I know this post is overdue, and I am behind in my blogging. You’ll have to forgive me; last week was a mess of deadlines and other stressful times. But I’m well rested after a nice, long weekend, and am ready to tackle another workweek…
…but not before an update on the whole day care situation. This will be quick, because honestly I’m tired of thinking about the whole thing. But I wanted to give you an update, especially since that blog post has been one of the most popular hits on my blog since the beginning, and several of you have e-mailed me or posted comments of concern.
So here’s the long and short of it. First of all, our meeting lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, and the majority of it was spent by G’s teacher telling us how well they do everything and how they have so much work to do with about 25 kids going to the pool and park program. She also expressed her frustration that they have 20 boys and only 4 girls in the program and how immature the class is this year.
Yet, she said the letter she sent home with G a couple of weeks ago now was just a result of a very frustrating couple of days; G wasn’t being as bad as we had interpreted the letter to be saying. Apparently it wasn't any big deal now that they look back on it. He was just playing when he should have been sitting at the park program. And it wasn't just our son who was causing trouble. (Keep in mind they were threatening to kick him out of the park program and ultimately school if things didn’t get better ASAP.) Apparently, that letter (or at least some variation on it) went home with every child in the class that day. On the one hand, it made me feel better that our son wasn't being as bad as we had understood to be the case, but on the other, they should never have made it sound so dire if that were the case. The poor guy had been "grounded" for the first time in his life after that letter came home...and this was three days later that we had the conversation with his teacher.
My opinion is that having the director in the room for our discussion (at our request) really put G’s teacher on the defensive, and suddenly things weren’t as bad as she had made them seem. Ultimately, I didn’t feel like we had made a lot of progress with the whole situation, although we did come to an agreement on a couple of things:
- They agreed to put sunscreen on him before going to the park program. The fact that they have a lot to do was not a good enough excuse to me for them to ignore the health of my child’s skin for two hours in the direct sun every day.
- They say (I’ll believe it when I see it, though) that they will work on communication with us as the parents. We should have been told about behavior problems on Day One, not on Day Three, when things were to the point of getting kicked out (or so she led us to believe). Communication has been lacking with them from the beginning of G's time in that class.
- They will separate G and the trouble-maker kid, or kids, as it turns out. There’s apparently the one obvious Bad Boy and another that I didn’t know was a problem until our conversation.
- We’ll take him some aqua shoes to protect his feet from the four hours on wet concrete at the pool, hopefully avoiding any excessive blistering. We'll also take him some higher SPF sunscreen. (We had taken in 30, but until our meeting, the teacher said they just take one to the park and use it on everyone. She denied that statement when the director was sitting right there. She said I must have misunderstood her. Not possible, my friends. She said straight out that they only took one that day, and "I'm pretty sure it was waterproof." Not much room for misunderstanding that one.)
When we left there, I was feeling just OK about the whole thing. I was expecting to get some specific answers on a couple of things, and on some I did, but others I didn’t. Plus, I left there feeling even less secure about the days at the pool.
Why?
- There are only two adults that accompany the 24 kids to the pool. One sits under an umbrella up on the concession deck the entire time, leaving only one adult at the poolside to keep an eye on 24 kids. My son cannot swim on his own yet, and after last week’s trip to the pool, he came home very proud of himself that he had jumped into the deep end—even though he has on the bracelet that’s supposed to identify him as a shallow-end-only kid. Thank God he only jumped far enough that he could reach the wall and climb out. I honestly have frequent nightmares about my kids drowning, so you can imagine how this freaked me out a bit.
- When the one teacher that’s assigned to poolside has to go potty, there is no one watching our kids—except for the lifeguards. But if you’ve visited this pool, you’re probably like me and a bit less than impressed with the lifeguard situation. We actually pulled our son out of swim lessons at this pool a couple of summers ago because the high-school-age lifeguards were more interested in flirting with each other than teaching the kids how to swim—or watching out for their safety. At the pool in the summer, they seem a little more interested in working on their tans than watching for each and every little kid. They assume (perhaps rightfully so) that parents are watching the kids, too. Not so with this school group, it seems.
- There is one major safety issue I don’t even feel comfortable blogging about, because I’m afraid it could honestly put other kids in danger if there were some perpetrator reading my blog. I’m dead serious. It’s a big, big issue in my mind, and one that has me trying to figure out how to get my son out of going to the pool with day care. I wasn’t aware of it until this meeting. If you’re curious, e-mail me, and I’ll talk to you about it outside of the blog. It’s just disturbing.
- The whole issue about me picking him up early the one day (before our meeting) was only met with, “That’s unsettling. It was just an unusually bad day.” That doesn’t make me feel any better. I felt like I could have walked up to any child in that group, taken him by the hand and left without anyone even realizing he was gone. “Unsettling” is an understatement.
So there you have it. Trust me, that’s the very SHORT story. Why does parenting have to be so hard? I have to work—and I like to work—and I need to know that when I’m working, my kids are in good hands. But are they?
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PS From a public relations standpoint, the day care could have done a better job at putting me at ease. I am still upset about the particular pool situation, not completely happy overall, and felt like I had to beg to get them to agree to give basic care (like sunscreen) to my child. I would have done things differently. But at least they made time to listen to us. That's at least one step in the right direction.
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