“You’re Not The Boss Of Me!”

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Transcript:

 Jeremy Walker (00:15):
Welcome back to another episode of the Preschool Pioneers Podcast where we discuss why Christians should become teachers, give practical advice to help Christian teachers and owner operators and share services and products to help Christian teachers and schools produce a truly educated child. I am your host Jeremy Walker, and on this episode we’re going to be discussing why You’re Not The Boss Of Me. Teaching proper authority and its limitations. We’re going to be discussing supervising the inattentive parent in our field guide and discussing our resources and materials with our Bible training videos.

Jeremy Walker (00:58):
I want to thank you for joining us today. I want to remind our listeners of a few things that you can check us out on our website at cr101radio.com, you can find this episode and more. You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/preschoolpioneerspodcast. Twitter is twitter.com/pioneerspodcast or on Instagram @cr101radio and of course YouTube. You can find videos of this episode and more on YouTube as well. Just search CR101radio and of course we’re on all the major podcasts out there, all the major directories, as you can tell here on our screen. We have iTunes, if you are Android fan, Google Podcast, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Spotify and lots of others.

Jeremy Walker (01:45):
Well, thank you for joining us. We are going to go ahead and get started with, You’re Not The Boss Of Me. What does that mean? Well that’s a very famous quote that children will say from time to time. I myself am a father of 11, I’ve been working professionally in childcare for now almost 22 years and my wife and I run a Christian preschool if you’re not familiar with who I am and what I’ve done in the past and so we have quite a bit of experience here with children. We’re going to begin with a passage of course, as you can see here. We’re going to start with, it’s Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long on the earth.” Ephesians 6:1-3.

Jeremy Walker (02:42):
Now one of the very important things to know about children is that they are born with a few innate beliefs. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you believe, what you don’t believe. There are a few things that everybody agrees with and that is what we see with children. What it is we get to see every day. And one of the first things you’re going to notice about children as they grow is that they believe that everything they want should be given to them right away. Immediate gratification is what it’s called. And so it starts from infancy, you’ll hear them cry and if you’ve worked with children, have children or going to have children, then this is something you need to know. Children believe everything should be given to them immediately. It’s called instant gratification.

Jeremy Walker (03:24):
This is one of the first beliefs that all children have, no matter what the age is. In fact, it’s also something that adults have, especially when they’ve grown and haven’t learned the difference between what they can and can’t do. They’ve never learned the lesson that you can’t get everything you want right away. This concept of instant gratification will fester and it will continue to blossom. And later on you’ll have adults who still believe that they should be gratified in everything they want right now. So let’s go ahead and continue. The second thing that you need to know if you’re a parent, if you’re a teacher, what your children’s innate beliefs are is that they believe that everything they want to do should also be permitted to them. I asked the kids in my school, “What is the number one word that children do not like to hear?”

Jeremy Walker (04:13):
And the number one where the children do not like to hear is the word no. It’s very simple. Two letters, but the word no is something they do not want to hear. And because they believe everything should be given to them, whatever it is. So not only should they get instant gratification, whatever they want, everybody who’s around them, their parents, their teachers their friends, their family, everybody should do exactly what they want. Whatever they want, never tell me no. If I want to stay up and watch a movie. If I want to eat chocolate chip cookies right before I go to bed, if I want to get a toy in the supermarket, whatever it is that I want to do, you are supposed to let me do it. This is also an innate belief that children have when they are born and as they grow. It’s also something that you’re going to hear not only with that as children grow, teenagers in particular, they’ll stomp off in a hurry, in a huff and puff. And I even heard some of the teenagers you’ll see in movies and things, they’ll say, “Well, you just hate me.”

Jeremy Walker (05:12):
Well, that’s how they feel. They feel like you do hate them because you won’t give them what they want. And if you just loved them, if you really loved them, you’d give them everything that they want. You would never say no. You’ll be the overindulgent parent, the overindulgent brother and sister, the overindulgent friend, the overindulgent spouse, whatever you are. Overindulgence. Number three, for our innate beliefs with children that I think is very important for everybody to understand is that they believe that everything they want other people to do, they should do. It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be a child as soon as your infancy to one, two years old.

Jeremy Walker (05:53):
If they see a child that has something, they’ll go over there and reach up and grab it and take it. And if the child resist, if the child refuses to give them what they want, well, they will become violent. Even as young as one or two, they’ll bite, they’ll scratch, they’ll push, they’ll kick, they’ll scream. As they get older, of course, it just gets worse. Anybody who has children has seen this with their children if they have more than one, and of course if you work professionally with children, this happens all the time, which is the reason why you have to have incident reports, injury reports because children do and will harm each other because they didn’t get what they want. Somebody didn’t do what I wanted them to do.

