Reply to 5-year-old behavior issues in Kindergarten

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[quote=Anonymous]I am a former teacher, and also a parent of a child who had a similar experience in Kindergarten.  I am still bitter about it.  If a child is doing well academically, and is not unhappy or causing behavioral disturbances in the classroom, then a teacher is way out of line in suggesting a psychological evaluation.  First, I want to make sure you understand that contrary to popular opinion, most K teachers have zero qualifications to evaluate anything other than a child's reading ability.  They have no training in child psychology, medicine, or counseling.  Many are some of the most uneducated and inexperienced people I have ever met.  In some cases, you may be dealing with someone right out of college who knows less about children's behavior than you do.  So keep in mind that any advice you take from a teacher is about as reliable as advice from the cashier in a checkout line.  So unless the teacher is giving you concrete behaviors that are really concerning, or which disrupt the entire class or something similar, this teacher is just spouting a random opinion on your child.

And based on what you've written, none of that is unusual.  Could your child have some kind of disability or something?  Sure.  Is it worth going through all kinds of evaluations and then putting them on drugs that will stunt their growth and make them feel weird?  You be the judge.

My child was described as "weird" by his K teacher, and she cited similar random things, but when I went through all the evaluations (worst time in my entire life) and eventually had several observations of him in the school setting, the conclusion by the experts was unanimous - he had a crappy teacher who didn't know jack about the behavior of 5 year olds. He went on to do just fine, and we never had another teacher complain about his little quirks, in that school or the others he's been to since.  He is still an anxious kid, a perfectionist, and a bit neurotic, but well within the norm for a human being.[/quote]

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