My 5-Year-Old Says His Teacher Doesn’t Like Him: What to Do (and What Not To)
The cheddar Goldfish were halfway across the kitchen table when Milo mumbled it into his elbow, rain boots still caked with playground mulch. “Ms. Henderson doesn’t like me.”
He’d dragged his feet the whole walk from the classroom to the car, kicking a pinecone so far ahead of us he had to jog to catch it every few steps, and hadn’t even begged for a fruit snack like he usually did the second his seatbelt clicked. For the first three weeks of kindergarten, all he’d talked about was Ms. Henderson: she did a silly growly dinosaur voice during storytime, gave him a sparkly star sticker for writing his name all by himself, and taped the three-eyed cat he drew to the edge of her desk. This came out of nowhere.
My first reaction was the wrong one. “Of course she likes you!” I said, pulling out the chair next to him. “Remember how she hung up your drawing? That’s so silly.” He just shook his head, pushed his cracker bowl away, and stared at the scab on his knee. I tried a couple more pushy questions—did you get in trouble? Did someone say something?—and he just shrugged and clammed up. I had half a draft of a very sharp email typed into my phone before I texted my friend Lila, who’s taught pre-K for eight years, to vent. I remembered her story from the year before, when a parent emailed administration demanding a meeting because their 4-year-old said the teacher “hated” her; it turned out the teacher had just asked her to stop pouring glue on the table, and the awkward tension hung around the classroom for the rest of the year.
Lila text back two minutes later. First off, she said, stop saying “of course she likes you.” That doesn’t land for a 5-year-old. His feeling is real right now, even if his big conclusion is wrong. If you tell him he’s being silly, he’ll just stop telling you the hard stuff. Five-year-olds don’t do nuance. One sharp redirect or a distracted “not now” when they’re excited about something is enough to make them decide the whole person dislikes them. They don’t automatically connect that a teacher was busy helping another hurt kid, or that a classroom rule applies to everyone. They judge how someone feels about them based on the last 10 minutes of interaction.
Her other tip was simple: don’t sit him down for a big serious “we need to talk” conversation. Little kids talk best when they don’t have to hold eye contact and their hands are busy. Bring it up later during something low-stakes: Legos, bath time, walking the dog.
That’s what I did. After dinner, post-bath, he was on his bedroom floor in faded dinosaur pajamas, grunting as he tried to click the leg pieces of his new birthday T-Rex Lego set together. I sat down and helped him line up the pegs, and didn’t even look at him when I spoke. “Hey, that thing you said earlier about Ms. Henderson? That sounded like it made you feel really crummy. Want to tell me what went down today?”
It all came out in a rush. At recess, he’d found the whitest, sparkliest rock he’d ever seen half-buried by the slide, and wanted to show her right that second. She was kneeling next to Zoe, who’d fallen off the monkey bars and scraped her palm, holding a Frozen band-aid and wiping her tears. He tugged her sleeve and held up the rock, and she said “Not right now, Milo, put that in your pocket safe, okay?” without even glancing down. That afternoon at calendar time, he’d known it was Wednesday before anyone else, yelled the answer out loud before he remembered to raise his hand, and she’d said “Milo, we raise our hand to speak, remember?” before calling on the quiet girl sitting next to him who’d had her hand up the whole time.
“She didn’t even say good job for knowing it,” he mumbled, jamming a plastic spike into the T-Rex’s back. “She only likes the other kids.”
“That would hurt my feelings too,” I said. “If I had something super cool I wanted to show someone and they were too busy to look, and then I got in trouble even when I knew the right answer, I’d probably think they didn’t like me too.” His shoulders relaxed, like he’d been waiting for me to argue with him. I only asked one more soft question: “Do you remember why she was busy with Zoe at recess?” He picked at a sticker on the Lego box for a second, then mumbled “Zoe was bleeding.” I nodded. “Yeah, she had to help Zoe first because she was hurt. Do you think she was mad at you, or just busy?” He shrugged, but he didn’t repeat that she didn’t like him for the rest of the night.
Lila had also said a short, casual check-in with the teacher is totally fine, as long as you don’t frame it as a complaint. That night I sent a three-sentence email: Hi Ms. Henderson, Hope your week’s going okay! Milo came home a little quiet today mentioning he got a couple redirects and was worried you were upset with him. No big concerns on my end, I just wanted to check in if there’s anything we should reinforce at home, or if anything’s come up I should know about. Thanks so much.
She wrote back an hour later, relieved I’d reached out. The first month of kindergarten is always full of gentle boundary testing, she said, and Milo had been extra wiggly and chatty at circle time all week. She’d been redirecting him a little more often than the other kids because she knows he’s capable of sitting and raising his hand, and didn’t want him to miss out on activities. She also said she felt terrible she’d missed the rock; she’d gotten swamped with Zoe’s scraped knee and forgotten to ask about it before dismissal, and promised to pull him aside first thing the next morning.
When I dropped him off, he was clutching the rock so tight his knuckles were white—he’d slept with it under his pillow. Ms. Henderson looked up from attendance, saw him, and waved him right over. “Hey Milo!” she said. “I heard you found a one-of-a-kind sparkly rock yesterday. I’ve been waiting all night to see it. Can you show me after I finish roll?” He grinned so big his dimples showed, ran over, and dumped it in her palm. She made a big show of turning it over in the light, and asked if he wanted to keep it on her windowsill where she could see it all day. He nodded so hard his hair fell in his face.
It’s not like that one conversation fixed everything forever. Last week he came home huffing because she made him stop building his block tower right as he was about to add the red lava volcano top, herding the class to art on time. He dropped his backpack by the door and said “Ms. Henderson doesn’t like me today.” This time I didn’t get that tight, panicky feeling in my chest. I didn’t tell him he was being silly. I just pulled a blue popsicle out of the freezer and said “Oh man, that sucks when you have to stop a project right before the good part. I’d be mad too.” He ranted for three full minutes about how big his volcano was going to be, then took a bite of popsicle and started chattering about how they’d painted paper dinosaurs that afternoon, and Ms. Henderson said his was the spikiest in the whole class.
I still glance at that sparkly rock on her windowsill when I drop off extra class snacks, and we trade quick casual updates at pickup every couple weeks. Some days he still comes home grumpy about a redirect or a missed turn to share. Lila says this is just what social learning at 5 looks like: kids aren’t born knowing that someone can correct your behavior, be busy when you want attention, or make you do something you don’t want to do, and still care about you. Most of the time, when a kid this age says their teacher doesn’t like them, they’re not reporting a fact. They’re telling you their feelings got hurt, and they don’t have the words to unpack why. It’s still a work in progress for both of us. But that’s okay. He’s already learning you can be annoyed at someone for 10 minutes, and still be excited to see them by snack time.
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