Education

When Your Kid Is the Class Problem Child

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Although it’s been four years since the onset of the pandemic and three years since the worst of remote learning, the toxic tentacles of that period continue to touch all New Yorkers and particularly children. Learning loss and social isolation have been covered fairly consistently in the mainstream press, but difficult classroom behavior — which can elude measurement and tracking — has been largely left out of the discourse. After circling around this topic in editorial meetings for a few weeks, I brought my observations to the prolific parenting writer Anya Kamenetz, who quickly came back to me with a story I knew we had to tell. She had met a mother in Brooklyn named Kim who had “that kid” — a young boy, Alex, with enormous promise who exhibited destructive behavior that disrupted his classroom almost daily. She was in an ongoing battle with his school about following his behavior plan and wanted more people to know what that experience had been like. As I edited this moving piece, his trajectory evolved in dramatic ways, sometimes leaving me stunned as I incorporated Anya’s latest updates. Alex’s story is heartbreaking and also common; it lays bare a glaring resource gap in the New York school system — one that affects every child, whether they can behave in the classroom or not.

—Julia Edelstein, features editor, New York

When Your Kid Is the Class Problem Child What would you do if your third-grader shoved teachers, destroyed his classroom, and hid from everyone?

Photo: New York Magazine
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