Jeremy Walker (06:31):
Of course, this doesn’t stop here. If a child of course never learns that they can’t just get everybody to do what they want them to do, they can’t just get instant gratification if they are going to be told no by people and specifically that people won’t just do what they want. This is where you get political activism comes from. This is the route of political activism where if you don’t do what I want, then I’m going to moan, I’m going to scream, I’m going to cry, I’m going to maybe destroy things, burn things. Whatever it might be. Now, there are some reasons why we should obviously be against certain things. If we want something good and the government’s doing something bad, then yes we have the right to then try to get people to do something that is good. Something that we say is morally good versus whatever it is that we don’t like.

Jeremy Walker (07:22):
But there are ways to do that. But in the cases that we’re talking about here, these are more people who just have selfish motivations and they’re just not getting what they want. Number four is that no one is allowed to tell them no, which we’ve touched on this a little bit before. So no matter what they want to do, where they want to go, you can’t tell them no. The very common slogan, if you will, that has been preached is, “I just want to be me. I just want to be me. Let me be me. Be true to myself.” See, if you tell somebody no, it means that they’re doing something, wanting something, their intentions are of something that is not appropriate. That is wrong, that is not permitted. And so this is something innate in all children that they do not like.

Jeremy Walker (08:10):
They of course believe that they should get anything and everything that they want instantly. They believe that they should be permitted to do whatever they want. They believe that people other than themselves should do what they want them to do, when they want him to do it, and of course, no one’s allowed to tell them no. Now, what we call this here, and this is something that’s common to all people who have children and people who of course work with children professionally. They know these things are true and they know that this is the common human nature of all children.

Jeremy Walker (08:42):
Now, there’s a disconnect here because when the title of our podcast here is, You’re Not The Boss Of Me. This is a concept, a slogan of independence, of a rejection of interdependence or independence or dependency on someone or something. In other words, they, children, people don’t want anybody to tell them what to do. You can’t be my boss. You can’t be my authority. I’m independent. Now we’re going to go into a little bit more of this here because this is just something that… I have the vast majority of people if they have experience know these things to be the case.

Jeremy Walker (09:20):
Now, contrasting here, because this whole section is about why Christians should become teachers, let’s contrast a little bit. The modern mindset with a biblical mindset. Now, the modern belief about children is that they’re born with an innate goodness, kind of a clean slate orally as mentally, everything’s kind of blank, and so when children are born, when children are brought into the world, they’re just these perfectly clean little creatures that are not prone to do anything. This is the basis for the idea. See, they believe that children must be allowed to grow with little to no interference by parents or teachers. Now, if you don’t know this, this is the doctrine.

Jeremy Walker (10:03):
The base doctrine for all education is that children need to grow on their own because they’re good because they’re mentally and morally already good. We don’t need to try to mold them. We don’t need to try to control them. We don’t need to try to make them into what we want them to be made into. We need to let them be and so this is the number one doctrine of the modern humanistic education professional. They tell parents about this as well. You shouldn’t try to break your child’s spirit. Well, when they’re talk about breaking somebody’s spirit and just means that you’re not going to tell them no, you’re not going to force them to do what you want. You’re going to let them do what they want.

Jeremy Walker (10:45):
The parent becomes a servant to the child, a servant to their whims, their needs, their desires, their whatevers and that’s supposed to be good parenting. If you’re going to be a good teacher then you’re going to get out of the way. You’re not going to at any point in time, at any point in time, try to interfere with how they’re growing or what they want to do. Now this is lunacy of course. You have to educate. You have to change what children do, especially when it’s something that is negative. Try to train what is good, what is not. But this is the number one humanistic belief that you should not attempt to interfere, but let’s let them be who they are.

Jeremy Walker (11:24):
Because after all, if somebody grows up and they turn bad as people call it, if something goes wrong, well it must be the environment, it must be their upbringing because after all, they were born into this world and they were pure and innocent and they were defiled by bad people, by bad environments. Really they’re just a victim. This is the leading belief of all educational professionals and it’s bled over into the court systems here in America even where people, when they get into situations where they grew up and then just go to lives of crime, what do they say?

Jeremy Walker (12:03):
Well, they had no dad, they had no mom, they were foster kids, they were in the gangs, they were this, they were that and so either the environment is blamed or some sort of other influence, the parenting or otherwise. Someone’s always to blame except for the child because after all, they’re innately good. Well, the second doctrine that is normally told by these types of people is that of course children should never be taught the concept of authority and should never be forced to listen to anyone based on someone’s position of authority.

