{"id":4627,"date":"2010-11-12T12:01:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T17:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=4627"},"modified":"2010-11-12T12:01:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T17:01:45","slug":"brothers-in-the-school-yard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/11\/12\/brothers-in-the-school-yard\/","title":{"rendered":"Brothers in the school yard"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>o here’s an interesting situation that I did not see coming. The boys have been discouraged from playing together in the school yard. Apparently, a Grade 1 student is not supposed to play with a Grade 3 student at recess, even if they are siblings.<\/p>\n

In their old school, we would have been facing a similar sort of problem had the boys stayed. Tristan’s best friend was in a grade ahead of him, and when they were in Grades 2 and 3, they were allowed to play together at recess. However, the school has a rule that forbids primary kids from playing with junior kids, and even allocates separate parts of the yard for them. While it was fine in Grades 2 and 3 when they were both in the primary grades, once they reached Grades 3 and 4 they’d have an invisible wall between them. Seemed rather silly to me at the time, and I’d been steeling myself for an argument with the school to allow it.<\/p>\n

Well, I solved that problem rather unintentionally by yanking the boys out of their comfortable friendships and dumping them into a new school. I was very surprised, though, to hear that brothers were being discouraged from playing with each other. In fact, I ended up speaking to both their teachers this week on a separate issue, and both teachers emphasized the importance of each of them playing with their same-grade peers.<\/p>\n

On one hand, I get it. They’re new to the school, and it’s important that they make friends with their classmates. They need to be open to the other kids of their own age groups. On the other hand, I’m concerned about the idea that they are not “allowed” to play with each other, and that cross-grade friendships are discouraged. <\/p>\n

It’s the elder who seems to be having the most trouble settling in, and the one whom I think would most benefit from making an extra effort to make his own friends. And it’s the younger who is most resistant to the idea. Just in the past week or so, the elder has found a little niche of friends and I’ve heard happy reports of recess shenanigans revolving around playing characters out of Super Mario Bros. The youngest is desperate to be included, and in fact has always seen himself as his brother’s peer.<\/p>\n

For all I know, this rule is universal and would have been the same at the old school, and we just never encountered it because Simon was only in afternoon SK the year we left. I’m curious as to whether any of you have experienced a bias against cross-grade friendships in your kids’ schools? What do you think of the idea of kids being discouraged from playing with kids outside of their grade? Should exceptions be made for siblings? Is it healthier to encourage them to form separate peer groups, or to let them rely on each other? While it might not seem it at the time, elementary school is really just a tiny portion of a child’s life — but siblings last forever.<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here’s an interesting situation that I did not see coming. The boys have been discouraged from playing together in the school yard. Apparently, a Grade 1 student is not supposed to play with a Grade 3 student at recess, even if they are siblings. In their old school, we would have been facing a … Continue reading “Brothers in the school yard”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mothering-without-a-licence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4629,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions\/4629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}