OK, huge information dump coming up:
Our son is currently 3 3/4 years old. He has gone to daycare since he was about 1 year old. At 2 3/4 years old we moved him to a closer daycare. He had trouble with the change at first, and there were several instances of hitting/biting/problems sharing at the new daycare for the first couple months. We talked with the daycare workers and talked with lil GuitarStv and worked out a solution. He would still occasionally (every couple weeks) have some sort of problem, but it seemed to be getting better and be under control. His behaviour at home is generally good (I mean, he's 3 years old . . . he still has the occasional tantrum, and gets cranky if he misses his nap . . . but overall there's nothing odd/abnormally bad).
This September he was required to go to kindergarten (we asked the principal if we could keep him back for a year . . . the answer is yes, but then he would be put into SK and miss a year of schooling). Both my wife and I work and need to commute through busy traffic to do so, so I drop lil GuitarStv off at daycare an hour before school starts and his mother picks him up an hour after school ends. The kindergarten is some sort of a combined JK/SK class, so lil GuitarStv is the second youngest of 30 children and ages in the class range from 3 3/4 years old to 5 3/4 years old. He's not a stupid kid, he is starting to read/write, knows his numbers, and picks things up quickly. Our concern was that he would not be emotionally ready for the class. It's also a large class (of 30) and he is unable to take the nap that he usually did a little after lunch at daycare and at home since there's no dark quiet place to do so.
So anyway, school starts and for the first week we don't really hear anything from the teacher so assume everything is OK. The second week we start getting notes back from the teacher detailing bad behaviour that lil GuitarStv is doing, hitting other kids, not listening to the teacher, etc. So we go back to having talks with him every night about proper behaviour and strategies to control himself when he gets mad (talk about what's bothering you, take a deep breath, count to three, etc), and we start reading books with titles like 'hands are not for hitting' every night. We write back notes to the teacher explaining the things that we're doing at home, asking if they have any further ideas for things that we can do to help, and asking for regular behaviour updates of some kind so that we can praise him for good behaviour/punish him for bad behaviour.
Lil GuitarStv's behaviour at school progressively gets worse. We get updates and notes from the teacher saying that he's spitting in people's faces, that he has slapped her in the face, that he is throwing chairs around the room. The teacher says that she "has never in her 29 years of teaching seen such a badly behaved child", that "has no idea how to discipline him". She suggested taking him out of school. This is pretty crazy behaviour . . . and again, nothing that we have seen at home, not something that happens at the daycare before and after school. I try calling her a couple times, but she doesn't return calls. I write back notes with ideas for preventing him from having tantrums and strategies that we use to prevent him from getting angry and get back no response. We keep up with the behaviour books and discussions at home.
Fast forward to last week, where I called the school eight times on Wednesday until I got through to the teacher. I finally managed to get the teacher to return my call. My wife and I had an idea where we could get the teacher to document all instances of bad behaviour in a notebook each day so that we could talk over specific instances at home with lil GuitarStv, and so that we could try to look for patterns that are causing the extreme behaviour at school. Specifically, I wanted the teacher to write down what happened before he did something bad, what he did, and then what discipline was meted out and how well it worked. The teacher agreed to do this. So, on Wednesday we got back a book that said he was mostly good, on Thursday he was mostly good, on Friday she listed 11 things that he did that were bad. She didn't really give any background information for what happened before hand or after for any of them. So I wrote back asking for this information, and suggested some ways to mitigate the bad behaviour that she had observed.
On Monday I got back a note saying that it's not possible for her to follow any of the suggestions that I made because there are 29 other kids in class and she doesn't have time. Then a listing of 8-9 things that lil GuitarStv did that were bad (again, with no clue as to what had gone on before or after). So I asked her if she had any plan to handle his behaviour, and if she could provide the missing information so that we could get a better idea what's going on in the classroom. The teacher didn't send back the notebook on Tuesday. She was sick on Wednesday, and there was a supply teacher in her place. The supply teacher and teacher's assistant told us that there were no problems with lil GuitarStv that day, so we praised him and told him that he was doing a really good job when he got home.
This morning I got a call from the principal of the school asking to talk about lil GuitarStv's behaviour because it was getting worse and worse and she was concerned. She said that she wants to send in a person to evaluate him and that they will have to remove him from the class when he's acting up for the safety of other children. I said OK, but asked about Wednesday since he had just had a really good day yesterday. The principal said that she had talked to children in lil GuitarStv's class who said that he was bad, and that the supply teacher and teacher's assistant were wrong. Apparently yesterday was a really bad day according to the four and five year olds. The principal said that if the bad behaviour continues she would suspend our son from school, that neither she nor the teacher would provide any updates to us regarding lil GuitarStv's behaviour, and that she wasn't open to having the teacher meet with the Early Childhood Educators in the daycare to discuss strategies that work to control his behaviour.
My goal is to get lil GuitarStv behaving properly so that he's not disrupting others and is able to learn properly himself. I figure we have the following options:
- Keep trying to work with the school (my only issue with this option is that they don't seem very interested in helping)
- Try another school (big disruption, difficult to find childcare before/after school)
- Take him out of kindergarten and put him in daycare for another year, skipping JK (so he loses a year of education)
Any better ideas or suggestions?