Jeremy Walker (12:40):
In other words, just because you’re the parent doesn’t mean you get to tell people what to do. Just because you’re the teacher doesn’t mean you get to tell somebody what to do. Just because you’re a police officer does not mean that I have to listen to you and so there is no such thing as authority. Now I’ve read some books and I plan to do a little, I wouldn’t say a book report, maybe a book review on a book called Summerhill and say a school that was developed in England and we’ll get into all that later on, but one of the simple concepts, well it goes along with these two things, is let children do whatever they want to do. That was like if they wanted to learn, they could learn. If they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to learn.

Jeremy Walker (13:18):
And this goes into the educational side of things, not just the parenting side. Listener, if you don’t know this, the modern educational thing says you shouldn’t teach children anything unless they want to learn it. So you shouldn’t try to teach them to read. You shouldn’t try to teach them to do anything. You shouldn’t make them sit down. You shouldn’t make them line up. You shouldn’t make them do anything. If they don’t want to do it, don’t make them do it. You don’t try to interfere with what they want to do. You go along with what they want. What is their desires as an educator and when they want to learn, then you try to learn, but you’re not really teaching them. What you’re doing is that you’re a facilitator.

Jeremy Walker (13:53):
You’re just going to be there, but you’re not actually going to teach them anything. You’re going to help them teach themselves. See, that’s what it means here that you can’t force it. You can’t say, “Well, I’m the teacher. This is our curriculum and this is what we’re going to learn today.” You can’t do that. You can never do that. In fact, the one that created the school in Summerhill, he allowed his children to come to classes if they want. Now this guy went all the way through 12th grade, up through college, and this was his idea. So basically, as you can guess not much education happened. He was more concerned with the philosophical side of things.

Jeremy Walker (14:28):
The religion of humanism side of things more than he was the educational side of things. And this is why, partly why we have this podcast, because people really do believe that education is morally neutral and it’s not. So anyways, you’re not supposed to teach from authority. You’re not supposed to teach authority. So you don’t say, “Well, you have to listen to me because I said so.” You’re going to have to have a reason for it. You’re going to have to be able to tell somebody, a child why they should listen to you. You have to give them a good reason to listen to you. Not because you’re in charge, not because you’re an authority figure.

Jeremy Walker (15:01):
Nobody should listen to anybody because they say they’re in charge. Only if you feel like they’ve given you a good reason to listen to you, then you should listen. This is the humanistic doctrine. The third doctrine is that to teach the children should be led to believe that they are to contribute to all decisions that involve them and what of course that what they want override anybody else. This idea that children going to say so is a humanistic idea. It’s in education. Parents are taught it. In other words, it goes along with don’t make a child do anything they don’t want to do. You have to try to reason with the child. They’ll go into, the concept of reverse psychology. Some people were teaching this idea that he wanted the child to put on their shoes. Then you would say, “Well, don’t put on your shoes. I don’t want you to put on your shoes anyways.”

Jeremy Walker (15:54):
And then that of course the child who’s rebellious would make them want to rebel against that. And then they fought for it, they put their shoes on. You would get what you wanted by using reverse psychology. In other words, you can never say you have to put your shoes on because I told you to. And of course the child doesn’t want to do it. They don’t have to do it at all. I’ve seen this a lot. This is infested in the educational field horribly so. I mentioned a little bit before. In fact, I’ve seen people… the educational field teaches that children should be allowed to do whatever they want all day long and never be forced to do anything whatsoever. It doesn’t matter what the subject is or what it’s about. The child is supposed to have complete autonomy.

Jeremy Walker (16:36):
In other words, the teacher doesn’t have authority to say, “It’s time to clean up now and if you don’t clean up, you’re going to get in trouble.” Where before there used to be the concept of get in trouble. We’re going to get into this a minute, where if you didn’t do something, there was a consequence. But now in the educational field, they’re teaching teachers there should be no consequences at all. Schools have gone so far as to go into the side of things in public school systems in particular, where children can not be expelled under any circumstances at all because all of their rebellion, all of their misdeeds, whatever it might be, is not really considered to be a misdeed, is considered to be a failure of the school. A failure of the teacher, but not a failure of the child because they’re not taught authority under any circumstances whatsoever, and they have the overriding view.

Jeremy Walker (17:28):
If they don’t want to do it, they don’t have to do it. This breeds a child who is completely self-indulgent. This is what leads to those videos you see on YouTube and Facebook where the person is in the car and the police officer is asking them to roll down the window so they can talk to them and the person refuses to do it. They refuse to do anything the officer tells him to and of course it makes a great video because now the officer’s going to have to compel them. And then of course the person’s kicking and screaming on the ground screaming, “You can’t do this to me. Why are you doing this to me?” Acting like they’re dying. Well, most of these things are coming to the fact that they couldn’t respect authority at all. We’re never told to respect authority. They’ll argue with the officer and this is what you see normally in most of those videos.

