The Bad Influence

As an Early Childhood Educator, I don't know much about Physics--astrophysics, geophysics, or any other physics, but I DO know the First Law of Childhood Physics: Negative behavior always attracts! This is an unfailable law of nature, as dependable as gravity!

Are you familiar with this scene? Your sweet child comes home from nursery school and starts to spit at you. He is smiling--he thinks it's cool, it's great! Spit! Spit! Spit! You can't believe the horror of it--where did he learn such a thing?!? Then you realize where: at nursery school! Who is letting children spit at school? What are those teachers doing? Why isn't someone stopping this? The answer is simple: First Law of Childhood Physics. Negative behavior attracts--it looks so attractive. And it causes such a stir in the classroom! Very often when a negative behavior is experienced in a classroom for the first time, the child who is doing it is probably doing that same behavior at home (or experiencing it by an older sibling at home). It is important that teachers stop the undesired behavior before it spreads, but that is a challenge. If you give it too much attention, everyone wants to try it. If you ignore it, there is the risk that the child thinks that it's acceptable.

A quiet, middle ground is what's needed--at school and at home. The child who's showing the negtive actions needs to be sat down quietly and told that "We don't do that in our class/family." You can explain why if there's a really solid reason ("Spittting spreads germs and can make people sick."), but generally it's more productive to quietly and quickly declare that such behavior isn't done. Is there a chance that the teachers are unaware of negative behavior? If it's a very large class with very few teachers, it could happen, but then it spreads wildly, and soon everyone is a part of the negative scene! Always let the teachers know what you've been seeing at home if it's something that you do not approve of. And always let your child know what is and isn't allowed in your family. When  family rules and family values are clear, it's much easier for a child to know what to do! (And what not to do!)