My Son Picked Up Inappropriate Words From Daycare

Posted by Jeff on April 18, 2009

Tonight I am totally shocked and scared.

My son has said a few words that just freaked me out.

And these words were not “shit” and “fuck” — those would have been nice!!!

What he said was “I’ll cut you in half” and “I’ll kill you” during his “no-nap, long-day-running-around meltdown” from 7:30-8pm tonight. And he was saying that directly at his sister since he wanted Mommy to put him to bed. My wife heard him say that an immediately asked him where he heard such words. His response, “[name removed] from Pre-K2 at school.”

Great!!!

Well the unnamed child is the same one that less than a year ago was talking about guns and stuff — and he was only 3 years old then!  This is going to be A PROBLEM! And one that I am addressing with my child’s daycare immediately via email to the Director as well as on Monday morning with a phone call or face to face. Something like this needs to be addressed immediately by the school and a resolution to the issue by removal of the problem student and any siblings.  Harsh? No, not at all…it’s a private daycare, one where I’m paying $1200 for both kids to attend. This situation calls for an immediate and appropriate response from the school’s director. If not, then I’ll have to go to the corporate office for satisfactory resolution….which in my mind is the immediate removal of the problem child.

Not only were these words just awful to hear…I also find out that the same child is making all of the boys in the pre-K room speak like robots or people with traceotomy tubes. Ok that isn’t anywhere near as bad as cutting someone in half, but still it’s an annoyance I, and my son, don’t need. My wife learned about the annoying voices while at soccer practice today. There is a child in the earlier soccer class, and that goes to my son’s same daycare,  that came up and said hi to my son in that weird voice. My wife looked and said to the other child’s mom, “Your son does that too!??” And the mom said, “YES! It’s annoying and he’s learned it from another boy in his daycare class”…ends up being the same child that is alleged to have said the bad words and phrases.

Anyway…Over the past two weeks my wife and I noticed that our son just didn’t seem himself at daycare/school. I even emailed his teacher directly to ask her if everything was ok. She replied and said everything seemed to be ok and that my son was playing with all of his friends like normal.  For all of you…my son is very affectionate, caring and considerate and while talking with my wife before writing this post we think our son was acting the way he was because of things going on at school. He knows not to say bad words and stuff and if he was hearing those things he might have felt out of place and unsure of what to do.

My wife finally got my son to calm down and like I said, he told us where and from whom he heard “cut you in half” (just say that like 3x to yourself and think about those words coming from your child’s mouth) it’s sickening. He’s never said anything bad like that.

Do any of you [other parents] reading this have any advice for me? Do you have children in daycare and pre-k that are learning inappropriate phrases or behaviors? I’m not sure what to do?!?  Any thoughts?