18 hours of recordings from kindergarten. “Ma'am, when I listened to it, I had a nervous breakdown.”
Screaming, crying, squealing children. And the teachers who call them “nuts”, and the janitor calls them “creeps”, says Anna, mother of 5-year-old Piotruś. This was recorded by the dictaphone she hid in her son's pants pocket. She filed a report with the prosecutor's office. At the end of December last year, the indictment was brought to court. Against Mrs. Anna.
According to the mother of the 5-year-old, her son's problems began in October 2022. She noticed that from a cheerful child who eagerly went to kindergarten, he had turned into a nervous and scared child.
– My son was enrolled in kindergarten when he was two and a half years old, and he liked it. A new teacher joined in October 2022. After a few weeks, when I picked up my son, I found him sitting in the corner, covered in sweat and shaking. The teacher sat above him on a chair. I said that I had never picked up a child in such a condition, to which she replied that my son should be in a group with fewer children. I didn't hear anything else, I accepted it. But he stayed. From that moment on, the teacher avoided me and I had no information from her about my son's functioning at kindergarten. I assumed everything was fine, says Anna.
She talked to the other teacher about Piotruś's behavior.
Anna: – This lady said that Piotruś runs around, spits and throws toys. I asked what caused this behavior. She said she didn't know, she didn't catch it, she didn't notice it.
However, the boy's behavior at home began to be disturbing for his parents.
– The warning sign for me was that my son started stuttering. Day by day he faded away and became less and less joyful. I was picking up a child I didn't recognize from kindergarten. He didn't even say a word the whole way home, only in the evening did he come back to his place, talk and play. Despite this, he showed more aggression, got angry quickly and threw toys. Then, before leaving for kindergarten in the morning, there were attacks of hysterical crying that she didn't want to go to kindergarten and that she was afraid. When asked why, he said that the lady was rude and shouted. A red light went on for me, says the mother of a five-year-old.
Anna is a teacher herself. He teaches English at a school in Ostróda. The same school complex also houses the kindergarten to which Piotruś was sent. The school and kindergarten complex is managed by the same director. He is the superior of both the kindergarten teachers and Mrs. Anna.
Anna's son cried almost every day before going to kindergarten. Parents felt helpless. Out of desperation, as Piotruś's mother says, she and her husband decided to record their son in kindergarten.
– My husband bought a dictaphone. It was the only way for us to find out what was happening during classes, he explains.
Parents felt helpless (illustrative photo)Shutterstock
What the recorder recorded
It was March 17, 2023. Anna's husband hid the recorder in the pocket of his trousers, which Piotruś was wearing all the time. The device recorded for six hours what was happening in the rooms where the boy was, most often in the kindergarten room. Then, on April 4 and 5, the parents decided to record six hours of their child's stay at the facility. In total, the device recorded 18 hours spent by Piotruś in kindergarten.
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