Sorry this is so long.
We have a 4 1/2 year old who shows a lot of signs of ADHD. His mom refuses to get him assessed by Child Development, but she has taken it upon herself to diagnose him with ADHD, and she is constantly giving us stuff she's printed off the internet about how to deal with a child with ADHD. She comes into the centre every day at the end of lunch to see her kids, and completely disrupts our transition from lunch to nap. Then she comes very close to closing time at the end of the day, and lets her toddler run around and take toys out. She tells him not to, but doesn't do anything to stop him. Meanwhile the older boy runs around the room and gets all hyper, and his mom refuses to be firm with him.
Last week we had a huge upset at the centre involving her 4 1/2 year old. We ran out of our regular cutlery at lunch time, and so we gave him a spoon that is usually used on the infant/toddler side. He refused to eat with it, and then his mom came and wondered why we wouldn't wash a different spoon for him. We have 16 children with 2 staff, and lunch is often very chaotic, so it's not always possible to do that, and his mom was really upset. The next day she put plastic cutlery from home in his lunch bag, and all was well. Wednesday she forgot to pack plastic cutlery, and we gave him 3 different options for cutlery, and he refused to eat. When she came to see her kid, he told her the situation, and she accused us of withholding food as a punishment, which was not true at all. This was all in front of her child and all the other children. She called her husband at work, and he came to the centre and calmed down his kid, fed him, etc. My coworker, who is the head teacher, talked with the dad, who was completely reasonable and asked for the forms for getting his child assessed. At the end of the day the mom came to pick up her kids, and gave me info about a series of workshops about ADHD and said she would pay the tuition for one of us to attend.
I've been so upset about this that I haven't been able to think about anything else all weekend long. She wants us to make all kinds of exceptions for her son, and all kinds of special treatment. She is always telling us about how sensitive he is, and yet she fails to recognize that we have many children with special needs and behavioural issues who are in the process of being assessed, yet we don't go about washing the specific spoon the want. We feel that all the children, including the little boy in question, have to learn to cope with situations that aren't exactly to their liking. In elementary school there won't be special treatment for him unless he has a diagnosis and a special needs worker. Yet his mom always manages to make me feel guilty. Maybe I should have handled the situation differently. Maybe I should have just washed the damn spoon. Did I do the wrong thing?