fall festival (so named as to not make it Halloween, but it was Halloween) and two kids out of 25 didn't participate and it was fine, they had alternate activities.

There are preschools where this would not be an issue, though. We sent our kids to a non-religious daycare/preschool where there was no pressure except that, yes, there were winter and spring parties that parents were expected to attend. If you missed it the teachers wouldn't say anything, but the kids were disappointed. So DH and I alternated on those. If you are choosing a school partly for a warm atmosphere, part of that atmosphere is going to be participating in events. We got away with the bare minimum, but had to do some.

Nothing wrong with YMCA if it works for you, of course.[/quote]

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