What to expect from preschool behavior reports, and how to stay calm when your toddler starts a dance party scandal.
The first time your child’s preschool teacher asks you to review and sign an incident report, it can be a little concerning.
Once you realize they write up an incident report for every small scrape or droplet of bodily fluids (in some states, incident report documentation is a regulatory requirement), the weekly incident report becomes routine, background noise.
By now, I’ve signed dozens of these incident reports for scraped knees, pushing a friend (Mom, it was an accident, I promise), potty training misfires, and more. So, when I got to school pick-up on a cold, rainy Wednesday, I wasn’t surprised to see the teacher grab the now-familiar carbonless two-part pink and white incident report form.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to read.
We Need to Talk
The preschool teacher’s face was my first clue that this was no typical incident report. With a mix of amusement and concern, she sheepishly handed me the incident report, “So… something happened today, and we need to talk.”
My mind raced through possibilities—did he bite someone? Use a forbidden word? Start a preschool fight club?
My stomach flipped as I started to skim the incident report.
During our daily pre-lunch dance party, your child instigated a troubling trend … “booty-shaking” … “toddler twerking is not appropriate at school” …
As I raised my eyes to meet the teachers, I felt my cheeks becoming warmer.
Thankfully, she spoke first: “Is this maybe something he learned at home?”
My mind was racing. In my childhood, dancing meant the “Hokey Pokey,” was my kid channeling Shakira? I stammered: “We do play a lot of music, and he really likes to dance and, uh, shake his hips, I suppose. Was it really that bad?”
“We had to create a new classroom rule. No booty shaking allowed,” she deadpanned. “While we welcome creative expression, I need to ask that you help your child understand that that type of dancing, that type of, uh, toddler twerking is not okay in the classroom.”
We had to create a new classroom rule – no booty shaking allowed.
My cheeks were on fire now. My parents would have been apologizing. I’m trying not to laugh. “Got it,” I scribbled my signature on the form, tucking my pink copy in my bag as my child bounced over to me smiling.
Post-Incident
In the car on the ride home, the redness on my cheeks began to fade. Taking a deep breath, I asked my offspring: “What happened today during the dance party?”
The squeaky voice in the back seat started to explain: “I really like the song, and when I was dancing, my friends started laughing and having fun and dancing like me, and then (serious face)… my teacher said NO BOOTY SHAKING!”
“That sounds like a fan dance party, and maybe your teacher just wants you to dance a different way.” At his age, I would have gotten a stern lecture. Instead, here I am, trying to explain classroom etiquette while secretly impressed by his rhythm.
“Why?”
“Well, when you’re at school, this is the new rule for your classroom.”
“But why?”
And for the next 15 minutes, I failed forward, ineffectively answering his favorite question, a welcome distraction from my thoughts about what the other parents—I’ve already seen the looks they give me at drop-off—will say. By the time we made it home, mercifully, the kiddo had moved on to asking about other obsessions (e.g. the solar system and the mean scientist that demoted Pluto).
Dancing on My Own
That evening, as I revisited the mortification all over again for my spouse, my cheeks started to feel warm again. In fact, I was starting to feel pretty hot and begin gesticulating wildly as I described what happened.
“Do you want to use your words to talk about your feelings, babe?” my spouse asked, with a mix of sarcasm and seriousness.
“I mean, where did he learn this? From your brother’s kid?” I asked accusingly. “Normally, I love that all of his cousins are 15 years older than him. What was scandalous in 1990 is now just a TikTok trend.”
My spouse rolled his eyes at me.
“Well, what’s so wrong about a little booty shaking?” I asked, perhaps rhetorically.
After thinking for a minute, my spouse said: “Probably nothing. But we’re not in the teacher’s shoes, and maybe they grew concerned when a bunch of kids started wiggling their tushies.”
We made a game plan to help our little one comply with the new classroom rule, without making him feel ashamed about expressing himself. We still hold nightly dance parties at home, celebrating all the silly ways we move our bodies.
And, instead of taking a worried, punitive approach to prevent the problematic booty-shaking, we simply didn’t make a big deal about it.
Following some of the best parenting advice we’ve received that we’ll try to implement every day, we kept cool heads and focused on positive encouragement. Our child hears that he’s a fantastic dancer, and, before we knew it, he had “invented” ten new dance moves, none of which will fall under the umbrella of “toddler twerking.”
I thought about tossing the infamous incident report into the recycling bin, but then, I thought better. With my own little booty shake, I put the incident report where it belonged: prominently displayed on the refrigerator door. This will be perfect to save and display at his graduation party.
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