I recently had to send this letter to the principal of girl child's school. In order to become appropriately angered on my behalf it is important that you know that girl child is 6 and that we chose her school in part becasue it has a very clear underlying philosophy of cherishing and protecting a child innocence.
Rachel -
I do not know if you are aware that Dick told the children
two extremely inappropriate ‘ghost’ stories during their cooking time today. From what we can gather, one involved a plane
crash that killed 20 people on the runway.
One was a man in a bowler hat that became a ghost who haunted the
airport, looking for his briefcase and scaring people, and even the police could
not track him down. The other was about
his roommate who crashed his motorcycle while driving drunk. He rolled into a ravine and clawed his way
back out, only to die by the side of the road.
When an educator interacts with a child they have a responsibility
to insure that the lessons they are providing are not harmful. This extends to all support staff who work at
the school. They do not always have to
be enlightening, but they should also never be disruptive to the children’s
well being. That said, here is what our
child learned at school today.
Planes crash and kill people. That given, it is not safe to fly to grandmas for
the holidays.
If you die you might stay on earth, not knowing you have died,
and scare living people.
Even an adult might not be able to stop terrifying things
from happening.
Death can be gruesome and frightening.
People can drink so much alcohol that they become drunk.
When you are drunk you can die.
People might suffer at their time of death.
While we do understand that this time of year often has a
spooky element and that part of the fun for many people is scaring each other,
that scare factor needs to be age appropriate and handled in a safe and
manageable way for each individual. For an
adult who had been given a role of authority over small children to tell the stories
that Dick did is unforgivable.
If he felt that he could not make it through the season
without a few stories, there as a wealth of age appropriate stories that could
have been shared. We assume that he did
not clear this ‘lesson’ plan before he carried it out. We would like to know where his level of
accountability is for his interactions with the children. Who oversees his interactions to see that
they follow the very clearly defined teaching methods and philosophies that
led parents to choose this school in the first place?
We have no idea how long it will take to get our child to a
point where she can go to the bathroom in the middle of the night again, or to
sleep in her own bed. Even after that
though, she will still remember those lessons, and those are not lessons a grown
man had a right to give a six year old.
At the very least, we need to know what will be done to
insure that these kinds of things will not happen again. Additionally, we need Dick to apologize to (girl child) and tell her that he made up the stories he told to her class. She looks up to him and we cannot convince
her that he lied.
We will be there in the morning to discuss this
with you and with Dick. We are sorry to add this to your plate, but
hope you can understand why this is such an issue and can help us do
what we can to undue some of the damage.
-(Mrs and Mr. Charlie)
There was a host of apologies and shocked faces and promises to make it
up to her, but they can't. The damage is done. No matter how badly
Dick feels he can't fix this. I have a 6 year old in my bed again who
can't go down the hallway at night without a grownup. I am tired and
cranky, and left frustrated becasue nothing but time can ease this for us.
I do know that she will have these moments, that bad things will
seep into her world. I cannot protect her forever, nor do I really want
to. I think about the wisdom I have gleaned from one to many trips
through Finding Nemo, which is actually a scary story in its own right.
Marlin: I promised I’d never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That’s a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.
That said, I also know I should be able to send her to a freaking hippie school without worrying that she will be terrified.
