To all who have ECE degrees, moms, dads, and anyone else with advice: My daughter was accepted into a preschool program for children with developmental delays as a peer language model (they have a couple of normally developing children in each class as leaders and models.) I dont have a degree in early childhood ed and have very little experience with children with developmental disabilities, but Im pretty sure rewarding kids with food such as gummy bears and goldfish is wrong, even if as a child who has developmental issues its difficult to find something that works as an enforcer. There are a number of other issues with the teachers (such as, according to my daughter, putting her in timeout for crying for me.) But what I readily find disturbing is that as my child is leaving the class the teacher is standing at the door with a bag of cereal and handing a piece to each child that leaves. Ive brought up the issues with the director who seems concerned but reminded me that children with developmental delays need different methods of enforcement. Should that include time out for crying and physically holding on to my child as I leave the class because its her first time in school, even though she doesnt have developmental delays. Ive always seen teachers give the child something to play with or distract her with something interesting to comfort them in such a situation. Im thinking of taking her out of the program completely.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 19:23:57 +0000