Daughter in preschool

[Roxxy]

I have a three year old daughter in preschool and, more and more, I'm realizing that the district is not up to date on developmentally appropriate practice. My question to you is:

How do you respond to a teacher who tells you that you need to work on apologies with your kid because she accidentally kicked someone today and refused to say sorry?

I'm not a fan of forced apologies because I don't want my child to learn to say words with hollow meaning. I also don't believe that is ready to grasp the concept of an apology yet. Instead, I would have liked to see the teacher model appropriate behavior by saying, "Oh, you kicked ___ and it made her feel ___. What can we do to help her feel better?" I personally feel that this is a much better approach.

I believe that human interaction is complex and we need to lay the groundwork for our children to function well in social settings. Any thoughts?

[Letitia]

Well, I don't know what to say to the teacher, but I do agree with you about forced apologies. I don't know what that's teaching. I don't think if someone hurt me and I witnessed that person be coerced into apologizing I would feel any better. It reminds me vaguely of saying "uncle." Say "sorry" and the badgering to say it will stop. Maybe there's some satisfaction for the original victim in watching the perpetrator cave in? Seems twisted, and to me makes the word meaningless. Maybe that's why people sometimes use it as a pass for bad behavior, like someone shoving in front of you to get to a line and saying "sorry" over their shoulder when if they were really sorry they'd stop and let you go first.

I do think 3 yo's can understand sincere apologies. We've tried with our daughter, who is 3, to foster empathy. Pretty much anybody she is in close enough proximity to hurt when she's around us is someone she cares about (she's too shy to hurt someone at the playground). We've taken the tack of pointing out the behavior to her and asking her how she thinks the other person feels. When it's clear she understands he/she feels bad or is hurt, we have suggested then that it might help if she said "sorry." We haven't forced it, but when she clearly feels bad that she caused pain she will say she is sorry. She was 3 in January and she's been saying "I'm sorry" without any prompting and very appropriately for a while now. Like when she accidentally butted me in the nose with her head. But she's certainly not perfect. I think sometimes she's too mortified to say anything, and other times she is simply not sorry.

[lunarlady]

My daughter is 3 and has recently started saying sorry. I think the thing that actually helps the most is just modeling good behavior. So when I accidently bump her head lifting her into the car, or when I trip over the dog, or when I bump into my DH, I say "sorry" and I do mean it!

We have also tried to help her by prompting her to say it when she should. So if she bumps me, (say a head knock to the chin), I'll say "ow! That hurt me!" Then I wait a minute to see if she will say anything. If not, I say "You know what would really make mommy's chin feel a bit better? If you gave me a hug and said 'sorry'." Then I get a hug and a sorry and we're off. So it's not "say you're sorry!" but more just a gentle way of teaching her WHY we say we're sorry. Hope that makes some sense and maybe helps you in some way.

As for the teacher, I would just say "Thanks for letting me know. We'll work on it," and leave it at that. I think at this age it is really hard for kids to think critically about their past actions, so trying to talk about it now doesn't really make sense. With good models, your DD will start to say sorry soon too, and you might as well let the teacher think you had something to do with that.

[BreatheMama]

Just came to the realization lots of what my dd was bringing home from preshcool was opposite of what we try to live at home, so now she stays home with me and baby dd. I'm keeping her home next year and entertaining home schooling. Have seen a huge improvement in her overall wellness and just tonight she said after reading about what a blizzard is "yeah and when we had a blizzard I didnt have to go to school, yeppie". I thought the idea of preshcool was to get them excited to go and learn. sorry to hijack. good luck.

[ssh]

Things can differ a lot between preschools with in a community, so you might want to try another one. Ours is awesome. It's also a co-op preschool so the parents are required to help a couple of days a quarter and welcome in the class anytime.