Something about glass houses...

There is a rumor floating around among the preschool parents in my kidlet's class. Another parent supposedly pulled her kid from the preschool because not only was her daughter not learning anything, she was picking up bad habits.

First of all, I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that if a child is picking up bad habits, that counts as learning something.

Secondly, I wonder why the parent of a child who spent a lot of class time in time-outs would think that it was everyone else's fault. This is the third school year my child has been in preschool there, and to the best of my knowledge, he has been in a time-out precisely twice. This woman's daughter has him beat hands down in the misbehavior department. And my son is not the only one who cannot compete with that little girl. I would find it more likely that she is teaching them bad habits.

Third of all, if you are teaching your child bad habits, please don't blame everyone else. When parents cannot get their child to school on time (on most, if not all days) and show up late for afternoon pickup, they are teaching their child that it is okay to not keep a schedule and that other people will just have to cope with covering for them. When someone is the classroom parent and manage to lose all of the paperwork associated with classroom parties for the year, they teach their child a heck of a lot about how to NOT manage responsibilities properly.

I guess what I wish I had a chance to tell that parent was that sometimes the child has no chance to learn bad habits in school when they have already mastered a number of them just by watching their parents in action.

Then again, I am nowhere near being a perfect parent, so it's probably best that I did not have the opportunity to say such a thing. I can just silently rejoice that there is one fewer misbehaving child in my son's preschool class right now.