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Jeremiah and His Mom: A True Story of Seeing Strengths
Jeremiah was “that boy.” You know the one I mean– the one who yells out an answer to every question and can’t seem to wait; the one who needs to be sitting right next to the teacher at circle time or he will be disruptive; the one whose mother you have tried to talk to but it just doesn’t seem to get anywhere. That is how this story of Jeremiah and his mother starts.
I walked into Jeremiah’s Pre-K classroom one morning at circle time. I had come to observe the group of children of a master teacher who was relatively new at our school. I quickly noticed there was a mom sitting at the table, watching this group time occur. I heard her call out to Jeremiah several times and immediately knew which child Jeremiah was.
“Jeremiah, shush.”
“Jeremiah, listen to your teacher.”
“Not now, Jeremiah, wait.”
She tried to manage his behavior in the group from the distant table, yet I could feel her anxiety building as her efforts were in vain. Jeremiah continued to shout out answers and wiggle close to his teacher.
I crouched next to her and said, “I think you must be Jeremiah’s mom.”
She looked at me apprehensively, fearful that I was judging her child’s “bad” behavior. “He is really quite a bright boy, isn’t he?” I said. Mom looked straight at me in shock, immediately a bit more comfortable. Her gaze quickly fixed on Jeremiah and as she began to say something to him, I placed my hand on her arm and said, “Let’s let the teacher handle it. He’s fine. Let’s listen to his answers. He is really answering each question correctly! He just has a hard time waiting."
She looked at me and it was as though her armor dropped right off. “I work with him at home every day.”
“That’s great. Any time we moms spend with our children is so valuable. What do you do?” I asked.
“I have workbooks that we do,” she said.
Now it is not new information that all the quality indicators in our field frown upon using worksheets with preschoolers. There are entire Web sites that talk about what a waste of time they are for young children’s learning.
I had a choice to make here – I could take the early childhood expert role and talk about the cons of using worksheets with young children, or I could build on the strength that this mother was sharing, working with her child on learning. I chose the latter. What did I have to gain to judge this mom even more than she was obviously already feeling?
So my next question to her was, “What kind of worksheets?"
“Oh, maybe there is a cat and you draw a line over to the other cat.”
“Ah, if you want to make that worksheet even better for Jeremiah, you could try to talk with him more about what is on the worksheet. Maybe someone you know has a cat and you could begin to talk about the details about the real cats he knows. If you add more conversation about his own experiences, you will also be building his language and concepts at the same time, and he will get better at waiting his turn in conversations!"
“Really?” she said, “I can do that.” She then took a pen out of her purse and wrote her phone number on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “Will you call me and give me more easy ideas like this?"
I love this story. It shows so many wonderful things about the commitment and desire we possess as parents and teachers. It also shows how our well-intentioned efforts to educate children and include families can be alienating instead of strength-building. Had I chosen to lecture or “teach” about the perils of worksheets in preschool, this conversation may have ended very differently.
Oh, and the teacher later found me and said, “What did you say to Jeremiah’s mom? She left here happy, and she is always so negative with me.”
I shared the story with her. Her mouth dropped as she said, “Oh my gosh. I would have never thought to do that. I surely would have talked about the worksheets. Thank you!”
We all learned something about looking for positives and seeing strengths that day. I will never forget Jeremiah or his mom and what they taught me.
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