What to do when your child says, "I hate school."
It can be heartbreaking when your child comes home and says three of the worst words. I've heard them as a teacher--luckily only a few times.
Your first thought might be to make excuses for school for example, "It's not that bad."
Or you might attack the problem at the teacher level by contacting your child's teacher.
The reality is that many students do not like school. Hating school is as popular as the Disney Channel shows which feature it. It might be the school's fault. It might be a child's fault. Aside from going back into time to get to the root of the problem there are a few excellent ways to go.
Acceptance It's okay for children to not like school. I'd argue that most, if not all, students do not like some aspect of school--even to the point of describing it with the dreadful word hate. Many of the most memorable parts of childhood won't happen at school. The reality is that as long as your child can pass their classes, they will have enough education cache to signal to employers that they are capable.
Nowadays, bachelors degrees are needed to meet employers' minimum requirements. But, experiences push job candidates over the edge. After high school, I've never heard someone ask me what my GPA was. But, I always have experiences in working with youth and living abroad to rely on when I face the challenges of being a teacher.
Just the other day, I stopped making a stern phone call to a parent about her son's absence from school. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that the child does not want to go to school, and is just faking being sick. The mom is buying in. However, my work at a restaurant with my parent co-workers has taught me that being a single mother is very difficult. I'm probably going to be more successful being more empathetic, and working alongside the mother than working against her. Ask Ask your child about what happened that made him or her (send me a message about making this more gender neutral) say, "I hate school!". From there, you can move into problem solving with your child to plan an appropriate course of action. Divert DIvert your child's attention from school. Sometimes children use the word, "hate" without substance. They'll say, "I hate doing taking out the trash!" when really, it's not difficult to move a trash bag from one part of the house to the other. At the end of the day, in most situations, children bounce back. The worst that can happen is that your child gets fixated on a thought without the issue having a major impact on their life. As a teacher with student with Autism, tantrums have started over taking out a pencil. Sometimes, it's just the feeling when taking out the pencil rather than the light burden of taking out the pencil which affects children the most (Hopefully, most children aren't so dramatic).
As always, feel free to comment about your experiences in parenting. I'm available for free consulting on starting a dialogue with your child's teacher or otherwise!
-Shawn
