heirofathena

I have more with parents than with kids.

At the crazy Christian place they had cameras in each room that sent their feeds into a wall of monitors in the front lobby, that way when parents walk in they can see where their kids are and what they're doing. One day a grandmother saw me "snatch" a toy away from her granddaughter. She exploded into my room - I was in the middle of changing a diaper - and started screaming at me that she never wants me to be in the same room as her granddaughter again, she calls me a bitch and a child abuser and all sorts of things. She yanks the poor child out of the room and leaves, hollering the entire way out. Immediately after my boss comes in to check on me. Apparently that lady is a repeat offender, once she got kicked out for calling a teacher the n-word and other such terms.

Well, I've had a lot of parents tell me that their kids ask for me or pray for me at night. I get pretty good teacher-gifts around the holidays, too.

One stands out, though. Every teacher, I believe, has that one kid who is special to them. My one kid, at the time, was a little girl with some sort of developmental/commutative issue. My guess was autism, but it's just a guess. She hardly ever talked, but followed me around and would mimic my postures. I just loved her. She left the daycare for financial reasons, but after her last day her mom sent this huge edible arrangement and a $50 Wal-Mart giftcard for me (she knew I'm a single mother, and she wrote for me to spend it on myself).

We really have to watch what we say to parents. They're typically more sensitive and conservative and particular when it comes to their children. As far as staff goes, we're not allowed to do anything for Halloween, we just do fall activities. Management talked serious shit on Harry Potter and spoke down to me when they learned of my support for Obama (they pulled the Muslim card). We had to memorize this prayer that we all recited/chanted before eating. It just feels like needless stress added on top of an already stressful job to me.

Apart from the story I've already mentioned, Friday I had to dig through diapers and other stuff in our garbage to retrieve this little girl's bow. Parents don't fuck around with bows. If you lose it, they tell your director. Y'know how the bow got in the trash? The little girl put it there. Did her mother seem thankful? Absolutely not. She thought her daughter's behavior was adorable.

I absolutely do. Children tend to have vastly different relationships with men because they're around them less often which reinforces the gendered societal norms. It also reinforces the notion that women are the caretakers. Apart from the asshole I worked with at the Christian center, the two other men I've worked with who were teachers were fantastic and the kids just loved them. It's important to note, though, that all of these men worked with the school-age kids, never in the younger classrooms.