how to deal with little monsters

yes!!

totally shocked/amazed at time-outs being considered "too extreme" a form of discipline. They won't give them at this preschool because it would be too much of a "marketing problem".

we are looking for another pre-school now...

i don't even understand that. "marketing problem"?

like, they would have problems attracting families/parents if they advertised that the way the way they discipline children includes giving time-outs. that temporarily removing a child who is causing problems from the group is some kind of horrible trauma just makes me say GTFO - and yet, this appears to be fairly common in the Bay Area, which is borne out by all these co-ops/preschools advertising that they advocate "peace-based solutions to problem solving" or some such nonsense. Your kid is being a jerk, he goes and sits in the corner for 10 minutes, what is the big fucking deal...

now I'm just pissed and dreading the headache of finding another preschool

yeah that ultimately hsa to be the most irritating thing. doing the research, settling on it, establishing your little gal there - and now doing it all again! aaaaarrrrgh

I just feel bad like we failed as parents cuz we went with the easiest route and it turned out not to work out - this co-op was started as an extension of an indoor playspace that we were bringing her to, V liked it, we knew some of the other parents, she knew some of the other kids, it seemed like the most reasonable choice. but the drawbacks of being a relatively new co-op with poorly established rules are now really clear and we're just like ARRGH fuck now what

i'm not up for advocating any hippy-dippy "peace based problem solving" malarky among preschoolers, but alfie kohn does make some pretty sane and interesting arguments against certain uses of 'time out' type behavior –– NOT THAT I AGREE WITH THEM –– as forms of punishment predicated on the notion of 'love withdrawal.' a little too liberal for my taste, but interesting food for thought here.

advertising that they advocate "peace-based solutions to problem solving" or some such nonsense.

you will have to really nail down with these people what this means procedurally, beyond "we won't do shit"

Your kid is being a jerk, he goes and sits in the corner for 10 minutes, what is the big fucking deal...

They're prolly thinking about "time out" as practiced in some public schools: Standing stock still, with additional punishment added for slouching (has happened), being locked in a small box (common), or being put into a janitor's closet filled with open cans of paint and varnish (has happened too).

being locked in a small box

i do not believe this has regularly happened in my lifetime.

as they get older I expect modes of discipline to change/adapt but we're talking about 2 and 3 year olds here, and I don't see how doing bad shit with no consequences teaches them anything valuable or important.

and yeah goole OTM about our having to press for specifics in the future

xp

They're prolly thinking about "time out" as practiced in some public schools: Standing stock still, with additional punishment added for slouching (has happened), being locked in a small box (common), or being put into a janitor's closet filled with open cans of paint and varnish (has happened too).

this doesn't meet any definition I ever experienced/witnessed in public schools (either myself or with my parents, both of whom worked in public elementary and jr high schools for 30+ years). if I got a time out as a pre-schooler/elementary schooler it meant I had to go sit in a corner or something and be quiet and that was pretty much it. The locked in a box thing sounds insane/abusive

being locked in a small box

I meant a *narrow* box, sorry. A box tall enough to stand in. And I'm one of those that was locked in one.

in england they have something called "the naughty step" i.e. the bottom step of whatever stairs are close by that you have to go sit on

I meant a *narrow* box, sorry. A box tall enough to stand in. And I'm one of those that was locked in one.

that's insane - this was in America?

yeah, that wouldn't be tolerated here

I'm old enough to remember the cane - used in my primary and middle schools (1973-81) on kids as young as six or seven. Hold your hand out, six whacks on your open palm or fingers with a bamboo rod. Pretty barbaric when you think about it.

that shit was banned from CA schools afaik, never happened while I was growing up and would have been grounds for firing.

surely there's some middle ground between abuse and "hey run free there's no consequences for your actions! Peace out!"

http://www.nospank.net/cacpban.htm

^^^and that's just at the state level, I'm sure it was banned at the local level in various counties well before that

Definitely had the paddle in my elementary school (in TN). At some point they changed the rules so that you had the option of three-day suspension or the paddle. Most kids chose the paddle. Pretty fucked up!