Jeremy Walker (18:07):
And if the officer won’t sit there and reason with them, then they aren’t going to listen to them. And then of course, even if the officer did try to explain something to them and they didn’t like it, well they don’t have to listen because I don’t like your reasons and I don’t have to do what you tell me. In other words, you’re not the boss of me. And of course, the fourth doctrine here is that children are taught that the collective decision making does have power over their individual choices. But only because of greater power, not because of there’s authority involved. In other words, if 51% of people said that you had to do something then they have the right, the democratic vote to force you to do stuff. But it doesn’t have anything to do with you having an authority, maybe because they’re more powerful or stronger or whatever.

Jeremy Walker (18:56):
Now in the Summerhill book, which I want to do a book review on because I thought it’s absolutely horrid, just horrid. Because one of the things that he had to say in the book was this, is he wasn’t going to have the children see him as an authority. So if somebody came up and… he had a story about a boy hitting another child and he wouldn’t stop. And he of course had asked him, “Hey, this is not a good idea. I don’t think you should be doing that.” But the child continued to hit them. So in other words, he said, “How do I fix the problem?” Well, authority is not supposed to punish. Authority is not supposed to have any consequences for those under authority. So what did he do? He decided that the best way to do this was to teach the child what it was like to be hit.

Jeremy Walker (19:42):
And so him as a adult male started hitting a 12 year old boy, physically punching him, and every time the child hit somebody, he would hit the child. Then of course in the book he boasted that the child would then turn his anger on him so the child would attack him and every time the child hit him, he would hit them back and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until obviously his power and his strength would be too much for this 12 year old child. And he was able to beat him physically into submission, physically beating a child into submission. And that was the way to teach him, not to hit his friends. Now he was against the authority figure. He despised and hated the idea of disciplining children properly for their own good.

Jeremy Walker (20:28):
In other words positive and negative consequences and his solution instead of having those types of consequences was the physical beating of another child as if you’re on their level just to show your brute strength and to brutally beat somebody into submission. Now this is what humanists, like the man who created Summerhill School in England thought was a better solution then the concept of authority and the right to reward and of course to punish those who of course have positive or negative consequences for people who did not do what they’re supposed to do. So humanism is teaching these things. As you can tell in America today, our public school system has been infested with it. And the problem with it is that because we’re infested with humanism in America, we’re seeing the results of it now.

Jeremy Walker (21:20):
I’ve been out of school for about 22 years now and I’ve seen steadily the morality in America go down. When I was growing up we did not have the problems that you have now. I know that sounds cliche, but you didn’t. I mean, I started some fighting in schools and things like that, but the sheer disrespect that is amongst younger people for older people, specifically for their parents that was unheard of when I was growing up. Parental authority was vastly taught and on top of that teacher authority, even though we were in the public school system, I grew up in the public school system. My parents, if I came home and the teacher contacted my parents, I was in trouble. I got in trouble at school and then I would get in trouble at home.

Jeremy Walker (22:07):
Now you have people who when their children get in trouble at the school, the teacher has to explain themselves of why they were doing X, Y, and Z. The parents will side with the child over the educator, over the teacher, over the facility, and because they for some reason have it stuck in their head. I’ve been taught by this humanistic nonsense that if they love their child, they’re always on their child’s side. Well, that’s partly true. Doing what’s in their best interest, but on their side doesn’t mean siding with somebody like a teacher or against a teacher whenever the child is in the wrong. But if you were an educator, if you know anybody who is an educator, they know what I’m talking about.

Jeremy Walker (22:52):
The children now have parents who then say, “Obviously we’re on your side against the teacher.” I never have people when I talk to them, ever blaming the child for whatever they’re doing. Instead, they’re always blaming the teacher. The weird thing is this, you would think that teachers would say, “Well, we shouldn’t be doing that.” Well, the opposite is also true. If a child says something about a parent, the teacher is also on the child side against the parent instead of the parent and the teachers having a good relationship as they should, respecting each other’s equal authority over the child and using those things in order to properly rear the child with a good sense of authority and how they’re supposed to act at school and at home. Instead, they’re all fighting against each other, all attempting to have this false idea that the child can be autonomous and that nobody’s going to be an authority figure here.

