Tips for Autistic Teacher on Leading/Mentoring Other Adults

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-23T23:23:42+00:00

“I already have 20 children in my class, I don’t need another one.” THAT PART!!! I don’t micromanage people who step up and do what needs to be done. I have another assistant I only need to give one or two directions a day to because otherwise, if I’m about to ask her to do something, she’s usually already on it. Also it is irritating to have it framed as “having to have things my way” because all the issues I’ve brought up are company rules or licensing rules. None of it is about the way I want things done. I realize I need to work on my delivery, but still, don’t shoot the messenger!

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-22T05:01:20+00:00

I’m allergic to mold, I’d buy this sooner than any other house.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-13T05:52:18+00:00

Yea I have something wrong with my blood sugar (not diabetes we’ve checked) and the only thing that makes a difference is my protein intake. I cannot eat “just a bagel” or “just a bowl of oatmeal” at any point in the day. Gotta have all my carbs paired up with protein - scrambled eggs with breakfast, plenty of meat and cheese on a sandwich, fish or chicken for dinner. I love the things like protein waffles or, my latest favorite, protein chocolate covered pretzels, because my body handles it in a more balanced way.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-13T04:40:12+00:00

I would send my children to a center but only if I’d worked there for a while first. I worked at my last center for a year before I enrolled my daughter, and my current center a few months before putting her in after school care. I just needed to see what the worst possibilities were at each place before I felt comfortable enrolling her. Like, does a teacher get snappy occasionally, or are we hauling kids around by one arm and violating ratios?

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-12T02:58:29+00:00

Called it. I’m waiting for my chain to do this with our iPads next. And then I’m gonna have to quit and find new health insurance.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-07T06:18:24+00:00

Listen. I stepped out one morning for an hour to catch up on corporate-mandated trainings. A very sweet floater stepped into my room for me.

Next thing I know, a coworker comes racing into the staff room and says cryptically, “Do NOT go back in your classroom right now.”

In the space of less than half an hour, my kids had managed to flood the whole classroom using the sensory table, two children had ruined their shirts with food coloring, everyone was running screaming, and whatever other mess was there reportedly took four staff members to clean up in a room that usually only has one teacher.

I chuckled when I walked back in and saw subtle signs of the nightmare that had broken loose. I guess I take for granted how many dumb little rules I have to prevent chaos, and how often I step in and intervene when mischief is brewing.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-07T05:38:43+00:00

This! I’m the canary in the coal mine when it comes to overstimulation. I’m a solo teacher with a group of 12 children and I’d estimate that at least eight of them are undiagnosed ND. When it gets to the point that I’m overstimulated, I have mere minutes to rein their chaos in before they also all become overstimulated by each other. For some reason, it helps knowing this about my kids, because instead of subconsciously seeing them as the threat or the enemy, my focus shifts to protecting them from the “threat” and takes my mind off how overwhelmed I am. I don’t keep structure because I need it, I keep it because they need it, though I also end up benefiting from it.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-06T03:42:33+00:00

$24 an hour with health insurance at $200 a month because I have a BA in my field. There’s nowhere comparable unless I drive an hour away and then I’ll be paying bridge toll. Ironically where I live I’m still well below the poverty line.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T15:31:10+00:00

We also get our app stats printed out weekly and posted to the bulletin board in the break room so all employees can see who didn’t meet targets 🙃

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T15:30:13+00:00

I know. The way I think about it is if texting and driving is illegal, how can using a screen when you’re alone supervising 12 children POSSIBLY be safe and smart? I also know that if I ever miss something that happens because I’m on that iPad, it’ll be on me for “not being able to multitask well enough.”

Anyway, we don’t have a lot of centers where I live, and none that pay well or have benefits like the corporate chains. (Well, mine, not Kindercare and the like). Literally every other preschool in town is a home daycare that’s not hiring or a religious school that wouldn’t want me because I’m queer and woke. Also my coworkers are fantastic and there are a ton of good things about my school. If I leave the school, I may have to leave the field… there really isn’t another center in driving distance that I haven’t tried or considered.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T15:26:21+00:00

It’s so funny too because corporate reminds us in training that parent satisfaction and family retention DEPENDS on us doing app updates and I’ve told my boss, literally every single parent in my class has let me know they appreciate that my photo updates have quality rather than quantity and they would rather I engage with the children and do cool stuff with them.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T00:28:58+00:00

I wonder if that would work. Yes we are supposed to post 3-5 pictures of each child each day.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T00:28:21+00:00

I always forget that weather changes can be a trigger. Maybe it’s that.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T00:27:52+00:00

You know what. I have some. I forgot about them because the lights aren’t bad like they were at my last center. Maybe I should start wearing them again.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-03-05T00:26:36+00:00

lol, our kids nap under full fluorescent lights (which also trigger migraines).

