Teachers Q&A

I am in a school where screaming at all students is the norm. I have a kindergarten assignment and students are humiliated and degraded in efforts to control their behavior. I was able to show some positive discipline techniques to the teacher the first week by modeling and the students had several teachers from their classes call or come into comment on what a great two days they had. However, at the end of the first week, the teacher took off and I had total control of the class. None of my usual stuff worked and there was total chaos.

I am a home day care provider and mother of a 16-month-old boy. The problem I am having is that he refuses to share any toys with the other children. As soon as a child picks up a toy, he screams and takes it away from them. As soon as they move on to another toy, he does the same thing. I have tried everything from giving him the extra attention he needs to telling him the importance of sharing. I realize that he is too young to really understand this concept, but I want this daycare situation to work out so that I can continue to raise my son and earn money at the same time.

Q. My son (Talen) currently attends a Catholic school. He is in the Kindergarten. He has a very strong personality and wants his way ALL of the time in class and wants to do things in his own time. He gives his teacher a hard time and sometimes gets very angry (arms tightly crossed over his chest, red face, crying). This is the problem: About 3 weeks ago, 4 boys in his class were "acting up" (including my son), and they were all reprimanded in front of the entire class by their teacher.

I am a parent of a 6 yr. old boy in the first grade who has had a few occasions of being reprimanded for talking during class. This happened this past week and his desk was moved away from the other students (along with 3 other class talkers). I felt that this consequence was acceptable and made sense. What happened next is what is unacceptable to me. Later in the afternoon there was a birthday party and the birthday girl's mom brought in cupcakes, chips and drinks for the kids.

Question:

Was just wondering if your program has components for high schools as well as elementary and middle schools. Dave

Answer:

Q. I attended your parenting lecture last night. I thought what you had to

Dear Kristin, I have several Certified Positive Discipline Associates who help me asnwer questions. If you read any of the Positive Discipline books, you will find that we don't advocate punishment of any kind. Rather we use methods that are respectful and designed to teach life skills that help children develop good character. Christine Haymond has done an excellent job (to follow) of respectfully answering your question. Jane Nelsen

School Problems

I am a 2nd grade teacher in the Los Angeles area. Lately there has been a resurgence of giving children standards to write as a form of punishment.

Since we struggle to help our children reach grade level in writing, I find this way of punishing a student (making him write) rather backward. I seem to be the only teacher who feels strongly about this? What do you think?

Question:

At what age can children participate in class meetings?