Taking Children Seriously

The problem with allowing social workers to have direct access to your children is that you immediately put yourself in a weak position because the social services then have so-called expert witnesses who, being fallible human beings with their own biases, may say all sorts of terrible things in court and you would then have to show that those experts are mistaken. Whereas if you are the one hiring the experts and your case comes to court, the social services will then be in the position of having to show that your expert witnesses (whom I am assuming will say good things!) are mistaken or committing perjury.

Actually, I registered here about a year ago & lost the link =/

I haven't really been able to read through much here, but I manage a local Attachment Parenting info/support group website. My daughter is 3 years old now & recently started Nursery School at the public school within walking distance of our house {I'm posting here because I can be more anonymous!} I expected a transition stage, but last week 3 things really bothered me. I did not expect these things to come up based on the literature I read from the school & from the teacher....

1st I came early to pick my daughter up & saw that the teacher had all the kids gathered in a circle in front of her while she "discussed" their behaviors that morning ~ it seemed to be going OK until the teacher pointed to a couple kids in particular & said "YOU were a bad boy & YOU were very bad" @@ !!!!! When she was done I came in & asked her what was going on; she just said that there was an "incident" in the cafeteria. I didn't get the opportunity to find out any more than that, though, because I was already late for my appointment.

The 2nd thing that bothered me was when I walked in to see my kid crying between 2 other girls. I walked over & gently asked my kiddo to use her words to tell me why she seemed so sad. The teacher jumped on over, saying "Oh it's nothing, they were just fighting over the little horse, but I took it away so they're fine now." I felt like snapping back that I was not talking to HER, but instead I redirected my attention to my kid by paraphrasing what the teacher had said: "Your friends wanted the same toy as you so the teacher put it in time-out?" {which is what we call it when toys can't be played with for that reason & only toys go in time-out}. The teacher became oddly defensive: "NO, nooooo, they didn't go in time-out!" I just smiled & said I was talking about the horse. She blushed & walked away. I believe that simply taking the horse away does absolutely nothing to help the kids SOLVE the problem & PREVENT it from happening again; I believe the teacher should have had them share their feelings & think of a solution together before removing the toy.

If an adult tells your child that he's going to get his face punched in one day, simply because he speaks up and out, would TCS find this appropriate behaviour on the adults part? Opinions welcome.

What would you do if a parent told your child that he would never have any friends? Would you take it as an empty threat out of anger and/or jealousy or would you act upon it?