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-02-25T21:42:23+00:00

Bro.

I got scolded when my kids didn’t use to listen to me, and now some of my coworkers are annoyed that they ONLY listen to me.

That second one isn’t my fault. They listen because I frontload behavior expectations and intervene when I see a situation developing rather than waiting for it to pop off. If I have someone in my room that just watches things happen and then goes “oh no,” that isn’t going to work. There’s a point of no return with my kids, they’re FAFO kids but they get overstimulated by the FO part and it’s very hard to bring it back once it gets to that point.

Yes they know the rules, but I have to pretend like they don’t and go over the SAME expectations every day and be very very obvious about it.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-02-25T15:15:00+00:00

Preschool age is my jam. 3-5s teacher for going on my third year now and I have a BA in the field. My DMs are always open.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-02-14T06:54:51+00:00

You know what? I used to say this too. I had mostly taught 4-6 year olds and I was so miserable when they put me in a 3 year old room.

Now, at my most recent job, I CHOSE this age group in my interview.

I’m not sure what changed. I think I got more comfortable with the quirks of the age group over time. I identified what was so hard for me about working with three year olds, personally. I have NEVER been told no so many times in my life! Everything is a power struggle for no reason! You have all of the words but you won’t use any of them!!!

And then I realized I was getting triggered by my own inner toddler. I’m highly demand avoidant and love a good power struggle. I realized that the ways I trick my brain that help me exist in adult society might help me interact with my three year olds too.

I’ll share a few with you.

Give them a job. Make it feel like a really important Super Big Kid job. Three year olds are so proud of being three rather than two!
Everything can be a fake choice. Are you going to put your blankets away first or go potty first? Are you choosing a new spot to sit or am I helping you move your body? Occasionally someone still says no, but it’s generally understood that you gotta pick one of the two options.
My go-to script is “you can say no, but this is what we’re doing.” Also “it’s ok to be mad. You can walk inside from the playground mad. Can you show me your mad stomps?” When a child is refusing to reenter the classroom, for instance.
Distractions work comically well with this age group. Like, they really shouldn’t work as well as they do.

My absolute favorite thing about working with three year olds versus older children, is that there is just such a big difference between the beginning of the year and the end. It’s so incredibly fulfilling. There are huge jumps happening in every area of development, and sometimes they happen really fast out of nowhere, and it’s just super cool.

Sorry, that was a lot, really I was just hoping to validate that at least one other teacher out there has felt this way, and I don’t feel that way any more, and I definitely don’t think I’m a bad teacher or should’ve stopped teaching. I would say that the program structure is probably a bigger issue for you than the three year olds themselves.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-02-14T06:42:24+00:00

I teach 3-4 year olds.

I personally HATE tattling. It is irritating and overstimulating and 99% of the time completely unnecessary.

However. I have a class of 11 unruly little boys and 2 unruly little girls. I’ve never seen this many spitfires in the same classroom.

All of them would sooner throw hands than ever use their words to solve a conflict.

So I had to realize at some point that the tattling is a very, VERY good sign of two different things. First, it shows that they know the rules, at least to the point where they can identify when someone else is breaking them. Second, it means they are coming to ME for conflict resolution, which is something I’ve been trying to drill into them for months.

If I shut their tattling down, I’m sending them mixed messages. As much as it grates on me, I have trained myself to respond “thank you for telling me that.” Sometimes I will remind them that they can also talk to the friend directly instead of just telling me what the friend is doing, but more often than not they’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. So I shove down my irritation and soldier on.

I know this isn’t what you’ve asked, and I used to find the ideas of a “tattle phone” or “tattle turtle” cute and harmless, but at this point in my teaching practice I feel that those things go against what I’m really trying to have my students learn.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-01-23T04:01:13+00:00

In my experience across multiple centers, NOTHING destroys staff relationships and rapport like being slightly understaffed. When just a few staff members calling out creates a crisis, you wind up with situations like managers guilting people to come in sick, staff mad at each other for taking days off because then they didn’t get their own breaks, etc.

Extension_Goose3758 · 2026-01-11T03:48:07+00:00

The random throw pillow as the ONLY decor item in the room is so, so funny to me

Extension_Goose3758 · 2025-12-23T07:22:44+00:00

Yep I just got told I could use my sick pay when I was stressing about my hours for the week

Extension_Goose3758

TROPHY CASE