preschool rant

in an effort to make the ends meet a little easier, i teach a mother's day out 2 days/week. it's fine. i'm not a teacher, i never gave a fleeting thought to majoring in early childhood education. i have a business degree and love doing business things. this is strictly just to get by during alena's pre-school days. i like it well enough, i don't get paid very much, but i think i'm pretty good with these kids. for a reference point, these kids have all just turned two between january and last week.

one kid i have, we'll call him Boy. he has a rough home life, but his caretakers are doing the best they can in the situation. but his rough home life shows in his temperament. he's a bit aggressive--if you don't stay right on him, he'll hit, kick, pinch, take toys, and has repeatedly bitten the other kids throughout this year. we have been very honest with his caretakers about him.

i do my absolute best with Boy. i know his little world has been unstable from the beginning, and i try to make sure that his 12 hours per week with me are loving and nurturing, calm and stable. he can be a sweet little boy.

but today, after my normal duties of making sure that he's using only "nice hands", he became the victim. he and another child, we'll call her Girl, were sharing a toy. they were doing quite well sharing the toy. i was changing a poopy diaper on the other side of the room. when i'm changing a diaper, there's nothing i can do with the other children in the room other than use my voice. i can't very well leave a child on the changing table to intervene anything.

so these two are playing, then Boy gently takes the toy from the Girl. she protested, he took it a little more forcefully. then i heard that cry..the one that you know is serious, more than just a "mine" cry. i finished up the diaper and hugged Boy. he was still crying. i examined him to find a pretty bad bite mark. Girl, who never gives me any kind of trouble, bit Boy.

obviously, i'm not happy about anyone getting hurt, but let's be fair. i kind of thought it was at least a natural lesson for Boy to learn what kind of pain he had been giving others all year. i punished Girl and consoled Boy.

now, here comes my rant. when Boy got picked up, i had to explain that he had been bitten. Boy's picker-upper was NOT happy. not that i expected her to be happy, but i thought she'd take it in stride. instead, i got chewed out. are you kidding me? Boy, who has bitten, pushed, pinched, snatched toys from, screamed "no" to every other kid in the room, gets hurt one time, at the end of the school year, and you chew me out? Boy, who started out in someone else's class this year, but because he was so difficult--and i had learned how to work with him and had bonded with him during the summer session--i welcomed him into my class...Boy,to whose caregivers i had given the utmost sympathy and support in his awful home situation...I'm doing my best, there's one accident, and you chew me out?

i'm trying to assume there's a deeper issue here (like the fact that he just got stitches taken out of his eyebrow from a dog bite and has had a broken arm in a cast since christmas) and that she wasn't really meaning to yell at me personally.....

(i'll probably take this down after a week or so...just in case they should somehow be able to find this..)