So I get to the church for the meeting, and I swear I'm on the verge of having a heart attack. I'm literally sick, my whole body hurt and my chest was throbbing. As soon as I walk in the door, the teacher is there. She told me to come on upstairs with her, that she was going to be in the meeting too. I don’t smile at her, or say a word. Truthfully, I'm just not able.
We get upstairs and the priest is in his “Headmaster's” office. We sit down and they start off by telling me fully what happened yesterday. It was a little girl that took the toy and he pushed her away, but he pushed her stomach. (Izzy had told us that he pushed down a little boy and made him cry.) Then her grandma asked the teacher later why her grand daughter was getting hit in the stomach - that, I'm sure, was a member of the church, and is why this meeting was held in the first place. Then before the teacher had a chance to get to him, he pushed another little girl away, and she fell into three other kids and they all fell on the table and hit their heads, so everyone was screaming and crying. Thanks to Izzy. *gulp*
Then she tells me that she's going to implement a new method of discipline with him, involving a stop light and clothes pins. For each infraction, he has to move the pin down himself. If he does it, then he gets another chance. If she has to do it, it goes straight to red and he goes to time out. I think this sounds like an excellent idea. It will help him to really focus on what he's doing that’s bad.
The priest told me that the aide told him there was no anger or malice on Izzy's face when he pushed the kids - it was just a normal 3-yr old's reaction, but it was just magnified because of his size. The priest was concerned about Izzy not listening and following directions, and that was the teacher's main concern too. They decided to call me in just to get us all on the same page about what to do with correcting his behavior.
I told the teacher that Izzy needs one-on-one attention (again, but this time the priest was listening too) and she agreed to work on that. I also told her that the secretary needlessly scared me to death and she apologized and said the secretary was just "way out there." That's the good of it. But seriously, all of this merited a PHONE CALL. Or a quick five minutes after class. There was no reason to keep me torn up about it for 24 hours.
I also found out that this is the preschool teacher's FIRST year of teaching preschool, although she had taught gym to older kids for 17 years. That's why she’s being so tough on Izzy, and why she doesn't know how to handle him. Chris and I both think she decided on day one that he was going to be a problem kid and this just wasn't going to work.
Here's what we're going to do: keep him in this school until the end of September, since we've already paid for it and he does seem to like it. And because the didn’t kick him out. But I really have my doubts that this teacher is going to work for Izzy, although she and the priest were both very quick to say that he's a very young three (they were meaning recently turned 3) and this is a period of adjustment, but of course, he can't be hurting other kids, which I agree with 100%.
Overall? I'm just glad he wasn't kicked out. Yet.
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