My Daughter Is More Advanced Than Her Peers. The Teacher Is Punishing Her For It!

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

Our 2-year-old daughter, “Daisy,” started a new daycare program over the summer. Her lead teacher ran an in-home daycare for 20 years before moving to this center, and she has what we consider to be an old-school approach. She places what we feel are unrealistic expectations on toddlers.

Our daughter is very verbal and can clearly express what she needs and wants and how she feels. She’s also incredibly sweet and easily picks up on others’ emotions. A few kids in her class aren’t yet really verbal, and her teacher tells us that because Daisy is verbal, she should only be using her words and never taking toys or hitting other children. While we totally agree that this is behavior we need to quell, it is neither frequent nor developmentally abnormal behavior. But because our daughter speaks in full sentences, her teacher expects her to exercise impulse control at 2, which she isn’t demanding of other children. She also uses passive aggression (“Well, if no one is going to clean up, I guess we won’t go outside”) and icky blame (“She made me sad today because she didn’t listen when I asked her to clean up”).

All in all, we don’t like her approach. But we like the program overall, and Daisy won’t be in that class forever. Besides, to be frank, we can’t afford any of the other programs in town. How can we address these unrealistic and kind of toxic behaviors with the teacher (or the program director) in a way that won’t result in our daughter being treated poorly because the teacher is miffed at us?

—Teacher Needs a Lesson

I’m not sure you can. The one thing I am sure of is that talking to the teacher about this is not a good idea. She will not welcome criticism of her behavior. It’s not as if you’d be telling her something she isn’t aware of. She is making choices, not slipping up, and while I agree that her choices are unfortunate, she will not, especially since she’s been at this a long time. As you suggest, the worst outcome would be that she’d take out her annoyance with you on Daisy. The only other possible outcome is that she’d be angry at you and leave Daisy out of it, stick to her ways, and Daisy would be no worse off than she is now. (So: not worth it.)

Talking to the program director about the teacher seems to me an only slightly better idea. Even if the director is 1) unaware of this teacher’s methods (which seems unlikely) and 2) if so, glad to have this brought to their attention, what do you imagine would happen next? If getting the teacher fired is the outcome you hope for, then I suppose you could give this a shot. If getting the teacher to treat the children in her classroom the way you want her to—and to lay off your daughter—is your goal, this option will be no more helpful than the first.

So what do you do? You have a few options, I think. One is to ask the director, politely and respectfully, about moving Daisy into the next-older group—not because you dislike her current teacher (I mean, yes, it is because of that; just don’t say that), but because her verbal skills are more closely aligned with the 3-year-olds (or whatever the next classroom up’s age is). If you are accurately describing Daisy’s verbal precocity, this would, in fact, be a better fit for her anyway. (Full disclosure: My own kid was alarmingly precocious when it came to speech, so before she even began attending the daycare center where they’d automatically assigned her to the “older infants/younger toddler room” at 13 months, I asked the director to interview her. Eyes were rolled, as I knew they would be. But once they witnessed her ability to string together full sentences, my year-old child was placed in the “older toddler room.” Thus, I know from experience that this can be done, even if it isn’t done very often. The downside to it, especially if your child happens to also be exceedingly small for her age, is that she will be accidentally knocked down a lot.)

If this idea doesn’t appeal to you, or if you speak to the director and it doesn’t work, for any reason, you can either wait it out, gritting your teeth (I promise that it will not be the last time you wait out a teacher with whom you’re unhappy in an otherwise good setting), or else take her out of this daycare just for the rest of the year, and re-enroll her next year. You don’t have to tell the program why you’re taking her out or that you’re sending her elsewhere. Nor do you have to tell the more expensive daycare program that you’re only going to be there for the rest of this year. The choice between the additional financial burden until next summer and the burden of feeling aggrieved and frustrated until then is yours. Daisy will be fine either way. To make sure of that, if you decide to stay, I suggest you redouble your efforts at home to treat her in a way that is the antithesis of her teacher’s during the hours she spends in her care.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

Last year, my wife and I had a miracle baby, a boy, though we’d thought our daughter was going to be an only child. Initially, she was excited about the prospect of a sibling, but his actual arrival brought out the green-eyed monster.

Their birthdays are only a month apart. My daughter and her best friend got to go to an expensive amusement park, and she got a new iPad as a birthday present. Our son had a small family gathering for his first birthday, where he was given both new clothes and hand-me-down baby toys. And our daughter spent the rest of the weekend sulking that her baby brother got more gifts than she did! My wife pointed out that we spent a lot of money on her birthday and that the trip to the amusement park and the iPad were what she’d said she wanted. These facts didn’t even register with her.

Recently, my wife took our son to a children’s museum. Our daughter didn’t want to go with them, but when they got back, she cried that it wasn’t fair that her brother got to play at the museum and she didn’t. My wife got fed up at this, told her to stop whining, and declared that she was acting like more of a baby than her brother. Our daughter reacted by throwing her new iPad to the floor. She lost her internet privileges for a week.

We are at the end of our wits. We talk and talk to our daughter. We make sure she gets one-on-one time with each of us. Nothing seems to get through to her. My parents’ “advice” is that we be conscious of sibling rivalry and that we shouldn’t reward her temper tantrums. OK, but this isn’t helping. Now my wife is worried that her behavior now is a preview of the terror of the teenage years ahead. So what do we do?

