When bad people happen to good kids

Warning! This is a personal post (not a work-related one), and I'm very upset! So it's admittedly a rant, but one I need to get out there for the sake of my own personal sanity, and one with which I could use some help, especially from my friends with kids, whether you use day care or not. If you know me from work-related contacts, you can just ignore this post. Thanks!

Consider this a public service message: If you use day care, beware!
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There have been very few times in my six years of being a mother that I have wished I were a stay-at-home mom. In general, I think day care has been a very good thing for my kiddos. Although I have absolutely nothing against the concept of being a stay-at-home mom, I just know I'd be terrible at it, so I haven't ever really given it much thought. Until yesterday. Now I wish there were some way — ANY way — I could get away with not having to take my son back to day care...EVER.

Here's the short story.

In general, my son is a really good kid. Sure he's a six-year-old boy, so he has trouble sitting still, has a natural desire to talk about killing things (OK, don't freak out...I'm talking   plastic army men, bugs, mild video games, cartoon characters that kill each other and then they pop up like nothing ever happened...that kind of thing), he likes to pick on his sister, and he's a wee bit competitive. But generally speaking, he's fairly well behaved.

Until, that is, he befriended a terror child (we'll just call him Bad Boy) at his day care. The kid happened to be in his kindergarten class, too, and sat right by G. He was also on our baseball team during summer 2007. This is the boy whose chaperone at the zoo gave him back to the teacher at lunch time and said she couldn't handle him. The kid is wild, uncontrollable, mean and troublesome...and G is attracted to him like a magnet. For some reason, the boys are best buddies. And it's suddenly biting us in the butt.

We got a lovely (very sarcastically spoken) note home from G's teacher at day care yesterday. His teacher (as well as the school - although most of you readers know darn well where he goes) will go unnamed...for now.

Anyway, the note said that G is about to be kicked out of the park program because of unruly behavior. He and Bad Boy (and apparently one other) have been getting in trouble, not listening, and doing things after they're told not to. Yes, I could see how this would be true, and we have talked to our son about listening (a problem in our house sometimes) over and over again.

But what upsets me lately is how the school is handling it. Rather than talking to the parents about it at all, we immediately get a letter home threatening us to take him out of the park program and possibly out of school if it happens one more time. The teachers wrote two letters — one that went home to all parents in the school-agers class and one that was directed at each child's behavior.

Needless to say, I am extremely disappointed in my son's behavior. And Chad and I have sat down with him and talked to him very seriously about the situation, even "grounding" him from his bike, TV, video games and scooter for a week. (Yes, we were really upset by this and thought he needed something more than just losing one thing. We needed something that would make an impact.) But in truth, I am more upset at the school. They should have talked to us on Tuesday, when it happened the first time, not sent a letter home with us on Thursday threatening their ultimate punishment. Plus, they should be doing what they can to 1) control the Bad Boy...I know he's been a problem there for a long time, and 2) separate the kids who are obviously not playing well together. If they would just separate my son from this terror kid, he would be an (almost) angel, I can almost guarantee it.

We've talked to G about not playing with him, but it's a lot to expect for a six-year-old to stop playing with his friend because his parents think he's causing trouble. I want to be there to pull them apart when they get together and get in trouble, but I can't do that. I can't keep them apart. The teachers are there with them every minute, though, and I think it's reasonable for me to expect that they would do something to try to keep the troublemakers apart. Am I wrong about that?

This isn't the first frustration I've had with this particular teacher. Let me tell you another story about the way this place has let us down recently.

Let me first say that the school has been good for our kids until this summer. Both of our kids have gone there for two years now, and we haven't had any trouble. We have liked all of E's teachers and most of G's. I haven't been fond of his current teachers — who were his teachers during kindergarten, too — from the beginning (they just are not friendly and do nothing to inform parents about how the kids are doing), but we didn't have any real trouble with them until school let out for the summer. And then it's like the teachers thought their job was over. I feel like they have been completely neglectful and irresponsible as their caregivers from the first week of summer.

It started by sending the kids to the park for six hours on Tuesdays. They go for two hours a day every day for the park program (why not, the park program instructors do the day care providers' jobs for those two hours), and then after the park program, they go to the public pool for FOUR hours (wow, lifeguards can do their jobs for those four hours...six hours off for the teachers, it seems). The first week they did this, G was completely fried — sunburned on his back, shoulders, arms and face — and he came home with huge blisters on the bottom of his feet — one on the ball of each foot and four small ones on the rest of his toes on one foot. He honestly could not walk on his feet that night. He crawled around the house on his knees. The blisters were from walking on wet concrete with wet feet for four hours. The sunburn is obvious. You put a fair-skinned kid in the sun for four hours and he's going to fry.

