My child (6 years old) had a similar incident - the teacher told me that
some kids had reported to her that my child pushed a boy and made him cry.
the thing is that the boy had always pushed her. I had a quite few
conversations with the teacher including emails and face to face talks. My
take is the following:
1. need to let the school know that we are taking it very seriously.
2. need to make sure that the children speak up and let the teacher know
what had happened.
3. need to put in writing on all the pushing incidents so that there is
record.
below is the letter that I had send and the incident was resolved well:
Ms.XXX
Thank you for the conversation regarding the pushing incident occurred on
XXX. I appreciate your effort to keep the students safe and make sure that
they abide by the rules.
I had a serious talk with my daughter D once we got home and I discussed
with my wife regarding the incident. I also spoke with xxxx (other parents)
and we all agree that we shall make sure our kids will take this rule very
seriously.
However, I would also like to work with you to help D to learn how to deal
with this type of situations.
D insisted that she did not push the boy B and I would like to give her the
benefit of doubt. My wife told me that D had told her multiple times she
was pushed by other kids at school and she once was push off the swing by B
- this was why my wife remembered B's name when I mentioned the incident. By
our observation, D has never been aggressive and she has always been the
receiving end of "pushing" incidents in the past. We have never observed
pushing behavior in the past when she was around other kids. My wife and I
have been trying to help her learn to talk to the teachers when the
incidents happen but it seems she would come home and talk to her Mom about
it rather than talking to the teachers.
Please understand that I am not trying to find an excuse for my child or
make a judgement on whether she did push or not. As we discussed today,
there might be several scenarios which could cause other kids think she was
pushing. What I am saying is that we are aware of D's tendency of keep
silent in certain type of situations and she needs to learn how to deal with
incidents. One of the biggest challenges that we have is that she does not
speak out loud. She tends to speak in a very tiny voice and one can barely
hear her sometimes but she did say something. She usually follow our
instructions - we taught her that she should greet people, say "how are you,
" "please" "thank you", etc, and we know she usually do as we asked - the
problem has been that she greets her friends' parents in the morning but
they often can not hear her. It is her personality which sometimes put her
in difficult situations.
Those were the reason why I had asked in our school meetings about how she
does around other kids. I was not surprised that she did not explain
herself well about the incident today - as a matter of fact, she told me she
said "I did not push" but I think what you heard might be just her
murmuring.
My wife and I will continue to help her improve her communications and we
would very appreciate it if you can help her on this and give her more
encouragement to speak out loud. We will also make sure that she understands
that pushing is not acceptable. - she was pushed by other kids and she does
not like it so that I think the message is not difficult to go through.
Thanks again for your kind help to D. She likes you and she likes to go to
school - I hope that our joint effort will make the school a
great experience for the kids.
Thank you.