Diligence VS obedience

Defend your child. She was doing what she was told by wiping the tables and making sure she did a good ob. Tell the teacher you understand your daughters need to hurry but that she was wanting to make sure she was thorough and following the techers instructions when doing her assigned jobs.

I would go talk to the teacher about it. It sounds like she was trying to do the job properly, in which case you need to defend your DD for sure. But, it may be a case where the teacher had to remind her over and over to hurry, and not worry about rechecking her work. If that were the case, I would talk to DD about maybe spending an extra few seconds the first time to be sure she'd gotten the whole table, so she wouldn't have to back track and get in trouble from the teacher. Its probably somewhere in the middle. Children take longer than adults and the teacher was probably being a bit to harsh.

My kids are like that, too...but if I am telling them "that's good enough", "finish that table and then come here", "put it up, we'll do it later...we have to do something else" and they wont, that IS disobedience IMO.

If it made me feel better I would write a short note about your feelings,and then let it go. There will be more important things to battle as she gets older. (sorry, just my own experience)

This is one of those times when you need to advocate on your child's behalf. I love that she was being so careful and diligent

My daughter was upset about a similar situation today! She's 8, the class was out on the playground for recess. The class was playing with the PE equipment, jump ropes, hula hoops, etc. The teacher told them to clean up. My daughter and 2 other kids were cleaning up, but no one else in the class did. The teacher tells them to line up, the rest of the class does, but my daughter and the other 2 have their arms full of equipment. She apparently yells at the 3 of them and tells them that since they didn't listen (?) they don't get recess on Monday. My daughter was so upset because she was doing the right thing, plus she said she wanted to clean up because the PE coach gets upset when their stuff is a mess.

I told her that she did the right thing by cleaning up, which the kids were told to do. I told her that it would be best if she explained it to the teacher tomorrow morning.

I understand your feelings. This wouldn't really happen in my situation (we don't have "naughty slips" for starters, & if they had a similar situation with a child, their standard response would be to understand the child's purpose & efforts, acknowledging those WHILE guiding them to do differently if needed--it would never be recognized as or interpreted as "disobedience" and the way they respond to "not following directions" is communication, not citing the student for an infraction or something.) But if I were in your situation, I think I might communicate with the teacher about my perceptions, and just check if she indeed saw this instance as a case of bad behavior, actual disobedience & not following directions--if she thought my child understood & was being "willful" in some way, hence the slip. If she DID, I'd give my feedback about what I thought was going on. If she didn't think that, I'd explore the slip's purpose.