The average age for children starting preschool is three to five years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A new study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicates a large number of those children are getting expelled from schools across the country. WEAR News spoke with child mental health professionals about the trend the department calls troubling.
James Rhodes the director of Children’s Outpatient Services at the Lakeview Center says ages three to five are especially formative years.
“Those are key times for children just because, as far as preschool, we’re looking at the social relationships, the learning relationships — working with each other,” says Rhodes.
Amy Vaughn works as a school-based therapist in south Alabama for Altapointe Health. She says until around age five, a child’s brain develops at rapid speed.
“That is when they are learning the most,” Vaughn says. “That’s when things like language development, general communication, emotions, all of that stuff is developing very very quickly.”
By that age, most children are enrolled in pre-k or another similar early childhood program. But, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a big chunk of those young students are getting expelled at a rate three times higher than children in K-12.
Saying preschool aged boys are four times as likely to be expelled as girls. The department points to “challenging behavior.”
“Oftentimes, we call it emotional dysregulation,” Rhodes says.
Rhodes says it could look like unsafe behaviors, like property destruction or tantrums that last 20 or even 30 minutes, and sometimes physical aggression with peers or staff.
In a report from 2017, the National Center on Early Childhood Development said 10.4% of pre-k teachers expelled at least one child in the past year due to behavior problems — showing a map of expulsion rates.
Florida has four to seven expulsions per 1,000 preschoolers and Alabama has more than 10 expulsions per 1,000 kids attending preschool.
Rhodes says it’s been a problem that has been becoming more prevalent. He says Lakeview has seen several pre-k students expelled this school year. He says the COVID-19 pandemic is partially to blame.
“I think it’s a lack of exposure during that time frame,” says Rhodes. “And now they’re put into a classroom where they are expected to know these kinds of behaviors that they’ve not been exposed to.”
“They did, I think, miss out on a lot of that socialization and that structure that they could’ve had,” Vaughn says.
They say if you’re a parent of a pre-k student, keep an open line of communication and when you experience conflict lead by example.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also highlights racial disparities, saying African American children are expelled almost twice as often as Latino and white children.