Help PS teacher is nightmare & Husband lacks confidence

Personally, even if you do an utterly ROTTEN job of homeschooling this kiddo… for crying out loud, he’s five years old. If you simply prevent the emotional wounds and their scars, which take so long to heal, you’ll be doing the kiddo a huge favor.

You’ll get people who think “oh, what a ditzy mom! She pulled her darling little babykins out because the teacher was mean!”

You’ll also get ten other parents thinking “Wish I had the courage to do that!”

I’m reading your post and of course wondering just what a fly on the wall would have seen… an overreactive, overprotective mom flipping out over a teacher who actually has control over a classroom, or a somewhat insecure mom observing with a sinking heart a teacher who is, perhaps with their best interests at heart, intimidating and terrifying a bunch of kindergartners. It doesn’t take much — behavior that would be fine for fourth or tenth graders just doesn’t work with these guys.

I’d spend this weekend finding out the laws in your state. I don’t know your husband — but maybe he’d be impressed by a thorough investigation and some work on the analytical side of things… so he knows you’re not just reacting emotionally. If it looks like a “home visit” might happen (not likely in most places, especially at that age where often kids aren’t even formally required to attend school — but that doesn’t matter if you’re not in those “most places,” does it?) then separate out the “territories” of the house so that the visit won’t invade the wrong spaces.

Also, I’d wander over to http://www.vegsource.com/homeschool/hschool/index.html and ask the very diverse bunch of homeschooling moms there for advice. You’ll get all *kinds* of answers… listen to the ones that ring true ;) Another supportive group is at http://www.network54.com/Forum/180575?achk=1 but it doens’t get as much traffic.

Thank you Sue,

I have been waiting for someone to respond. I appreciate your supportive words and info. I will check the sites you recommended also. Unfortunately, this teacher is the first teacher in the drive up, child pick up, car line at school. So whether I want to or not, I get to go try to retrieve my kids from the very teacher my husband just told I thought was incompetent. Thing is, I agree exactly with what you said. If these kids were older, it would be alittle easy to stomach such teaching tactics, although certainly not preferable. An eight grader would be able to sit back and say to himself, gee it isn’t me, she is just got some personality issues. But the five year olds are thinking, “Oh my God, so this is what school is really like for how many more years??? NO thanks, I don’t want any!”

I just can’t tell you how hurt I am that my husband who I would have hoped would have had at least alittle faith in me, would rather leave his son to this woman’s mercy because he doesn’t trust ME to teach him, what is it really 45 minutes of actual academic curriculum for 5K????? I am offended, but for my son’s sake, I still have to try to get through to him somehow. Unfortunately, he is usually so caught up into his own personal problems with work, etc. that he is very difficult to communicate with. Sometimes I wonder how I let myself be a person that has been PUT UP with, or whatever it is that he might call it to describe how he really feels about me. Of course it is always easier to judge your spouse and their failures and inadequacies before you can really see any of your own. Thanks for lending a support to me. I really appreciate it right now.
Deb

Debra -
you are not insane, you are right to do what you need to do.

Leaders sometimes have to make the unpopular decisions that ultimately necessitate the need for a foundation of overall progress and growth. You will need to evaluate the dynamics and the realism of the relationship between you and your family including your spouse while not to negate the fact that the direction you have established is the correct course of action that will reveal its own benficiary value of its own contrast to the curent situation 5-15 years into the future.

D. Harrell - CEO Network Management Inc.

Debra,

First let me say I have the utmost confidence in you!

My husband is a wonderful dad in so many ways. Hugs, listens, plays with, and adores his two boys. Yet, I have to say that when it comes to my son’s disability he is in LA LA land. He sometimes even says, “He could do it if he tried.” My husband had LD. I was married to him for 7 years before I even knew. He is very successful and extremely bright. There really are no clues to his LD for anyone he encounters. I only found out because my son was having trouble learning to read and my mother-in-law told me that my husband was dyslexic too as a child.

I have come to understand that his attitude is just really related to the fact that he hated living with the stigma of LD. My husband had great parents. I think that is why he has excelled in so many areas as an adult despite the hinderance.

My husband is willing to do anything for my son. Yet, I recognize he doesn’t like to talk about my sons LD. So we don’t. (That is why you lovely people have to hear so much from me)

I definitely am more in tune with my child than his dad is. This is true with other moms I talk too. We can feel their feelings. We understand them better than anyone. I think you are very much in tune with you child and you should not ever doubt that.
I wonder if you addressed it with you husband as a temporary thing. Don’t relate it to anything that would imply that it was because your child was ‘very different.’ It is just because he is a little young and you need to give him a little more time to mature before he faces school.
Show your hubby that you have done your research. Say, “I found this great program that helps kids learn to read.(phonographix) I think if I worked with him before he gets to kindergarten he could start his school career ahead of the game rather than behind the 8 ball.”
Explain that if he started out with the confidence of the added maturity it could reflect on his entire school career.
Also, try and understand that he needs you to hear the teachers perspective. So go to the meeting, sit and listen. Say things like I hear what you are saying but my feelings are this. If you don’t do this she seems like the rational one and you sound like the emotional nut. (From one emotional nut to another this is just not good ;)
If you make it a personal thing against the teacher, she won’t hear you. Try and emphasize the other reasons for a year of homeschooling; added maturity, work on some basic skills etc..
You might even get her on your side.

