Saturday 28 September 2019

Teacher badmouthing my parenting to my 8 year old


My kids teacher has been badmouthing me to other parents and now my own daughter and I’m totally at a loss as to what I should do.We switched from a charter school to a public school this year so both my kids are new and there was some sort of “get to know you” assignment in my 8 year old’s class.One of the questions was favorite TV show or movie. She said All In The Family. Ok, great. Good show, solid choice.So after school her teacher brings me and my husband the project and says my daughter claims to have been watching All in The Family and was I aware of what programs she’d been taking in.I said, you know, “sure, we watch it as a family every weekend.” Thinking that would be that. She said “well it’s a highly inappropriate show for young children” and I said “Thanks for your concern, but we’re fine. She isn’t going behind our backs or anything, we watch it as a family.” And the teacher said “Well, I have to tell you, I that’s questionable judgement on your part.”My husband doesn’t take very well to that kind of passive condescension so he says “Nothing compared to the Eminem music we listen to on the way here” and I figured I should just end the conversation before it escalated.Everyone at the school thinks of us as the “new family” but I have a few friends whose kids have always gone there and one alerted me that the teacher was essentially gossiping about me while the kids were being dropped off. I thought it was wildly inappropriate but I figured as long as my daughter enjoys school, I’d let idle gossip roll of my back.I have a friend who’s a reading specialist at the school and come in a couple times a week and she just informed me that they’d say these things around my daughter. What my friend overheard was “If your mommy really cared about you, you wouldn’t watch that show.” And in the context of something like running in the halls “I know your mother has no rules or regulations at your house but when you come to school you’re not the boss like you think you are everywhere else.”My reading specialist friend confronted the teacher because as someone who works with kids she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Before she could flat out say “that’s inappropriate” she said (this is what she told me was said at least and I’m paraphrasing from memory) “So you’ve met CoralMansion Jr and her family?” “Yes, they’re reckless. I tried to help her but she didn’t want to be helped.” “I actually know CoralMansion Jr and—“ “oh does she have a learning disability? Go figure the way she rots her brain at home.” So reading specialist friend said “they’re good people and happy kids in a home that puts a strong emphasis on education. You’re barking up the wrong tree and this is not appropriate.”The teacher more or less shrugged it off with an “I know best I’ve worked with kids for X years” speech.I tried to gauge my daughter’s feelings/awareness of the situation without provoking anything so just kind of offhandedly said “How’s Mrs. Newteacher so far?” And she just said “she’s kind of grouchy but it’s still fun.” And I said you know, “what’s grouchy about her” and it sounds like my daughter is just attributing these comments to her teacher being old.On the one hand, if my daughter’s ok so am I. On the other hand, it’s still early in the year and if there’s a chance this escalated into a bigger issue, I want to act now before we’re halfway through the year and it’s harder to initiate a conversation. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2ny7ShP

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