Does the school even understand toddlers and their linguistic acquisition?? Those bright little sponges pick up new favorite words *everywhere.* It’s silly to dole out such punishment to parents when that particular word could have just as easily been learned in the teachers’ own school! Frankly, if a child is exposed to television in the US now then they definitely have heard the B-word. Although, any parent who readily admits to “We swear. We say F, S, AH, and occasionally GD,” while simultaneously claiming to not slip out the B-word or “derogatory” words is super sus in my book. If you swear like that with a toddler in the house, you almost guaranteed have swearing on TV or slip in a B-word in conversation and don’t notice.

Dear Preschool Teachers, Sorry you have forgotten that you are working with an age group of children at a developmental stage where they repeat everything they hear from any source without fully understanding the social context of what they are saying and need more time for their manners and emotional regulation to catch up with their language skills.

Oh gods this brings back middleschool memories. My science teacher drug me out in the hall and screamed at me because she overheard me say "aww that sucks!" (We were doing a quiz game and our team lost by one point, I was just disappointed, not even angry or throwing a fit.) She wrote a nasty letter home to my mom. She found it hilarious and replied something along the lines of "I'm SO sorry my daughter used words to express her feelings. Don't you have better things to do?"

I want to add a bit of a teacher’s insight here. If you don’t want to write the letter then don’t, but arrange a time for a phone call or a face to face meeting to clarify the problem. There are certain student behaviours (such as physical and verbal alterations) that require a huge amount of paperwork for teaching staff. It could be that the letter is part of the school’s ‘due process’ for their incident report. Being defensive (“I didn’t teach him that word so I shouldn’t have to apologise!”) or aggressive (“He learned that word at school!!”) might get the school to rescind their letter request, but this would not be worth it for you or your child. Teachers typically deal with 20-30 students with highly varied needs, and this incident was probably only one of about 50 student incidents that happen in a typical school week. Most teachers are keen to work as a team with parents in the best interests of the child. Its best to approach this from the angle of trust and mutual respect.

I'd give the child the piece of paper and ask him to write the letter. Whatever he puts on that paper becomes the apology lol

Sorry not sorry but AH. It's not the use of the b word out of context or swearing because you hit your toe. The kid insulted and was disrespectful to the teacher. This kind of attitude needs to be addressed NOW and he has to face tje consequences. And pwease don't try to tell me the parents "talked it out" with the kid. Talked my a$$. Kids swear to shock, to innocently repeat, not to insult someone. This talks about heavy problems in the education. And as it's told from the parents pov, I suspect the situation is worse than that. Also schools don't demand written apologies over that, there must have been other things before and the b word was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Hell no. I am not writing an apology letter to a preschool for how I, a grown adult, talk at home.

When my best friend had her daughter we all realized we would not be censoring ourselves in front of her (content yes, language not so much). They drink in front of her and just like they taught her that it's an adult beverage, she was taught that those are adult words, and she's not allowed to use them in public. At home she can use them if they sound appropriate and they talk about how to use them. Swears will never die, the words just change.

Just send the letter and apologize for him saying it but make sure you say he didn't pick it up from the parents and now you are worried that someone is teaching him these things. Redirects it onto the school.

If I wanted to read reddit posts, I'd be on reddit

I'd be tempted to write them a two word letter: f o. The school is way out of line. They're completely over stepping their role.

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I immediately didn’t trust him when the only time he’s swearing is at the dog when he’s “bad”. For that reason YTA