Good Luck

Take him out. Find out your state’s laws on home schooling. I wish i had done that with my son. At least I waited until he was a full 6 before he started K. but he has suffered in there every year. Now he is in 5th grade, 11, in special ed for reading, writing, math. The school has had him 6 yrs and he still can’t read, write, or do math or tell time. The only reason I keep him in is because he is so social. He has lots of friends. This year’s teacher is a real witch tho, I may end up homeschooling anyway, and let boyscouts and church and the neighborhood be his social life.
Good luck.

I am new to this discussion group, but I am a homeschooling mom and my child has dyslexia. I know for a fact that you would be better for your child than the school system. Your child should be happy if your child is not happy then something has to change. I know many teachers that are certified that I wouldn’t let teach my dog. My sister had dyslexia and was taught by the public school and had a terrible experience and hates public schools. Mind you that all these teachers were certified.
A piece of paper does not mean you are a good teacher or that you know how to best handle a LD or similar child.

If your child will let you teach him go for it. My child resists all attempts so I let the teachers and tutor teach her.I do think you have a valid point ,my child has poor expressive language and that kind of situation would inhibit her from conversing with the teacher and my child needs to do that to get accomodations and grow verbally.I surely would try something, in my case I would talk to the speech pathologist and the psychologist about my concerns as they are part of my child’s IEP team.

Hi -

Up until this year, my 8-year-old daughter was in a school that had a similar environment to the one you’re describing. Her teachers weren’t the terrors you describe but the expectations were high and they didn’t hesitate to embarrass the children in front of one another, take recess away for bad behavior, etc.
After some testing last spring, we discovered that our daughter had some moderate auditory processing problems as well as ADHD. We got her on Adderall, which has really helped her to focus, and we’re working on other strategies for dealing with the AP. We pulled her out of school and I am homeschooling her for the first time. My husband had great doubts about me doing this because of my own lack of focus(I’m probably ADHD), and more importantly, my complete lack of patience. But I’ll tell you, we’ve been at it now for about 2 weeks and I love it! It’s going really well. I’ve found that getting us out of that stressful school environment has made a huge positive difference. And, amazingly enough, one can learn to be patient when one has to be! If my daughter wasn’t on medication, I think homeschooling her would be very difficult. It’ll help you both to keep things very structured, i.e. have specific things planned from 8-8:30, 8:30-9, etc. It is also important to find a homeschooling group that you can do stuff with socially. Very important. With homeschooling, you’re with your child ALL the time. Important to give each breaks. But we love it. I AM SO GLAD WE GOT AWAY FROM THAT SCHOOL. Good luck to you.

Would said husband agree more if you said that you just want to wait a year with him? He is young, immature, and maybe needs more time, and certainly this teacher is a really really bad match. Or that you want to try it for one year—nothing is lost with a kid that young. You can just put him back in K next year if he isn’t up to first grade standards after a year.

I wouldn’t want my child in that classroom, even if he was very capable.

I agree with Sue, that at the very least you could provide him with a loving supportive environment and prevent damage to his self esteem.

Beth

Stay focused on the real reasons most people homeschool.

1. They are our children not the school systems and we know our children best.
2. Five years of age is very young to be apart from his family for such a long time. Some kids appear to handle, but your child is not just “some” kid.
3. Results are appearing more each day that homeschooling works. Universities are beginning to seek out homeschooled students.
4. Academically you can provide much more to your child than a teacher that shares herself with nineteen other children.
5. It won’t hurt if you wait a few years before trying again, but it will hurt if he is emotionally scarred from a horrible first year experience.

My husband, praise God is supportive of homeschooling. We have five children with two that have learning disabilities. I work with a neurodevelopmentalist on their home therapy programs and I’ll guarantee your they get much more on a daily basis than if they were in a special ed class.

Good Luck and you will be in our prayers!!!

Sometimes it takes realizing what’s happening to innocent folks like a 5-year-old to force us to take a stand for ourselves.

–I have come to understand that his attitude is just really related to the fact that he hated living with the stigma of LD. My husband had great parents. I think that is why he has excelled in so many areas as an adult despite the hinderance.

