When school rules conflict with your rules
Filed under: Child Development, Elementary school, Going to school
On Wednesdays, Henry has library at school, which includes computer time. When the school year started, I was delighted that he was getting time to work on the computer; because of his fine motor skills delays, doctors have told us, he will always struggle with handwriting and will need to learn to type at an early age so that he can take notes in class. At the beginning of the year, he was playing phonics games on the computer, designed to teach him to read AND type. We saw dramatic improvement in his keyboarding skills and his reading skills and just generally in his confidence level. It seemed like a good thing.But last week, he came home and told me for about the third Wednesday in a row that he had spent his library period playing Star Wars games at the Lego website. And frankly, it made me mad.
There are a lot of really great websites for kids Henry's age (he is six and in kindergarten). I'm not even entirely opposed to the Lego site; yesterday, we sat and played a Harry Potter game that required the player to guide the characters through a maze using different keys. But I don't want my six year old playing games where he shoots and kills people, for one thing, and I certainly don't want him playing games based on movies he's too young to see.
And I don't want him doing either during the school day.
I am the most frustrated just now because this is the first time I have felt like a school is directly undermining my parenting choices. We've been battling with Henry for a year or so now about what he watches on television ("But Mom, I am the ONLY ONE who doesn't watch Power Rangers!" he will wail). I was ready for that one, and had prepared my speech about how yes, some of his friends get to do things that he does not, but he gets to do things that his friends don't and that's just the way it is. But now I'm stumped because after telling him how important it was that he follow the rules at school and listen to his teachers, even if they were saying something different from what we said at home, I am vehemently disagreeing with what this teacher is allowing.
I'm planning to talk to Henry's classroom teacher this week, and see if she can get a read on what's going on in the library class. And then I will decide what my next step is.
Have you ever had a situation like this, where your child was being permitted to do something at school that you did not allow at home? What did you do?Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments