Pencil Pushing and Potty Shaming!

pencil kid One of the most important aspects of teaching in an early childhood program is that of creating and maintaining an environment of physical, educational, and emotional safety.

The Physical Environment is basic and obvious and the Educational Environment has to do with the staff, the setting, and the system of planning and organization. This blog deals with the Emotional Environment – the creation and maintenance of a place that builds realistic self-esteem and offers a sense of community to each child.

As teachers, we do this by using warmth and humor, acceptance and respect, protection of rights, assignment of responsibilities, celebration of events and milestones, and making strong connections with families. Some of us, however, have difficulty in using the most encouraging methods of assisting children toward the goals & skills involved with the areas of academics and personal care.

Children – in fact, humans of all ages – learn easiest and best when they are READY for a skill and when they are motivated toward accomplishing it by another human who is AWARE OF SIGNS OF READINESS, PATIENT, KIND, KNOWS WHEN TO ASSIST and WHEN TO STEP ASIDE, and USES LANGUAGE AND GESTURE THAT IS ALWAYS POSITIVE.

Let’s look at the preschool academic skills. In my opinion (based on fact, knowledge, study, and experience) these skills must be restricted to readiness to read, write, and do math and must be learned through activities that call for movement, sensory operations, manipulation, construction, role play, and expression. This leaves the use of worksheets as learning tools ONLY for those children who have learned all they can from using the normal methods and need busy work or preparation for first grade.

Unfortunately, I see preschool programs that call for children to accomplish academic skills at three and four rather than five and six, and this type of curriculum often encourages teachers to introduce developmentally inappropriate experiences before a child is ready (before he is through moving, sensing, manipulating, constructing, role playing, and enjoying free expression through art, music, rhythm, rhyme, gestures, words, laughter, and tears). It causes well-meaning and intelligent teachers to use attitudes and language that are not positive, and to look more for what a child CANNOT do than what he can – and will. Recently I observed a teacher ‘overseeing’ a child trying desperately to print his name. She was so in his face and so full of “NO. That’s not right” in words and attitude, I felt sure the child was going to cry or stab her with the skinny pencil he was wielding in his wobbly left hand. He was a mess and so was she.

As for toilet training, my other pet peeve in the category of NO PUSHING skills, I see programs, teachers, and parents taking on a very stressful attitude. Some programs will not move children into older classes or allow them to enroll in a class unless they are completely toilet trained. If pooping and peeing in the potty is a prerequisite for enrollment and since this is a skill that isn’t achieved by some boys until four, that means you may have big active boys of four interacting with tiny little potty-proficient toddlers. Again, this is frustrating for the child, the teacher, and the parent and causes all of us to say things like “Don’t you want to be a big boy like Peter the Pooper? Don’t you want to wear ‘big girl panties’ like all the other girls? If you use the toilet, I’ll give you candy!” and to do things like have a child wash out his underwear or roll our eyes and hold our noses if he has an accident. Not fair, not good, not right, not an efficient way for a child to be encouraged to learn.

SO. . .