I'm sorry you're going through all this. My wife and I pulled our son out of school last year over the way they handled a kid who was bullying our son. We've been homeschooling him since then, but we will probably have to put him into some sort of afterschool care program soon enough so my wife can pick up more hours at work. We dread having to deal with any sort of problem like this again, and from talking to other parents, it's way too common.

how old's your son...?

6, I was just about to make a post about how young your kid was to have to deal with this, too.

Jeez, sorry about that punctuation.

yeah prior to this I would not really have thought 3 yo girls would be prone to this stuff but guess what. the two in question have a whole bully-and-sycophant dynamic going on, it's obviously bad news

how's it goin?

kind of amazed to ehar about this at that age! all the three year olds I worked with had trouble with like pants and remembering their last name---can't imagine actual bullying. general childish monstrousness sure

oh the firestorm continues - now there's a Safety Committee and a Discipline Committee and the co-op is discussing whether to implement some kind of time-out policy and whether that would lead to the current teacher quitting (she is categorically against time-outs in principle, a position I find sort of baffling) and all kinds of random parents weighing in about what happened. there was a post on the co-op's discussion board yesterday, clearly written by a parent with experience as a lawyer, pointing out that the co-op and individual parents providing care are exposing themselves to some incredibly serious legal liability without clear, consistent policies in place to handle threats to childrens' safety, for example.

in practice, things are going better at the co-op already and they've instituted a few changes that are ensuring all the kids are more closely monitored, etc. and V seems totally happy there. today she checked in and one of the bullies had left her a present (a pink princess dress), which was nice.

I think it's all going to work out fine in the short term, but in the long term we're looking around for somewhere else to put her, just because this whole situation has been very irritating to deal with, and we've lost a great deal of confidence in the teacher and in some of the other parents' child-rearing philosophies.

on a sidenote, this whole affair has led to me learning WAY more than I wanted to know about other families' issues/dysfunctions, including some real-life horror-movie level trauma

yeah I guess that's reassuring in a weird way? like, gettig bullied at daycare is probably not gonna be hat traumatic in the long run?

someone else pointed out that V is now probably going to be the SAFEST kid at the co-op being that she was (mostly unbeknownst to her, I'm sure) at the middle of this whole brouhaha.

but yeah, her being on the receiving end of some little brats kinda doesn't even compare to some of the other shit I've heard in recent days (like surviving a murder/suicide attempt on the part of your mom, which claimed the life of yr sibling, for ex. I can see how your dad+stepmom might be a little hyper-protective of you after that)

oh man :(

yeah my eyes kinda popped out of my head when I heard that

"but in the long term we're looking around for somewhere else to put her"

Have you looked into L4ur3l Hill, Shakey? That's where my brother and I went to pre-school and it was a really good experience.

we haven't taken a serious look anywhere yet, just compiling a list - need to get on this tho

so the bullies are gone - new school year, my daughter is now one of the oldest in the program (keeping her here while we look around for a real pre-school, so far fingers crossed for Glenridge which seems like our first choice)

altho now she has a classmate who humps everything... which is more comical than anything but it's just like WTF this kid is literally humping something every couple of minutes. the floor, the furniture, toys, other children (latter doesn't always go over so well). Future porn star?

Oh man, long story but I ended up briefly reunited with a long lost sister about 12 years ago and during the reunion I met my niece who was about 4 and who constantly humped everything, just frottering away while we're having this estranged family reunion, and it made an already awkward situation almost unbearable. I would say it is just a normal thing some kids do, but I there was nothing normal about any of that.

I think this kid is around 2 yo

wow, it's tough when kids that young are doing it. the best thing to say is "that's something you do when you're by yourself, like going potty" but a kid that young prolly doesn't have the greatest grip on public vs private behavior. he might still be going in his pants.

^ and obv the parents should be the one delivering the privacy message

shakey don't be all like 'get a room you freak!'