Jeremy Walker (23:49):
While the results are catasterous, it’s completely fallen apart. It’s been a disaster because here is what the biblical doctrine is. The biblical doctrine is that the child is born completely desiring total independence from anyone and anything. That of course includes God. They’re not born with a clean slate, but in nature that is at war with its creator in all others that would attempt to command them, kind of an inherited rebellion that they had from their very first parents, from Adam. See, this idea isn’t just there because it’s by accident. People have lots of names for it doctrinally speaking, original sin, fallen nature, yada, yada, yada, total depravity. But what it comes down to is this, it’s just a simple subject. Mankind wants to be his own God. Mankind wants nobody to tell him what to do. Mankind wants to be his own self, make his own rules and not have anybody tell him what to do.

Jeremy Walker (24:46):
This is one of the main reasons that Christians should become teachers because they are the only ones who can teach the truth to children about who they are, where they come from, and what they need in order to live and succeed in this life. And what they need to learn to do is they need to learn who they are. That they are a creature created by God in His image for a specific purpose. That God has commandments and if they’re going to succeed, they’re going to have to obey those commandments starting with what we talked about here, in Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth.”

Jeremy Walker (25:31):
See, God’s promises here is the very first promise that he has is about a long life. The tie between authority and honoring authority, and it’s not just parents, but any authority figure, respecting and honoring that authority brings with it the blessing of life. And the opposite is also true. It brings with it the curse of a short life. And so the concept of authority is tied in with the concept of creator. If you remove the idea of the creator, you remove the concept of authority. And this is why in our schools, children who are taught evolution, children who are taught that they’re colossal mistakes, no parent can ever come to that child and say, “You have to listen to me because I have authority.” No teacher can come to the child and say, “You have to listen to me because I have authority.”

Jeremy Walker (26:21):
That child if taught properly, meaning in evolution, their viewpoint, if taught consistently, will come to the conclusion like the creator of Summerhill School in England. And the only person you can command them is the person who is stronger than them. And if they can get stronger than the other person, they don’t have to listen to them. And I hate to say it, but people who dishonor their parents and this happens quite a bit, this is not an isolated case, will end up harming their parents. I’ve seen children do it from the youngest of ages. And then of course later on, not only will they literally brutally beat their parents, but they’ll even kill them. And that’s happened quite often. In the news you hear it from time to time where some child eventually did kill his parents.

Jeremy Walker (27:04):
So Christians need to become teachers because we are the ones who are going to teach this. We’re the ones going to give children a proper view of the world. We’re going to give them a proper view of how to succeed in this life, how to properly have good communion with parents, with teachers, with coworkers, friends, family and specifically with God. And unless Christians become teachers and do their job, unless parents properly educate their children, unless teachers properly educate their students, then we will not see a reversal of this trend. Well I would like to go ahead and jump into some of the things that I like to remind our listeners about. Because that was, You’re Not The Boss Of Me. Why we should teach authority, how it operates and Christians are the ones and the only ones, either Christian parents or Christian teachers who are going to be able to teach that. But Rushdoony Radio is another one of our products that we like to support.

Jeremy Walker (28:06):
As R.J. Rushdoony, sermons, lectures and audio books, which you can find at rushdoonyradio.org. We also have our 24/7 Christian internet radio station cr101radio.com. You can check that out when you get more time. There’s also an app for that so you can have it on your phone if you have Apple, Android, listen to it. On the website, anything you want to do. We also have another podcast which we are also hoping you’ll take a look at. Reform. Reproduce. Reconstruct. See, Preschool Pioneers here we do things and talk about schools and education, but Reform. Reproduce. Reconstruct. talks about theology, the family and of course what they’re supposed to do, Christians supposed to do moving forward if of course they have themselves a family as well. So check out that at cr101radio.com/reformreproducereconstruct.

Jeremy Walker (29:04):
Now, moving on here to our second part of our Preschool Pioneers episode, this is our field guide episode. At least our portion is about supervising the unattentive or the inattentive parent. And there’s five things I’d like to discuss. Now, this of course is… if anybody’s working in a school or going to work in a school, then you’re going to have to work with not just children, but you’re going to have to work with parents, you’re going to have good public relations. And one of the problems you’re going to have is that, well, like how we just went over children don’t like to be told what to do now, neither do parents. The parents who we’re dealing with right now or raised with these doctrines in mind and so anytime somebody tells them what to do, they get all upset.

Jeremy Walker (29:47):
They don’t like to be told what to do. It’s questioning their parenting. I’m a good parent therefore you can’t tell me what to do, but you’re going to have to face it. If you’re in a school or facility, you’re a teacher in a classroom. If you manage or operate one, you’re going to have to also supervise not just the children in your care, but whenever the parents come in, you’re going to have to supervise them too from time to time. I’d like to believe most people that truly are respectful of your time, of your positions. I’d have to say people still are even though of course, as long as you stay away from telling them what to do, you’re probably going to be fine. But there’s going to be times when people are not respectful of your facility, are not respectful of your teachers or your school rules, your policies, and you’re going to have to step in and help with that.

