Is lap-sitting with a teacher OK? Recently I volunteered at my son’s school for a few hours for an assembly. He is in kindergarten and is my oldest. I was looking around at all the kids watching the program and noticed a child who appeared to be a first grade special-needs student sitting on the lap of the school’s only male teacher. It was clear the kid wanted to get up and run around and was having trouble paying attention.
I spoke with Erica Newfang, a school psychologist who works with elementary-age children every day and is the best school psychologist I have ever known, and she said that while she offers affection to kids who need consoling, like putting an arm around them or offering a quick hug, “I have one or two who try to sit on my lap, but I don’t allow it. I feel like it’s a boundary we need not cross. And as a means of containing kids, there should be and are better strategies.
Frankly, it’s probably going to help the teacher in question by eliminating any potential problems that he might have in the future.I have an almost 3-year old daughter who has so much energy. She is a naturally happy kid who has always loved school. For the past two weeks, however, anytime she gets to the school premises, her mood changes and she breaks down into tears when she has to enter her class.
There are lots of ways to ameliorate this sort of thing. For slightly older students, I often suggest they take the bus instead of being dropped off by a parent. Having a distinct, independent experience arriving at school tends to start the day on a better note for students with some separation anxiety.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that the students in my fifth grade class who have limitations on screens and don’t yet own phones tend to be the students in my class who enjoy reading the most and are the most attentive and focused, but this may simply be related to the boundaries that their parents are setting for them throughout their lives.
It might be worth talking to some families in your community to see if technology in the classroom has been an issue, to get an additional perspective. Depending on what your research yields, I think you have some navigating ahead of you in terms of finding a school whose education philosophy matches yours.
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