Help - Pensacola, FL

They change so much in a year---he will learn appropriate classroom behavior through positive attention for doing things well. Focus on what he's doing right.

He needs some time to adjust to his new surroundings and his new routine. This is a new experience and he is excited!!!

In the meantime you can just keep encouraging the good behavior with smiley or star charts. When he fills out X number of smileys or stars he gets a treat! And let him help figure out what the treats are and how many stars/smileys it takes to earn them!!! You'll be surprised at how fast they get on track.

Good luck!

What is the teacher doing? My daughter is also in pre-k, she was last year too, but we are lucky and not had any problems. one thing that my husband has started doing this year to reinforce her good behavior in school is each week the teacher sends home a little progress report and if she has all goods on her progress report then she gets a quarter at the end of each week. She also gets a quarter for writing her letters properly and that kind of thing. My point is if you start rewarding him for his good behavior through the week, or you could even start out on a daily basis, then he will start to lean toward the good behavior. Tell him in the morning that if listens to the teacher and does not talk to the other children while they are working that he will get a special treat, a quarter or something small that he would like. Start out daily and check with his teacher daily and let her know what you are doing. Working together with his teacher will help immensley.

Hope I helped a little. Good luck and in the end he will grow out of it and learn appropriate classroom behavior.

M. N.

Hi J.

Ha! This really hits home! First things first....is this your childs first experience with a structured setting? It is so early in the school year that I would really not be that concerned with it. My son just started Kindergarten and he has been a "school" setting / daycare from early on and he still from time to time has to be talked to about talking too much :). There is also the possibility that your child may not be challenged enough....my son was really acting out at one point, we moved, which obviously caused him to have to switch schools and the school that he moved into was/is amazing. It turned out that the other school wasn't stimulating him enough...he was bored out of his mind.
I hope for your sake the teacher is being patient because like I said it is way too early in the year to label this a "problem". Make sure you keep communication with the teacher and work together.
Feel free to reply to this if you have any questions....Good Luck :) --L.

It seems to me that if there is THAT big of a concern in the school with 4 year old talking to his friends, then the problem is the SCHOOL not the CHILD. He is 4, not 14, and shouldn't be expected to sit like a perfect robot and act like something he is not. Sounds like he is spirited to me. Maybe government-run pre-K is not the answer, and maybe he is just very bright and not challenged enough by the curriculum. Is private pre-school or pre-k an option at all? My own son is also 4 and is in a fabulous program where he spends the day learning art, phys ed, music, sign language, letters and numbers, etiquette, and Spanish, along with free play and recess time. He is NEVER bored, always challenged, and having so much fun all day he hardly knows he's learning. And he's Mr. Talkative and has a tendency to be in trouble for not knowing when to quit. This school believes a bored child is a child in trouble and does everything it can to assure he is preoccupied at all times, whether while learning the Spanish alphabet or while playing with Play-Doh in class.
If you're stuck with what you've got, maybe ask the school if the teacher can offer him some more creative work to do to preoccupy his need to seek sensory input. If he's actually challenged and enjoying what he's doing, I doubt his verbal "problem" will remain a problem.
And be happy you have such a friendly, outgoing kid. Better than the lump who always behaves and never rocks the boat. Look into ANY research on who does better in life, and your kid is the winner. Never discourage that.
Good luck and best wishes.

Because your son has just started pre-k, he most definitely needs some time to adjust to a more structured, routine classroom environment that's led by an authority figure other than you or your husband. That's why it's so important for children to get exposure to pre-school/pre-k BEFORE entering kindergarten. You're doing the right thing by getting your child accustomed to this environment. My son went through this hurdle back when he was three, and he still reverts back to that behavior every now and then at four. It's all a part of being a toddler. Repetitive reinforcement of the rules plus time and patience = success in this case.

Does your child's teacher provided weekly progress reports? If not, ask for them because they are invaluable training tools. A lot of parents, especially moms, are offended when teachers bring attention to their children's disruptive behavior. I am not one of them. I am very actively involved in monitoring my child's behavior through his teacher, and we always work as a team to make sure that what she enforces in her classroom is reinforced at home. Working against your child's teacher is very counter-productive, so if you're inclined to get offended, frustrated, or embarrassed by your child's behavior, know that it's all part of being a parent and we've ALL been or are currently going through it.

While I wouldn't consider your child to be a "problem," unlike other moms, I wouldn't be quick to blame his school either. No matter how brilliant a child is, he/she still needs to learn discipline and respect for others, especially his authority figures, and it must start and be continually reinforced at a very early age. Being "unchallenged" is no reason to justify a child's disruptive behavior. If a child hears this justification from his parents on a regular basis, then he/she may be on a path to being a nightmare student in the future. I have many, many friends who are pre-school and elementary school teachers. They ALL agree that the kids whose parents deem them "gifted and talented" are the ones who have the most behavioral problems. Because these kids are raised to believe that they are above every other kid in the intelligence scale, they feel exempt from listening to their teachers and participating in class exercises. My son is extremely intelligent and far beyond his peers in vocabulary and conceptual logic, but that intelligence needs to be cultivated within the boundaries of discipline. When his teacher tells me that he has a problem with disruption, I'm on the case very quickly. I don't lash out at my son, I simply talk to him about the report and ask him to explain to me why he felt he needed to disobey his teacher. At this age, my son knows when he's being disobedient and because he knows that his teacher and I communicate, when he does misbehave, he actually tells me about it before she does at the end of the week. I'm telling you, parent/teacher collaboration really works! I would be giving my son a great disservice if I were to let him think that being smart gives him an all access pass to do whatever he wants in class.

Let us all remember that school is not just about academics, it's about teaching proper socialization especially at the pre-school/pre-k level.

Your child is only 4 years old and will act like a normal 4 year old; experimenting, touching,smelling, & feeling everything and as long as they're not being disrespectful then you have nothing to worry about. It would be foolish for any kindergarden teacher to expect a 5 year old to sit and be still for more then 30 seconds- that is the attention span of the avergae 5 year old- don't stress he will be ready you just need to be ready to let him go off to school which the most difficult part for a parent.

Hi J.,

I am a Kindergarten teacher so I can lend you a little advice...
Your little one is doing exactly what a 4 year olds do. I think if you give him a little time, and many reminders to talk with his friends during playtime perhaps you will see an improvment. He'll be fine for Kindergarten!

Give this a try and get back with me :)

M.

My mom had the same problem with me in Kindergarten except I actually remember GETTING UP AND WALKING AROUND! LOL. I did it because I was bored. My mom had already taught me to read and most of the stuff we were learning, so I would get bored easily and walk around giving out the answers LOL. The kindergarten teacher gave my mom 1st grade books to work on with me at home and talked with me about how important it was to stay quiet when I finished my work until everyone was done- that I had to let the other kids learn for themselves.

maybe your son is bored because he already knows what they are teaching him?