Apparently there have been some problems in the lunch room at my daughter’s school. Bullying, her teacher told us. So now, there are assigned seats in the cafeteria. That seems reasonable.
But then our daughter told us that she has to “babysit” one of her classmates, reporting whatever he does that he’s not supposed to do.
Excuse me?
How old is she? She just turned six.
Now, my daughter is a very good student and pretty responsible, as six-year-olds come, but to ask her to report on one of her classmates’ activities is simply absurd.
Children do learn to police one another – I remember that kind of thing in elementary school, too. They try not to get into too much trouble, and often times help one another “cover up” if they’ve done something they should not have (I mean stuff like breaking things or spilling paint whose containers they should not have opened). But to act as a monitor for someone else in the class at the age of six makes no sense.
First of all, why are the adults not monitoring the children’s activity in the lunch room? The children are not left alone to be supervised by the cafeteria workers, are they?
Second, six-year olds are still navigating the rules of the system, and they cannot possibly be mature enough to regularly take on the responsibility of “babysitting.” The other day my daughter started marking up places in the house that she knows she’s not supposed to mark up; she probably did not do it deliberately – she in all likelihood forgot. That’s okay and it’s normal, too. It shows that she still has to grow into responsibility, like any other six-year old. So don’t put her “in charge” of her classmate!
Finally, given all the nuances of child behavior, there’s no way that any six-year-old can really fully respond to a classmate’s actions in the way that a trained adult should (note I did say “should.” because sometimes the adults don’t respond well, either). All she can do is “report.” Children have a comparatively simple view of the world, and bullying or other misbehavior requires adult responses.
We’re going to talk to the Assistant Principal about the matter this week. We do not want our daughter to be participating in any kind of “babysitting.” It may be that the word is merely the language used to the kids and that what they are being asked to do is really not as serious as that. But if necessary, I will for the remaining five weeks of school pick my daughter up during her lunch period and sit on a nearby bench and “do lunch” with her. That sounds like fun on a mid-spring afternoon.