How do I communicate that this is not appropriate?
Most five year olds are madly in love with their teacher or a classmate.
My daughter was "engaged" to another boy for most of Kinder. They were cute and have sense moved on to thinking that boys and girls are yucky.
Let him have his crush. The teacher is used to many marriage proposals and knows how to handle it.
It's adorable and totally normal. I don't think you need to do anything. He will mature and outgrow this kind of thing. It is sweet. My son at age 5 wanted to marry his best friend...another little boy. He also wanted to marry both me and his dad. My daughter would hug and hug her teacher every day at age 5. She just loved her so.
You don't! He's five! It's adorable!
Little girls sometimes want to marry their daddies. Would you go on about how that's wrong to a little girl? For heaven's sake, of course you wouldn't.
Ignore it. Soon he will be saying that girls have cooties and won't want anything to do with them. Then you'll be wishing he wanted to marry his teacher again...
I'd ignore it. It's so common and it will run its course. There's nothing sexual or inappropriate about it - relax and let it go. Just say, "That's nice, dear. I know Ms. Johnson is a very nice lady." Move on and he won't make a big deal of it for long.
Teacher crushes are totally normal.
They come and go pretty quickly.
He's five, absolutely normal. Five year olds think in big, instant terms with no concept of what being married really is (or lots of other things). I think being grateful that he loves his teachers is a better plan. A problem would be if he were having issues with them. Just enjoy how cute he is!
It happens all the time! He really doesn't understand what it means to be married. Up until a few months ago, my six year old believed that once you kiss someone you're married to them! The girl down the street would tell us that she was going to marry my son. He stayed about 20 feet away from her at all times, just in case she tried to kiss him so that she could kiss him (marry him.)
My son had a little girl in his class at age five who wanted to marry him. Would ask him every day. Very cute. My mom was a kindergarten teacher - if I recall, pretty normal.
I agree with the moms below - be a much bigger problem if your son didn't care for his teacher. We ran into that once. Not fun.
I'm an early childhood educator and I can tell you this developmentally appropriate! I secretly wanted to marry my first grade teacher way back in the day. It's very normal and your son will grow out of it. No need to worry.
Believe me, I've had children tell me they wanted to marry me (I was a preschool teacher), and I got a chuckle out of it and moved on. Before long, the child moves on to something else. Be glad he likes his teachers.
Enjoy this phase!
It's normal. My oldest used to want to marry Arial. He grew out of it.
