Teacher’s Say: Your Child Does Not Necessarily Act the Same at School as He Does at Home

Posted by teacher on May 17, 2011

Let’s say you’re hearing that little Johnny is behaving in certain ways at school that you can’t even imagine him doing at home. Is this cause for concern? Do you believe what you’re hearing? Chances are good the teachers are seeing a different side of Johnny you don’t get to see.

Farber relays, “Kids are always different at home than they are at school and a parent will always know their child in a very different way than a teacher for very obvious reasons. Parents will say to me, ‘I can’t believe that my child ate that at school because they never eat that at home or I can’t believe my kid shoved someone on the playground because they never do that at the park’…Well, children mimic other children and they learn in good ways and bad ways from their peers. Children are inspired to do things by their peers that they wouldn’t normally do because in essence a lot of children want to have that sameness that other children do, they want to know how they’re the same as the next kid.”

Farber goes on to say, “The best of all worlds is when we bridge the gap between home and school in a collaborative model and that’s one of the keys to success at school, particularly for very young children. I see it as a jigsaw puzzle—the parents have 950 pieces of the 1000 piece puzzle of their child and the teacher only has 50—but you still need those pieces to put the puzzle of the child together.”