I sympathize with both your husband and you. I was hyperlexic as a child, and speech was definitely not my language. I’m still a whole lot better in email and on paper than I am face to face although I don’t stand out in any way nowadays, unless I try to speak foreign languages. (I’m okay at picking up how to read and write them, but gosh, conversational Spanish or French is sooo hard for me.) I don’t advertise my LD on real life. I also have a kid who had multiple learning disabilities, which after extremely extensive intervention over a period of about five years, is now pretty much normal. She’s 12 now, and doing well in preparatory school, and the school doesn’t know. No accomodations. I have taken pains to bury my kid’s diagnosis even though YES, it does mean that she works harder than the average child in this extremely rigorous school. BUT, while I believe in intensive intervention for LD and in accomodations for such residual disability as remains after intensive intervention, I don’t think it is a good idea to turn impairments into disabilities by accommodating them prior to reaching maximal medical improvement. My difficulty with oral language is an IMPAIRMENT. It is not a DISABILITY. A sure way to have turned it into a disability would have been to allow me to rely on paper and pencil to communicate instead of speech. My child may have some mild residual impairments at this point, but they are not disabling and will likely continue to improve. I don’t think early accomodations are a kindness. As we say to patients, “Physical therapy can be difficult and painful, but doing it gets people better. You can either learn to appreciate life from a wheelchair, or you can do your PT and learn how to walk again.”

Having said that, your kid’s teacher sounds like a witch, and you can almost certainly do better at instructing your child than her, especially at this age. Since your husband is skeptical, what I would do is set a date at which point you expect to return him to the regular instructional system. Point out that this is just Kindergarten, and the teacher isn’t working out. Write out your goals and action plan. For example, for now, a reasonable goal is that the child will return to school at the beginning of third grade, and that you expect him to be able to cope with the third grade curriculum at that point. Your action plan would detail how you intend to get from here to there. Put in detailed curricula, your rationale for choosing them, and a proposed timeline. He may not agree to 3rd grade, but he will probably agree to a trial of homeschooling during Kindergarten.

Shirin

Debra they are PULLING THE WOOL OVER YOUR EYES.
DONT FALL FOR IT!
I had a similar problem when my son entered kindergarten.
First 3 days he came home crying and they gave me all sorts of excuses, until of course I popped in on the teacher.

I sat in the back of the room and proceeded to see this teacher humiliate student after student.
When I walked in I saw several kids silently crying and I was sitting there for no more than 30 minutes when she had two more kids in tears.

ie: at a table a few kids where creating dolls, and this one child was a little slow putting the doll together. She started collecting the “materials” to move on to the “next lesson” and the little boy did not get the chance to put the eyes on his doll and he really wanted to. She came over and “reprimanded” him for being too slow and proceeded to tell him “its too bad yours is the only doll that doesn’t have eyes now it wont be able to see and will be blind” the little boy started crying saying ” I don’t want my doll to be blind I want him to have eyes”

Well at this point I couldn’t take it anymore. I asked her to step outside of the classroom. She refused citing that I shouldn’t disrupt her class. I told her that if she didn’t step out of the classroom immediately that I would see to it she has enough “disruption” to last a lifetime. So we stepped out of the classroom and at which point I proceeded to CHEW HER ASS OUT.
We went to the principal’s office and I told him everything I saw.
And could you believe that they had the audacity to say that I may have the wrong “perception” of what really happened. She completely failed to accept responsibility for her actions and it amazed me how “sweet” this lady was when parents stopped by.

The only reason I caught her is because I was all the way in the back of the room on the floor with two other children doing an activity and she thought that I had “left” during one of the breaks.
She then started accusing me of SPYING on her!
Well needless to say that same day I withdrew my child from Kindergarten and homeschooled him for that year. The following year I placed him in a “private” school.
DONT LET THEM PULL A FAST ONE.
There’s nothing that kills a child’s desire to learn quicker, than a teacher who
is abusive with children. And that IS abuse. It’s called “emotional abuse” and there is no excuse for it.

Public school is not for everybody. As a parent, I would be uncomfortable with the classroom environment you’re describing. When it was my son’s turn to have such a teacher, I moved heaven and earth to avoid them.

While it isn’t always possible to avoid them entirely, I managed to do so until my son was in high school - where having such a teacher was still one of the worst experiences he’s ever had.

It’s true that abusive teachers can roll right off the back of some children while scarring others. If you feel your child will be scarred by this teacher and her manner (and he’s already showing signs of it) I wouldn’t hesitate to homeschool for the year.

I’ve taught for 20 years in many different grades. You can tell your husband I said so. Find other homeschoolers in your community and you can often build a schooling network outside of your school that your husband might be more comfortable with.

And consider having your husband go into the classroom himself to see what you’ve seen. Ask him if he’s comfortable in that classroom and if he feels it’s the kind of environment he wants for his son.

Good luck.

… Even if you decide it’s better to keep the kiddo in school (not being where you are it’s hard to say… and it’s hard to send courage over the Internet, much less the real support you’d need to deal with the big issues here) — ‘cause either way there will be rough spots and maybe a little online support can keep the blisters down ;)