Jeremy Walker (30:33):
So here are five things I like to go over that can help with this and see if we can give a little bit of tips about how to avoid some of the problems that myself, I’ve run into many problems in 20 years with people. But let’s start with number one. Number one for supervising the inattentive parent is observe inattentive parent and child and determine what the child is doing. Parents are going to let children do things that you would not let them do. The biggest example of that would be if a child is left in the bathroom alone. If your school hopefully has a policy that no child should be left alone anywhere but parents will do it. They’ll leave the child in the bathroom, they’ll go, “I’ll go get your backpack. You go ahead and go to the bathroom.” Well, you can’t let them do that. They can’t be alone. The child hurts themselves in your facility. It’s your fault. You can’t let them do that.

Jeremy Walker (31:24):
They could also be in there with somebody else, another parent. And you don’t know if somebody might do something inappropriate to say something inappropriate to the child. And this is one of the reasons why they should always be supervised. And even though when they’re in the parent’s care, they’re technically speaking not your responsibility, but if they’re in the facility they are, and you can guess you’ll be blamed for anything that happens to the child. Like if they climbed on top of the countertop, fell and cut their head open on the countertop, the parent’s not going to blame themselves. They’re going to not tell the truth and they’re going to blame your school. So just remember this, if anybody in your facility is there, you’re going to have to be responsible for making sure they follow the rules and it’s a liability and safety and everything else in between.

Jeremy Walker (32:04):
It can also be people who are allowing the children to go into rooms that are not where they should be. I had a afterschool student who was about nine or 10 years old at the time and we know the father would come to pick up who’d let the child just run into the infant room, which of course is against the policies of the school to let other children inside an infant room. But he liked to go in there and he liked to try to go in there and try to touch the other infants and touch their toys. I had to talk to the father who became very irate with me because once again, like I just said, actually I was questioning his parenting and it wasn’t that. It was just, “You can’t let your child do this. It’s against the rules. He’s going to hurt somebody.” And you can guess if he did hurt somebody, it would be the teacher’s fault because the teacher should have made it possible so he couldn’t do that.

Jeremy Walker (32:47):
And here’s the weird thing, this type of case I’m telling you about, when I did talk to this parent, not only do they get upset at me, their solution was not that they controlled their own child and keep them out of my facility in the infant room so that their child was possibly hurting somebody. His solution was, “Well, you need to make it possible so he can’t go in there.” Listen to that again. So I had to make it to where his child couldn’t physically go in there. Trying to have multiple locks on the doors. So even if the child did try, the child couldn’t actually do it.

Jeremy Walker (33:20):
Now if you paying attention, this goes right back with not telling the child, no. This goes back with allowing the child to do whatever they want without telling them they can’t do. So I’m putting limitations on them. This was the type of father that he was and this is the type of child that he had. He was never going to tell the kid no. And so therefore somebody else, responsible person, that would be our facility, me, I had to be the one to actually say, no, this is inappropriate. Which of course he took offense of. Anyways, you have to observe to make sure that you know what’s going on. You don’t want just to go by somebody’s word on it. You want to observe it yourself. So that’s number one. Number two, attempt to correct the child’s interactions whatever they may be by talking with the child and inattentive parent at the time of the incident or the infraction.

Jeremy Walker (34:11):
Well, this is real simple. I’m going along with what I’ve just said. A little bit of it, I watched the first time when the child went in to the infant room, didn’t say anything. Second time that they did it however I walked over at the time and I did talk to the parent at the time. It didn’t go well but I did talk to them at the time whenever we saw it. Another time I had a different child. A parent had brought them on, the playground. Parent was there and was allowing the children to run around on the playground. Well, the problem was is that parents are not going to observe safety regulations for playground playing like they should be. Like you would have your staff do so, or the school’s policies. And so you have to as the administrator, as a teacher, you have to be able to say, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with them being out here, but they can’t run around. They can’t be in the playground equipment without teachers here and without proper supervision.”

Jeremy Walker (35:03):
Because once again, they would think it’s okay, like they’re at the park. But if something happens, even on their watch, let’s say that they are letting their child jump off the slide as an example, if the child broke their leg, which actually can happen, they’re not going to blame themselves, they’re going to blame the school and then your school, you as a teacher are going to be the person liable for whatever happened. So of course you’re going to have to make sure that you at the time say, “Hey, please don’t do X, Y, and Z.” But it needs to be at the time whenever it happens. Otherwise, people will try to deny it, they’ll try to say it didn’t happen. And so always try to deal with the situation when it takes place.

