biff-boff

My most positive memory was an italian girl, 3yrs old which refused to speak at all. She was quite the perfectionist I supposed and I figured that she could be embarrassed by making mistakes speaking german (german here btw^). So I offered her to "trade" words and that she could teach me italian while I was gonna show her german words she wanted to know. I've put her into the position of the teacher and I was her student, which she liked a lot. One day I told her that the other kids wanted to learn italian too, so she started counting the kids every morning in her native language and all the other kids picked it up pretty fast. This boosted her confidence way up and after about 2 month of intensive work she started speaking german, with very good grammar of course. This girl has left for school a few months ago, we are still counting in italian in the group though....

NO! YOU JUST MESS AROUND IN THERE!

Yeah, the do it constantly. It always depends on how hard you estimate the actual injury. Most of the time they fall and look straight to the adults and figure out how they react to it. Some cry instantly due to being frighted but telling from my experience about 80% of the 3-6 year olds wait for your reaction. Knowing this, I usually tell them to come to me and I look closely if they are able to walk normal and stuff. When they still cry I hug them of course, but mostly its already forgotten. Parents tend to be way overdramatic which results in the kids trying to get the most out of their accidents. It's funny to see how fragile they behave once the parents are around.

Usually they don't show that they are surprised, but I notice some weird looks from time to time. They are way more sceptical towards me than my female coworkers and I feel being under surveillance for a while until they realise that I am not a weirdo or something. It felt bad in the beginning, but I learned to deal with it and just be professional and nice towards them. Most are exited and saying stuff like "oh, nice to have a man in here!"

Some kids take everything you've got in terms of patience. They test you like crazy. I'm usually special strict to those. They try their shit for a while, but it has always a downside for them, so they stop. The only question is how long they are able to do so. Of course there are days when I just want to slap someone, but as soon as the situation is over I calm down and look foward to the end of the workday. Next day is always a fresh start. This one kid was terrible. It had no respect at all for adults. Giving the finger, even when being shout at. I learned that you have to build a connection, the kid has to like you. In that way its way harder for it when you are mad.