You don’t say how old your daughter is, but clearly she was old enough, at the time of her brother’s birth, that she was well-accustomed to being an only child. That could be anywhere from 4 (which is how old I was when my little brother was born, and man was I mad—and I stayed mad for years) and 12. That’s a big range, and the way to treat a 5-year-old’s tantrums is not the way to treat a 10-year-old’s—but, tantrums aside, I have a couple of things to say.

Your daughter’s happy excitement about being a big sister was purely theoretical. The reality of a baby in the house has been a shock to her, and to call it “sibling rivalry” doesn’t really do it justice. She is used to your full attention. Beyond this, if you and your wife didn’t expect to ever have another child, and your daughter didn’t expect that a sibling would ever be on offer, she spent years (her whole life!) completely unprepared for the dramatic change in her life that would be brought about by a younger sibling (and the older she is, the more dramatic the change will feel). As far as I can tell, you didn’t do much to prepare her for the reality of a new baby, even during your wife’s pregnancy. (You seem to have banked on her early excitement.)

Is she being unreasonable? Yes. But have a little compassion for her. The baby has no doubt been taking up most of your parenting energy and effort for the last year, and there’s no way around that. Again, the older she is, the harder this would be on her—in part because the older she is, the more likely it is that you and your wife aren’t hands-on parenting her as much as you used to, because of course the baby’s needs are more pressing and more obvious. Pointing out that you spent a lot of money on her birthday gift is not a way to persuade her that she is loved, if she is feeling unloved. Nor is reminding her that she got exactly what she’d asked for for her birthday. Her complaint about the number of presents is not about the number of presents. Nor is her sulking about not getting to play in the children’s museum. Just pretend, when she tells you what’s bothering her, that what she’s actually saying (because this is what she’s actually saying, trust me) is, “I feel like you don’t love me. I feel like you only love him,” and, “It feels like he’s replaced me, like I don’t matter anymore,” and, “I’m sad.” Then try responding to what she’s actually “saying.” (I’d like to think that taking away her internet privileges would not be your first impulse if you do that. Nor would telling her she’s being a big baby.)

Also: Getting one-on-one time with her, and talking to her, won’t make a dent in how she feels unless you encourage her to talk to you about it and you sit still and listen, empathize with her, don’t try to talk her out of how she feels or make her feel guilty about it, and find ways to show her that she’s loved and treasured and that what she needs from you matters to you as much as it ever did, even though the baby’s needs are noisier and more immediate. Her tantrums, it seems to me, are a way to make her own needs noisy and immediate enough for you to notice. Pay attention.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife and I finally bought our dream home. It is located on the water with a private dock so we can swim, boat, and fish to our heart’s content. But the property isn’t fenced, and there is a busy road right off the bend towards our street. We have repeatedly told family and friends that we’re not comfortable with children who can’t swim or dogs.

My wife’s sister-in-law and sister refuse to get the memo. Neither of them will go anywhere without their kids/dogs, no matter the venue. The dogs are not well-trained and are inclined to run off; none of the kids swim (even though the eldest is 8). Both women act like they are the experts on the subject of canines and children: They are not open to any criticism. They show up, ignoring our reasonable requests, insisting that “nothing will happen.” I will not accept this kind of liability.

My sister-in-law threatened to show up uninvited with the kids for Thanksgiving when we hosted other family and friends, so I lost my cool and sent a family-wide email. It contained local articles about children drowning or getting hit by cars in our area because of neglectful parents. One toddler managed to wander from a restaurant at the marina and fall off a pier without a single person noticing until it was too late. The parents were busy getting drunk and playing on their phones.

I put in the email that, unlike some people, we cared about the safety of our guests. Thus, anyone showing up unannounced with unsuitable extras would not be getting a foot in the door. Our insurance doesn’t make an exception for sheer stupidity, I said, and so here was the phone number of the local hotel if anyone tried to visit us with kids or dogs in tow.

It got the message across, but certainly pissed off certain people. The worst of it is that my wife is mad at me. She was “handling” it, she said. Right. She has been handling it since we closed the deal on the house, with no success. She tends to be a people-pleaser and lets her family steamroll her. I love my wife, but in this matter, I have to put my foot down, don’t I?

But do you? Get an umbrella policy if “liability” is really what’s troubling you (premiums are low, and they cover you for the kinds of catastrophes you’re talking about). If financial liability is a euphemism for your genuine anxiety about a child drowning or being hit by a car on your watch, it’s important to talk to your wife about how you feel, and how altered your (and her!) life would be if such a tragedy took place on your property.

If your wife wants to be able to host her sister’s and her sister-in-law’s families, ask her if she’d accept as a compromise the prerequisite that the children learn to swim first. If their mothers refuse, and your wife fully understands your deep concern about accidents, then you indeed might have to put your foot down.

I will admit that it has crossed my mind that what’s going on here is that you just don’t like having these kids and unruly dogs in your dream house. I don’t think that is something you can tell your wife. I do know that if she doesn’t want to host her sister and her sister-in-law and their kids/dogs (and she has told you that), but has also told you that she can’t bring herself to tell them, the thing to do is to urge her to speak up. Don’t speak for her.

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