Friday afternoon at 2pm I received a call from the assistant principal at my older daughter's school. "Don't be alarmed," the assistant principal assured me as she opened the conversation. "I am calling to report an incident. Your daughter was involved in an interaction with two other girls in her class in which a piece of her hair was cut off. We have spoken with all three girls and your daughter is fine. It is school policy to inform all parents when their children are taken to the principal's office."
My stomach lurched as I listened to my daughter's assistant principal explain the situation. My eyes welled up with tears, and a lump formed in my throat. I could feel the slow burn of anger gathering inside me as I attended to the principal's full report. My questions gathered, too: Where was the teacher? Which girls were involved in the incident? Was my daughter hurt? Was the intent malicious? Or did one of her classmates just get carried away by curiosity, as my two daughters have done at home with scissors and hair?
The next hour and a half after this phone call was a long wait. I wanted, no I needed, to be reassured that my daughter was okay, and the only reassurance I could trust was my own first hand verification. As I waited outside the kindergarten doors on Friday afternoon, I hoped that she would emerge and then offer her usual smile, hug, and skip before charging off to play. And she did -- my Darling Daughter 1 (DD1) smiled at me, and then ran over to hug me before asking me to hold her backpack and coat so she could be freed to play. My daughter was okay.
24 hours plus later, I, too, am working to find my equilibrium. My DD1 provided me with the full story of what happened after we left the playground. The incident took place in the housekeeping corner of her classroom, which is somewhat hidden from sight. My DD1 was working with scissors and paper to cut out shapes with another classmate, when a third classmate came over to the housekeeping area holding her own scissors and announced that she was going to cut off her tongue. After being ignored, this classmate instructed the other girl to cover my DD1's eyes while she held her down to snip off some hair. My DD1 kicked in protest as she was being held down, and after a lock of her hair was captured she was released. She immediately went to the substitute teacher to report the incident; her story was confirmed by the ESOL teacher who witnessed the interaction. The three girls were then taken to the office by the ESOL teacher, and my DD1 repeated her story to the principal, which was corroborated by the two other girls who were involved in the exchange.
My daughter also revealed that the perpetrator was, indeed, the classmate whom I suspected. From the first week of school, my DD1 has been troubled by this girl's mode of interaction. She has pushed my DD1 on the stairs, pulled on her sweatshirt hood, taken away her stuffed dog and ignored my DD1's request to return her toy. When they were in the same reading group, my DD1 complained of the bickering that seemed required of her. When I have volunteered in my DD1's classroom, I have noticed that this classmate seems to be seeking my daughter's attention and friendship, which she exhibits by rushing to stand next to her in line, requesting to sit next to her at lunch, and chasing her at recess. And yet her manner of eliciting connection is challenging to my daughter because she is repeatedly invasive of her personal space and she is too often up in my daughter's face.
As a teacher, I would work each day to see and commend the good in this child who has been so irksome to my daughter. However, as a parent, I am ready to dismiss this child as unfit for my daughter's company. I fiercely want to protect my daughter from anything or anyone who can do her harm. Consequently, my dialogue with my DD1 has shifted this year away from how important it is to be friends with all the children in her class to how it is sometimes necessary to distance ourselves from those who do not know how to be friends. As of Friday, I have given my DD1 explicit permission to say "No" to this classmate's request to sit together at lunch or to play at recess. Yet what is not so clear to me is how I should engage with the educators at my daughter's elementary school regarding this pattern of problematic behavior with another child in her class. Is this incident an example of what can happen when the focus of kindergarten becomes too exclusively focused on the academic and not enough on the social and emotional developmental needs of children? If the kindergarten curriculum no longer teaches children how to positively interact with one another, then how can my daughter's classmate practice the kinds of behaviors that could better lead to authentic friendship and connection with her peers? What is the responsibility of the educators at my daughter's school to protect students from harm, particularly the harm that children can inflict on one another?
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