Your child is our child

A growing number of us seem to be unaware that upon enrollment in school, our entire family becomes part of a group. We don’t know that our children become part of the student body, we become part of the parent body, and we have a responsibility to all the other parents, students and school staff to actively participate in the education of everyone’s children.

No one lives in a vacuum. We are, like it or not, part of one another’s lives. What we do, and how we do it, either positively or negatively impacts one another. Nowhere is the impact more negative than when dealing with someone who thinks s/he is separate from everyone else.

Because of this narrow view, we expect to be treated as individuals. Instead of attending regularly scheduled parent meetings to share information and concerns, we make repeat, unannounced visits with the expectation of a meeting without regard for anything else that is going on at the time.

We also expect our children to be treated as individuals, as if our children’s needs are more important than every other student’s needs: “Don’t suspend my baby just because s/he is keeping everybody else from learning.” 

School is a place where students learn how to function as a group. Our children, hearing our short-sighted view, believe they are supposed to get individualized treatment and become high-maintenance children. This entitlement attitude sucks attention and learning time away from the other students. Who wants their children assigned to a room where teaching and learning time is diminished because of a high-maintenance child or three?

Your child is no longer just your child; your child is now our child. Your child is now part of a group. That means your child is not more important than any other child, nor is s/he more important than the group

Your child is not the only one in your family who is enrolled; you become part of a body of parents who, with the assistance of school staff, are responsible for the positive growth and development of the entire group of children. Your family is now part of a school community.

If you don’t want the responsibility and accountability that comes with being part of a school community – making sure your child follows his/her teachers’ instructions, paying close attention to your child’s behavior with other students, attending parent meetings regularly, volunteering in a substantive way, staying accessible to your child’s school, responding to home-school communications – you really should do the school staff, other students and parents a huge favor and home school.

A. Bolanle Ambonisye, www.freematerials4parents.com, facilitates parent empowerment workshops. She can be reached at bambonisye@yahoo.com.