I really hesitate to mention it, but isn't that sort of hypersexual behavior in toddlers a warning sign of sexual abuse?

I have heard that and I was concerned it might be the case w/ my niece (for other reasons, too, but like I said: long story). But it could also just be a kid who hasn't gotten the hang of socially acceptable behavior or just has a discomfiting self-soothing method.

shakey don't be all like 'get a room you freak!'

lol I've only seen this kid in action once, I'm not working at the co-op so no worries

But it could also just be a kid who hasn't gotten the hang of socially acceptable behavior or just has a discomfiting self-soothing method.

I think this is more what's going on. Both of his parents appear flummoxed/surprised by the behavior and like I said he is only 2yo, abuse would be a pretty extreme scenario/explanation...? It seems more likely that he just has no boundaries and discovered this thing that feels awesome and hasn't gotten a handle on it yet. but hey, that's what socialization is all about, right?

in the meantime it is kind of hilarious

also yeah pretty sure this kid's still in diapers

Alright folks. So, as noted on the redneck thread, the extremely troubled kid-next-door (I'll call him Chase) comes over to my house every day seeking to escape from whatever hell is going on over there. He and my son play together. It's about a 50% mix of them playing together nicely, as little kids do, and 50% of Chase acting up. The acting up is pretty extreme.

When he's in a bad mood, Chase often complains that he is "so bored" and that we are "so boring" and that whatever it is that we happen to say we like doing "sucks." My wife and I both believe that he is pretty jealous of our life. When he comes over to our house, there are toys to play with and attentive parents. From what we've learned about his house, his older brother sits around playing Halo or watching horror movies. The place is a complete dump (as witnessed from the outside - god knows what it's like on the inside). He wore the same shoes from March through August and frequently wore the same socks for days on end. His dad has been arrested on drug-related charges in the past and the word around the neighborhood is that he's into PCP. I don't credit rumor mills for much, but maybe they know something.

We don't see his dad much, but one of the few times we've seen him and his son together, his son had hurt himself playing in our yard. Chase had whacked his head on the gate to our backyard and was actually bleeding from the head. His father hollered at him for running and flicked him in the head - hard.

So Chase comes over, sometimes plays superheroes with my son, sometimes cusses us all out and vows that he'll never come over here again, only to return the next day when school lets out. My wife and I are completely sick of it. We feel that he is a bad influence on our son and I can tell that keeping him in the environment is having an impact on my son, who is acting up. Just a little bit more than usual, but it's pretty easy for me to see where it's coming from. I want my son to play with someone else.

On the other hand, we feel really bad for this child. He's a fucking child for god's sake. A little kid who comes from a shitty world and probably lives a shittier life than we know. At the beginning of the summer, my wife and I thought we might be able to make a difference in this kids life by modeling constructive behavior for him. It hasn't been working and it's taking a lot out of us.

Any thoughts, ilxors?

Like, talking to the dad about the kids behavior is out of the question. He'll probably just holler at him or beat him for it or something. Do you know how to work with extremely troubled youth? Are there good agencies or nonprofits out there I could contact about this kid? I don't even know what I'm looking for, really.

Umm... can I be blunt and suggest you call child protective services? If you were a teacher or doctor this would be a Mandatory Reporting issue –- i suggest you protect yourself, your son, and "Chase" by leaving the decision to professionals.

Seriously... call your state's agency and tell them exactly what you told us here: you are (almost) legally obligated to do so.

I'd tell him he's not allowed to come over anymore until he can keep a civil tongue in his head. You can raise your own kid, but you can't raise your neighbors' kids.

I also think you should have a man-to-man talk with your son, walking a fine line between a peers and father-son. "I'm worried about that kid, but more than that, I'm worried about the acting out he's teaching you. It's not okay. Just because we're not disciplining Chase, it's still not okay, because it's not our job to discipline Chase. But it is our job to discipline you, and if you do stuff because you see him doing it and getting away with it, you're going to find out who's in charge. I love you and I don't want you to turn into the kind of kid who insults and cusses out adults. Now let's watch baseball."