An embarrassing confrontation
Parents should give kids room to change their own behavior.
Originally published in the Moultrie News.
My son told me his teacher got angry and called him out in the hall to discipline him. This embarrassed him. She didn't call me or let me know. As his mother, shouldn’t the teacher contact me about this?
Why? What's wrong with trusting the child to work out his own behavior? The trend may be for parents to be involved in every electron of their children's lives, but what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.
Parents shouldn’t expect teachers to contact them every time for every instance of misbehavior. Most issues can be managed in class, benefitting both teacher and student. This saves teachers time explaining minor disruptions to catastrophizing parents and helps kids learn self-management.
In fact, contacting parents for every misbehavior can be detrimental. It can erode trust between students and teachers. Developing positive relationships with students is challenging enough. If teachers “snitch” every time the child breaks a rule, many students will see them as untrustworthy adversaries.
Constant tattling also annoys many parents. Micromanaging children might be popular, but you’re in the minority if you wish to know every flaw. A teacher who does this risks convincing parents that they’re “targeting” the child. Excessive outreach can also tire parents, leading them to ignore it. None of this helps achieve what we all want: an educated, well-behaved child.
In this case, I might be more worried about the child telling me about the incident than the incident itself. Most kids don't want their parents to know they caused a teacher to discipline them. Your son's comfort with this suggests he is either very honest, you are very lenient, or he believes you'll bail him out of trouble.
Here, your lenience appears to be the cause because your criticism is aimed at the teacher instead of your son. It takes a special sort of tunnel vision to blame a teacher for addressing your child's bad behavior. That's like blaming firefighters for making your stuff all wet. Fault the source of the problem, not those trying to solve it.
Another mistake is the suggestion that taking the child into the hallway for admonishment was embarrassing. For one, his feelings aren't the only ones involved. Do you think the teacher enjoyed it? She probably took headache pills during her planning period while reconsidering her career choice.
More to the point, however, taking him in the hallway was the teacher's attempt to spare him embarrassment, not provoke it. It would have been far more humiliating to be scolded in front of his classmates.
Some may argue that the teacher shouldn't have admonished him at all. She should have just taken a deep breath, let him act like a cretin, and forwarded parents a detailed report at her earliest convenience. That's fairy tale stuff. Spend a day as a teacher, and you'll see how absurd it sounds; I don't have room to explain it here.
Does all this mean parents should never be alerted when children misbehave? Of course not. There are at least three common situations where it should happen, possibly including a parent-teacher conference.
The first is when the child's transgression is egregious. The second occurs when the child fails to improve the misbehavior on his own. The third happens if the teacher has told the student she’s going to do so: “Do that again, and I'm calling your parents,” should be a warning that is carried out. Empty threats reinforce bad behavior.
Finally, while I do not doubt that the whole episode embarrassed him, what will be even more humiliating as he matures is having his mother fight his battles for him. Kids instinctively recognize the importance of standing on their own two feet. The ability to adjust their own behavior is a key component of this. Allow them—and their teachers—space to make it happen.
Jody Stallings has been an award-winning teacher in Charleston since 1992 and is director of the Charleston Teacher Alliance. To submit a question, order his books, or follow him on social media, please visit JodyStallings.com.