Parents, Teachers and Communication

As this school year winds down, I see two articles from teachers about student behavior in the classroom and trying to talk to parents about those issues.
From Fox News in St. Louis:

Erin Axson is a middle school reading and writing teacher in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In her open letter posted to her Facebook page, Axson said she knows not all parents will agree with her, but said she felt the need to say something after finishing the school year feeling “exhausted.

"Lately, it seems that many parents have adopted a bizarrely lenient attitude toward disciplining children as well as bending over backwards to accommodate their children’s every demand. It’s unclear what’s causing these parents to believe that children should be subject to no limits, no discipline, and no stringent requirements at school. Whatever the cause, these parents are, in fact, doing a terrible disservice to today’s young people and to society as a whole. And, they are leaving their children’s teachers feeling frustrated, ill-supported, and utterly exhausted.

The rate at which good teachers are exiting the school system is sky rocketing, and if things continue at this pace, no one will be willing to go into teaching at all. The average new teacher these days is lasting a whopping 4 years before calling it quits. Those seasoned teachers that have witnessed this strange, cultural shift firsthand are dropping like flies, realizing they don’t have the energy to fight this uphill battle. But, perhaps the saddest thing is that these schools are turning out children who are ill-suited to being constructive, productive members of our society."

Meanwhile, NPR had yet another take on this:

Childhood — and parenting — have radically changed in the past few decades, to the point where far more children today struggle to manage their behavior.

That's the argument Katherine Reynolds Lewis makes in her new parenting book, The Good News About Bad Behavior. 

"We face a crisis of self-regulation," Lewis writes. And by "we," she means parents and teachers who struggle daily with difficult behavior from the children in their lives.

Three factors, she says, have contributed mightily to this crisis.

First: Where, how and how much kids are allowed to play has changed.

Second, their access to technology and social media has exploded.

Finally, Lewis suggests, children today are too "unemployed." She doesn't simply mean the occasional summer job for a high school teen. The term is a big tent, and she uses it to include household jobs that can help even toddlers build confidence and a sense of community.

"They're not asked to do anything to contribute to a neighborhood or family or community," Lewis tells NPR in a recent interview. "And that really erodes their sense of self-worth — just as it would with an adult being unemployed."

Suggestions from the author:

• The four R's will keep a consequence from becoming a punishment. So it's important to avoid power struggles and to win the kid's cooperation. They are: Any consequence should be revealed in advance, respectful, related to the decision the child made, and reasonable in scope.

• You even tell parents, in the heat of the moment, it's OK to just mumble and walk away. What do you mean?
  That's when you are looking at your child, they are not doing what you want, and you cannot think of what to do. Instead of jumping in with a bribe or a punishment or yelling, you give yourself some space. Pretend you had something on the stove you need to grab or that you hear something ringing in the other room and walk away. That gives you just a little space to gather your thoughts and maybe calm down a little bit so you can respond to their behavior from the best place in you — from your best intentions as a parent.

How have communications been with your child's teacher this year?