When I approached this same (yes, again, said sarcastically) lovely teacher, Mrs. R., she couldn't even remember if the sunscreen they had used was waterproof. (HELLO! You take young kids to the pool for four hours, you'd better KNOW it's waterproof...and why weren't they using the kind WE brought, anyway?) She didn't listen at all. She didn't even hear me enough to understand that the blisters on his feet were not from sunburn, even though I pointed to the bottom of the feet. And her response to my concern that four hours was too long was that some parents complain that they don't get their money ($5) worth if they go shorter than that. The director pointed out that we were the only parents that had complained. So I guess that means our concern wasn't important enough for them to worry about. Mrs. R then responded by writing us a three-page note of things WE could do differently for the situation — make him wear a white T-shirt in the pool, make him sit under the umbrella with the mean old teachers for the last hour they're there, and put sunscreen on him before we drop him off.

Please note that we drop him off at 7 a.m. (7:45 at the latest), and they get to the park program at 9, when he would play sports for two hours and would sweat off the sunscreen which by then would be useless anyway, two hours after we applied it to him and then put clothes on on top of it. They don't even get to the pool until 11. Sunscreen applied at 7 a.m. isn't going to be helpful. The teachers need to stop being lazy and apply the sunscreen themselves EVERY day at the park program. But they don't. They admitted that. On top of that, as you can imagine, he was completely picked on because he had to sit with the teachers for an hour at the pool, and he begged and cried for us not to take him back this past Tuesday.

Then this week when I offered to pick him up at 2 instead of making him sit under the umbrella, I show up at the pool and the kids are all corralled on the grass in a fenced-in area — WITH THE TEACHERS NO WHERE TO BE SEEN. This is a public pool that had probably 200 people in it a the time, and there were probably 20 or more kids from my son's school. I stood there in shock for about three minutes before I asked my son where the teachers were. He walked me over to an umbrella table about 15 feet or more away (across the main sidewalk and stairs everyone had to use to enter and exit the pool area) and pointed to a woman with her back to the kids. I had never seen this woman, but G said that was the teacher. I told her I was taking G, and she said OK. Just like that. This woman could have no clue that I was his mother. I had never seen her before. And in a public setting, she didn't question it. ANYONE COULD HAVE WALKED UP AND TAKEN MY SON WITHOUT BEING QUESTIONED. This did NOT make me happy.

I walked G over to sit down and put his shoes on when out walked our lovely Mrs. R. from the locker room. She came out of the locker room (not seeing me, because I was on the other side of the exit sidewalk) and started screaming at the kids. "Sit down!" (The kids were all sitting in complete silence already, scared silly. They were scared even to talk to me five minutes earlier.) "So-and-so go take the lifejackets back!" Just one thing after another, screaming, as if these kids had just killed someone. It was uncomfortable and infuriating.

I had decided that we needed to do something before this coming Tuesday (pool day), but we hadn't figured out what it would be. Then we receive this letter on Thursday. Now I'm preparing myself for battle when we return on Monday. (I keep the kids home with me on Fridays.) I'm going to ask that I have a face-to-face meeting with Mrs. R and the school director, and I'm going to speak my mind. I'm so upset.

If we have to have day care, we as parents want to make sure we feel comfortable leaving our children in their teachers' care. Until this month, I have. But now, I wish so much we could just pull him out and never make him go back. It's ugly. I feel like the teachers are neglecting our children, putting their own selfish convenience in front of the health and well-being of the kids, and letting out-of-control kids rule the roost without doing anything to stop it. Now it's affecting my child's happiness and behavior, and I'm not happy.

Does anyone have any advice for my confrontation on Monday? I want to be prepared! What if they tell me right then and there that he's not allowed to come back? Would you be this upset if it were your kid in this situation? Do share!

Comments

[Jeff]

Wow. Chad had told me some of this on the ride Saturday night, but oh my gosh.

I don't have any advice as to how to prepare, plus it's already Monday :). But I'd stick to your guns, don't let them just bully over you. If they won't let G or E stay, pull them out. I'm sure Michele will help you out until you get a new place. I'd also write a complaint to the the state department that handles day-care licensing. If it were me I'd probably take a day off (meaning have Chad take a day off) and go video tape the apparent neglect happening every Tuesday at the Park and pool. Showing the state that they are not watching the kids at the pool, nor applying sunscreen to children seems like a huge issue.

As for the meeting, if you haven't gone yet, maybe you could take a tape recorder with you and turn it on as you walk into the meeting or record any phone conversations you have with the teacher. Indiana law states that to record a conversation only one person involved in the conversation must know that they are being taped.

Sorry, it's horrible that you have to deal with this.

[Corie]

Thanks for the comment, Jeff. I haven't had our meeting yet (requested, but not yet granted), so I appreciate the advice! I had thought about videotaping the pool stuff, too, although I also thought that might run me the risk of being arrested on suspected creepiness (videotaping youngsters at the pool when I don't have one with me at the time...if G is with the teachers). :-) The tape recorder in the purse isn't a bad idea...

[Heidi]

You do have a right to be angry! Voice your opinion! We had the music teacher for our elementary school fired this year because he threw a tamborine and it cut Austen on his chin and his arm. Nobody said anything to us about this until I asked Austen where the cuts came from after school....lets just say I hope that teacher learned his lesson. Also come to find out that the school has been trying to get rid of this teacher for almost three years...thank God the tamborine did not hit Austen's eye or another child's. I can not believe that we are dealing with this stuff it really stinks that our kids have to be treated like this! Call me if you want to chat! Miss you!