Yesterday evening, I learned that my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1) has been invited by her teacher to represent her kindergarten classmates in the Student Government meeting coming up on Friday. An hour after my daughter reported this good news, she revealed that she is scared she won't do a good job by asking me: "What if I don't have anything to say at the meeting? Will there be lots of other big kids there, too? Why can't my teacher pick someone else?" My heart went out to my daughter as she shared her fears. And I was left wondering, how can I work with my DD1 to help her cultivate some confidence about expressing her own voice?
Since the beginning of the school year, my daughter has been struggling to learn how to assert herself. Because my DD1 and her classmates are left largely to themselves to work through whatever dynamics and conflicts arise in their small group classroom interactions, as well as in the larger settings of the lunchroom and the playground, she has complained regularly throughout kindergarten that she does not have any "real friends" at school because no one really "listens" to her, including the teacher. In Rachel Simmon's The Curse of the Good Girl, the author asserts that being a "good girl" is a "richly rewarded pursuit . . . yet many girls learn to succeed by sequestering the most genuine parts of their developing selves. . . . Many girls are disconnecting from the truest parts of themselves, sacrificing essential self-knowledge to the pressure of who they think they ought to be." How has my DD1 come to believe in kindergarten that she should accommodate to the wishes of others rather than assert her own desires? How has she become so ready to comply rather than to be true to herself?
I picked this book up from one of my favorite, local bookstores as I was struggling to get my bearings and to better understand not only why my daughter was so miserable in the first several months of kindergarten, but also to get some insights about how to work with my daughter's teacher and other school personnel to assist in the transition. At home, my DD1 does not to have any trouble conveying how she feels or what she wants to her family, and yet she reports that while at school she is "afraid" to stand up for herself because she does not want her friends to get "mad" or "laugh" at her, or to get in "trouble" with the teacher. My husband and I have reached out to both my daughter's teacher and to the guidance counselor and asked for their help in modeling ways to work through conflict with peers. We were promised by the guidance counselor last fall that she would set up some one to one coaching sessions with our DD1, and yet nothing has come to pass. I am compassionate to the fact that my daughter's kindergarten teacher is under a great deal of pressure in our school district to utilize every moment of the school day in kindergarten to focus on academic outcomes. However, if the steely focus on academics means that her teacher can no longer attend to the development of her students' social-emotional needs, too, then how will my sensitive and accommodating DD1 fare over time?
What parts of herself is my DD1 at risk of losing if there is no attention or support for children's social and emotional development at school? Given the emphasis in my daughter's kindergarten class on working independently, doesn't it make sense that the teacher should be providing her students with on-going practice and coaching in how to work through conflicts when they arise? What responsibility, if any, ought our public school teachers have in helping their students develop an authentic, individual voice?
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