Teaching is challenging enough when you have to align your philosophies, expectations and approaches to that of your colleagues. But when it comes to early childhood education, that becomes a whole other ballgame.

How would you handle vehemently disagreeing with your colleague’s approach to teaching young children? One woman recently shared a cringeworthy story about this with Reddit. Here’s what happened.

AITA for correcting a teacher in defense of a kid?

I teach a multilevel class at a preschool.

We had an event today celebrating the end of the school year, so we had the kids in a separate room while setting up our classroom for the parents.

R (teacher in question) was supervising, I was in between both rooms.

Definitely still sounds understaffed.

I printed coloring sheets to keep the kids not chaotic.

One of my 4yo girls M was cranky, hungry, didn’t want to color, so was playing with blocks at the table while her friends colored.

About 5 minutes before event time, she wanted her chance to color, I said “I’m sorry but it’s too late, she may not have time to finish it”, so she shrugged and went back to her blocks.

Fair enough.

Some parents ran late, so I told her she had her chance, and she switched gears to coloring.

I went back to running back and forth between the setup and classroom.

A few minutes later I hear M crying- she’s still coloring, and R is sitting at the table saying she’s a baby, and she should just keep crying, which only escalated M.

Not exactly the most effective way to console a 4-year-old.

No clue what the context is, but IMO that’s not okay.

She put her head down, I kneeled down to comfort, helped her calm down, redirected back to task.

R continued on about M being a baby, and should just keep crying about it.

What exactly is their goal here?

That got me heated, so I responded “Please don’t do that”.

R looked shocked, gave me the “Oh Really?” look and asked me to repeat myself.

I did, and moved on.

Maybe early education isn’t R’s calling.

Deep breaths, didn’t get nasty, focused on the kids.

M calmed down and finished coloring while I started to gather up the rest to line up for the event.

Event went great, fast forward and me, R, and our boss are cleaning up getting ready to clock out.

Couldn’t have been good vibes there.

R says: “Don’t ever correct me again, or it will be the last time. You can talk to your kids how you want, I can talk how I want”.

I tried to explain I had an issue with her calling a child a baby, how we talk to them is how they learn to talk to others, it builds or destroys their self esteem.

Most sensible people would agree with this.

But she just kept saying “you don’t get to talk to me like that”.

Boss is playing neutral, trying to diffuse, we all just want to go home, so I left it alone and we clocked out and left.

Disappointing, but not surprising.

I recognize she’s been there for longer, but this is not the first time she’s been rude or nasty to the kids, and there’s no reason to go off on a kid who is crying.

AITAH here?

Yikes. These teachers don’t exactly have a unified vision of how to approach bringing kids up. Let’s see how the Reddit jury deliberated on this.

The readers were absolutely appalled by the OP’s story.

And dragged the teacher in question through the mud.

One person encouraged escalating the situation.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a company that didn’t expect their work-from-home policy to result in better time off benefits for their employees.

And another noted the long-term consequences.

But one reader made a valid point.

The only person acting like a child here is her colleague.

SECURITY GUARD QUITS AFTER HE DOESN’T GET A PROMISED RAISE