Hi
My 26 months old boy just started a Montessori pre-school last week. We are doing 3 hours in the afternoon four days a week. It started really well last week and he was loving it. But everything starts to go wrong this week and he has been crying and screaming with massive tantrums on and off during his stay there. And he has also started to self harm by banging his head on the floor and snapping his own face and the nursery staff couldn’t manage to stop him. When I picked him up yesterday he got scratches all over his face and a red forehead. It is really hard for me to see that he’s so stressed by the experience.
The teacher complains that he wouldn’t listen to them and he is in his own little world. I know when he’s with me, he has selective hearing too but generally he’s still responsive to my instructions most times. He also doesn’t like being told no but he hardly throws any tantrums when he’s with me nowadays.
So, is this normal toddler behaviour not being able to listen to other adults? Or are these simply signs that he’s not ready for pre-school? The teacher seems to think that the tantrums are normal when they first start to settle in but the self-harm isn’t.
I would ideally like to settle him in pre-school so I can go back to work after the summer around September time.
Another thing is that, the teacher told me on Monday that he is so advanced academically they actually have nothing to teach him. And they don’t have the material to advance him. He already knows everything in their curriculum, if not beyond. She thinks that he would be very bored with the pre-school within a year. She suggested that perhaps I should contact the primary schools to see whether we can get him to start reception/year 1 when he’s three. (Here in UK, we start children in reception year age 4, which I think is really early as it is)
My husband is completely against home-schooling, so that’s not really an option for us. I am not sure it’s really in his best interest to be in formal schooling too early but I am also worried about being bored in school may put him off learning. The question is, if he does accelerate in the school system, he would need to have the emotional/social skills to match. Right now, it doesn’t look like he’s particularly emotionally mature for his age. I am hoping that the pre-school will improve his social skills in this mixed age setting (all children here are at least one year older than him)
I would love to hear your opinion on this and perhaps point out things that I am not considering.
Thanks in advance!