This is not the typical kind of post that I do. I don’t have the kind of life that enough interesting things happen to me to blog about on a daily basis. BUT, I am so frustrated about something and I needed to vent. My daughter who is 19 is between school and jobs and took a temporary job for a couple of weeks, substituting in one of these home care playgroups for 2-3 yr olds.
Today she came home and shared with me what goes on in the program and I have this knot in my stomach and a feeling of helplessness since speaking to her.
The teacher is a lovely person. She just doesn’t understand what 2 and 3 year olds are all about.
Their project for today was something to do with a water bottle.
The kids were each given a water bottle but, were not allowed to take the paper off by themselves, only the teachers were allowed. They are basically not allowed to do anything.
So the teachers took off the paper and then the teachers put glue on the bottles for the kids. They weren’t allowed to put the glue on you see because they were going to put iti in the wrong place of course.
The children were then given small pieces of tissue paper to put on the bottles.
If they by mistake “shmushed” up the tissue papers (and you know how easily these tissue papers shmush) they were reprimanded…the pieces were taken off and they had to do it AGAIN… because they did it WRONG…you see.
Those poor little kids. It makes me sick to my stomach. I know that this is rampant.
I know that sooo many teachers and parents don’t understand what kids are all about and all they care about is what the end product looks like.
But these kids are only 2 and 3 years old.
What are these teachers (and parents who do the same) doing to these kids?
They are squashing their self esteem, taking away all initiative and actually creating little robots. Forget about creativity.
The sad thing is that when I’ve even tried to explain to some of these parents or teachers why what they are doing is wrong…they just don’t get it.
Why don’t they get it? Can anybody enlighten me as to why so many people just can’t seem to understand what little children need?
Anybody?