Jeremy Walker (35:44):
Okay, number three here is if the inattentive parent has not corrected the issues that have been mentioned. Obviously you mentioned them before, talked to the child and the parent a second time also again at the incident of the infraction. So once again, the situation with the child who’s going into the infant room, it wasn’t the first time that they did it. I’d seen it the first time, let it go. There was nobody in danger at the moment. So I kind of let it go. Second time I talked to the child and said, “Hey buddy, let’s get out of there. Let’s not go in there.” And of course the father had seen me and I said, “Oh well we’re just trying to ask him to stay out of the room there because he shouldn’t be in there and it’s against the policy. He can fall down and hurt somebody. We know he’s not intending to hurt anybody, obviously he’s not trying to hurt anybody, but we want to make sure that he stays out and is part of the school’s regulations.”

Jeremy Walker (36:36):
And so the second time you want to talk to them again and this time you’re going to want to be a little bit more forceful with it. And that’s what we’re talking about here is the next time is you’re physically talking to the parent and explaining the rules and regulations. What do you need them to do. So that of course is number three. Number four is if the parent is still inattentive or allowing their child to continue doing whatever they were doing before, I ask to talk to the parent alone and speak directly and respectfully about the importance that the parent is supposed to, of course help ensure that the child is safe for future incidents and it can’t happen again.

Jeremy Walker (37:14):
I know that sounds easy. Basically comes down to this, I did this to one of these parents and this about the child in the infant room and I pulled them aside and I had talked to him privately. His kid’s not there. If you didn’t know, you should never talk to a parent in front of their child especially when it’s something that’s of a negative nature. Children just don’t need to see that. But I did talk to the guy and when I talked to the guy, I talked to him in the office. I didn’t make it a big deal, just said, “Hey, by the way, so and so was doing X, Y, and Z and this was yesterday again after we already talked to you. So I need you to make sure as a parent that you help me follow the rules. It’s not demeaning, it’s not attacking them, it’s not insulting their parenting, it’s just, I need your help. We need to work together on this to make sure that it happens.”

Jeremy Walker (37:56):
Well, I had the guy explode on me. He exploded on me. Wanted me to apologize, thought I handled it terribly. Once again, like I said, people will think that you’re calling me a bad parent. You’re not doing that. But that’s how they’re going to take it a lot of times. But you can’t be concerned about that and you can’t back down because if you don’t handle your job, like in this case, if I didn’t say anything to this boy, he could step on an infant and break their leg. A lot of different things can happen. So you have to be more concerned about making sure people are safe, than making people happy. And if you can’t do that, then you can’t operate a school. You can’t be a teacher because you can’t put safety first. And so this is something that you’re going to have to do, but you do need to do it respectfully and in private. And it’s usually the best thing to do.

Jeremy Walker (38:41):
Number five, if the parents still does not correct their issues or becomes aggressive or angry, dismissal of the parent and the child from the facility maybe warranted. And in the case of the child we’re talking about here the parent did become aggressive with me. He started to insult me actually. The funny thing was called me, he goes, “Clearly, clearly you’re an authoritarian.” Authoritarian. If you noticed our humanistic points we went through earlier about modern education, modern parenting is you should never be an authority figure. You should never be somebody who says you can’t do this.

Jeremy Walker (39:16):
If you are, then that’s the worst possible thing that you could possibly be is somebody who is speaking out of authority. And he hated that apparently. Apparently he didn’t think he wanted to be an authoritarian and I assure you he was not an authoritarian. But rules are rules and they should be rules in your school. As a teacher, rules keep you safe, as an administrator rules keep you safe. In the case of the parent we’re talking about here I did have to tell them that it’s best that they don’t come back at this point if parent was so upset that it was mutual. But if they wanted to be aggressive with you, if they want to disrespect the rules, then you’re going to have to send them on their way. It’s not something that you can allow. You can’t have people just break the rules and get away with it.

Jeremy Walker (40:06):
It’s something that they are going to have to respect the rules in order to attend your facility. Otherwise no one’s going to be safe. So anyways, hopefully that’ll help you as our Preschool Pioneers field guide. Some suggestions for you for supervising inattentive parents but remember, have rules, stick to them and to don’t be afraid to talk to people if you need to. It is complicated, but it’s very important that you do so if you’re going to maintain a safe environment for everybody that is there. Now another thing I’d like to talk about is the book giveaways that we do. Book giveaways, we give away books at our website cr101radio.com/bookgiveaway. You can go to the main website and click on the link at the top. But if you’re interested in good books theology is the basis of how you parent, how you work and so we’d like to give away free books there. So go ahead and check it out. We’d like to give out a free books twice a month. So see if you can check it out when you get time.

