My dear old Gran always used to say, take care of the dimes and the dollars take care of them selves. This wasn’t financial advice either. While she had an analogy for nearly everything, this one could be applied across multiple contexts…and it was. In the school setting this is equivalent to sweating the small stuff. When you sweat the small stuff, the big stuff is fewer and farther between, meaning mind the dimes and they don’t turn into dollars.
Then, you have those people that don’t care about the dimes. They toss them aside because it isn’t enough to care about. Relating this to behavior, there are people that overlook small behavior issues because in isolation….it is no big deal, or isn’t worth the energy expenditure to correct it. To that I say, The lowest form of acceptable behavior defines the culture. Read that again because this is true in the home, in the office, and especially in the school. The little things that are allowed and overlooked will become acceptable.
In the principal’s office, this is sometimes questioned. I have been asked on more than one occasion why I am making a ‘big deal’ about what someone else perceives to be a small issue. From the parent perspective, I understand this….sort of. Nobody wants their children to feel bad or have consequences. But if a child has made a poor choice, an error in judgement or a mistake…isn’t it best to learn about how to avoid that problem down the road? Isn’t it best to correct behavior when it is low level behavior and required minimal intervention for correction?
Teaching children to respect boundaries involves them testing the boundaries. Always. Every kid at some point will do it. The children who have never tested a boundary at school (yes there are some) have had the lesson reinforced at home so I DON’T have to correct it at school. The kids that are testing boundaries at school have likely tested boundaries at home and are either testing to see if we mean what we say….( we do), or if the boundaries are different from home…and sometimes they are. Sometimes kids test boundaries at school because when they were tested at home…they weren’t really a boundary after all. Hint: if adults are not consistent with where the line is drawn, then it really isn’t a line….meaning if you relax the boundary once, fail to intervene when it is crossed once, you have to work twice as hard next time to re-establish it.
Sometimes boundaries are very different between home and school. What a family decides is ok at home for one or two children may not be appropriate or acceptable for 300 children. Play fighting is a prime example: parents often allow play fighting to take place between siblings. When issues arise in the home siblings either resolve it with out adult intervention, or adults can sort it our relatively quickly and easily. Play fighting in the school setting can get out of control…. real quick. It is all fun and games until someone gets hurt, kids take sides, someone has to stand up for someone else and then it is an unsafe situation.
When it comes to kids, often times we have cases of monkey see, monkey do. So when kids see other kids doing something: play fighting, back talking, name calling, playing a new game, singing a song…positive and negative behaviors….they often copy it. If they see someone getting away with the negative, something they know is wrong but went uncorrected, the unspoken message is ‘ no worries, that is ok’ and they are more likely to repeat the behavior.
There are major difference is between what is safe and acceptable behavior for a few kids in the home and family setting and hundreds of kids in the school setting. So when I correct your child in school for something you let slide at home remember that I have high expectations for your child because I care about them, that I don’t want the behavior to become acceptable for the larger group, and that emotional and physical safety is the priority.
The bottom line here is that the school is tasked with keeping a large group of kids who come from a wide variation in cultural backgrounds with different norms and value systems in their homes emotionally and physically safe. We have to apply a set of standards for behavior to assist in keeping kids safe and we have to consistently enforce it, otherwise our climate is no longer a safe place for kids to be.