Jeremy Walker (41:04):
You can also sign up for our mailing list which will allow you to stay updated on all of our podcast episodes and any new information, including the free books that go out twice a month. So check that out on our website cr101radio.com. Scroll to the bottom and you can fill it out there and hit Submit. Okay, let’s go ahead and roll into section number three. This is the bedrock of all parenting and all Christian schools and that is a Bible. Bible time, Bible training. And what we do at our schools, Grace Community Schools, is we do teach Bible time. We do it twice a day. It’s about 15 minutes at a time every day. So first Bible time is about 9:15 ish. From 9:15 to around 9:30 and the second Bible time is about four o’clock, about 4:15 ish. And what we do with ours, we have resources and materials because over 20 plus years, sorry, that’s my me 30 plus years for Grace Community School.

Jeremy Walker (42:02):
We do a lot and have done a lot of Bible teaching. We have a formula for how it works and found some things that work better than most. So some of the things we do is that first of all, Bible doctrines, the firm foundation that everyone needs, who are we? Where do we come from? What are we supposed to do? Children need this. They’re looking for answers and as the teacher, as the parent, you need to have some answers for them. Unless your answer is the ridiculous notion of accidental evolution, then you’re going to need to find the truth out there somewhere because it can’t come from you. I mean, like me, I’m just 39 now, almost 40. And so I don’t have the truth of where we came from. I don’t have the truth of morality, not in and of myself and so you’re going to have to find the root somewhere. If you’re an evolutionist, there is no root, and therefore children can say and do whatever they want and while are we going to be upset whenever horrible, terrible things happen in the world because after all, it’s just a colossal accident anyways.

Jeremy Walker (43:06):
So Bible training is foundational for success in life and one of those resources and materials that we’ve done are Bible training videos and you can find the materials on our website at gcsapprenticeship.com. We have Preschool in a Box and part of that is the Bible training videos. Now with what we do for Bible time for those interested, is we have a formula which we start with recital of the 23rd Psalm. We do pledges to the Bible, the Christian flag and the American flag and that order. We tell Bible stories Jonah and the whale, the Christmas story, those kinds of things. And we use large picture cards, which actually come from Pensacola Christian College. They have a wonderful source of materials.

Jeremy Walker (43:55):
If you are interested, you can check them out at abekaa.com, that’s abeka.com. We actually use their Bible cards for our Bible time. I definitely suggest you use those if you’re a school. They are a great resource, but we usually tell a Bible story utilizing those cards and of course to explain the story on the level of a two to five year old or up to 12. After that, we also go through the 10 commandments that are of course telling about a age appropriate story about the 10 commandments, teaching children how to evaluate the world. What they do, what others do based on the commandments of God themselves. Humanism teaches people to evaluate the world based on what they want to what they think. They are the standard and Christians have the opposite. We are not the standard. If we had our way, we wouldn’t care about anybody else.

Jeremy Walker (44:48):
If we had our way, we’d only do it as in our best interest. And if you look around the world, it’s abundantly clear that that’s the case and without Christianity, that’s what you get. You get a world full of people who only do what is in their best interest and they will do that at the expense of others almost exclusively. But after the story about the 10 commandments and retelling the shortlist story, we’ll then go over closing prayer, have the children recite the Lord’s prayer, we’ll have a Bible song, and then of course, pass out a Bible badge as well.

Jeremy Walker (45:20):
Now with ours my brother-in-law, his name is Aaron Slack, he’s filmed roughly about a year’s worth of Bible videos that can be used for Bible instruction in preschools. I guess you could use it any home capacity, but it also can be used for training if you’re going to train yourself or somebody else how to teach Bible, especially to preschoolers. You can also use it as a supplement to a teacher. It is a course by itself, so you could just have children watch it if you wanted to, but it is something that is available. As I said with our Preschool in a Box, you can find out that information on our website at gcsapprenticeship.com and click on the materials button.

Jeremy Walker (45:59):
The Bible training videos are great and as I said, they can either be utilized on their own to help you create or start a Bible program for your school or they can teach you how to do one yourself. And as I said utilizing the Abeka cards at abeka.com for the Bible cards is a very good idea as well. So I would also like you, like I said, to remember our website gcsapprenticeship.com where you can find those materials on there. The apprenticeship program for Grace Community Schools also is of course the main sponsor for this podcast and more same as cr101radio.com.

Jeremy Walker (46:40):
Don’t forget that you can also follow us on social media. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You can also subscribe to this podcast on all the major platforms, iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all the rest. So I want to thank everybody for joining me again today on another episode of Preschool Pioneers Podcast and I hope that gave you something to think about and until later, God bless.