Four and a half weeks until school is over. Despite the relatively safe haven that my son's preschool has been and my concerns over what kindergarten may bring, I can't wait. I'm sick of dealing with those people, tired of constantly hectoring my child to do better, better, better when he's actually a pretty good kid and he's made amazing progress. Can't we just go play in the mud and ride little trains for awhile? I guess I'm burned out. Maybe everybody is.
At this school, before the kids assemble in the main classroom for lessons, they have a gym period of about half an hour. They go into a padded room which has a large trampoline and various pieces of climbing and swinging equipment, and run around like small madmen. I applaud whoever came up with this idea, of letting them burn off a little energy before having to sit still.
Now, one of the main functions of having parents around is safety. Somebody needs to make sure the kids don't crawl under the trampoline or make sure kids' legs don't plummet through the springs while bouncing. Somebody needs to keep an eye out to ensure that roughhousing doesn't get out of hand, or that kids don't slip and bash their heads, or any number of other nightmare scenarios. It's really asking too much of one single teacher to watch 25 energetic little kids under such circumstances and ensure their safety.
So, what did we have this morning? Two mommies standing in a corner chatting, four mommies sitting on the floor gossiping and sipping coffee, the teacher, and good old muzzy-headed me. At one point the teacher walked over to me and said "It's nice to have one parent watching the kids." Annoyed by this time, I replied, "Maybe they're discussing something really juicy, like their sex lives. I guess they don't care whether any kids get hurt or not."
Unfortunately, I spoke too soon. One of the kids had a minor fall and screamed her head off. But, you know, it still wasn't enough to get those women to put down their lattés. Seriously, what in the hell is wrong with them? I "get" that they're mostly there for their own kids, but let's just pretend that we give a damn about the other kids as well, shall we? After all, wouldn't we want someone to look out for our kids when we can't be there?
Ridiculous creatures.
That's what I mean about burnout. I'm to the point where stuff like that just grates on me. Just … argh! Why sign up for a parent participation preschool if you're not going to participate? So you can sit around gossiping about shoes or which crackers have palm kernel oil?
Then there's the helicoptering. Today was calendar day, when the kids fill in dates on a calendar. They all have various degrees of proficiency in writing, some having no idea of what numbers look like, or even how to count beyond ten. Some, if they see the number one filled in on a Friday, will start adding the numbers two through whatever to the left.
And you know, that's okay. They're what, four or five years old? The point isn't, or shouldn't be, perfection. The point is repetition, of practicing small motor skills and thinking. Learning how to hold that pencil. Making a few mistakes and learning from them. "We generally put the one to the left of the zero when we're making a ten," I told one boy, "but your ones and zeroes look really nice."
Oh, but here come the helicopter parents. Not content to let their children think, explore and make a few mistakes, they abandon their assigned task in order to make their children erase and redo ad nauseam, until their papers are perfect. I'm not sure when or where the children are supposed to learn how to think and cope themselves.
There's one mother in particular, a dry humorless creature, who seems to have a specific, "perfect" way of doing everything. It's so much the antithesis of my "try it and see what happens" philosophy that I suppose it's inevitable that we grate on each other. Gosh, I won't miss her. I should probably stop at that.
The third minor event of my morning was a kid wanting a story. "I can't read this," he told me, handing me a storybook, "I don't know the words." Okay; no sweat. I pulled up a chair, and before I knew it, five or six little boys had draped or arranged themselves around me and I was reading the horror that is Babar.
Dear God. Nightmare upon nightmare. By maybe page five or six, Babar's mother had been killed off by a hunter for no discernible reason. "That's hunters for you," I wanted to say, but instead said (rather weakly) "That's dreadful, but I think things will somehow be okay by the end of the book." The children didn't appear traumatized, so I kept reading.
Left to his own devices, Babar wandered off to a town which was mysteriously within walking distance of his home. (Where on earth could this be?) He then got kitted out with a suit, spats and such, started driving a car, and became an anthropomorphic elephant. It made me wonder, since he had such great cognitive skills, whether killing his mother should have been tried as murder.
Later in the book, the king of elephants ate some poisonous mushrooms and died, so that the story could be moved along and Babar could become king. Gaaah! This was a children's book? However, I took the opportunity to talk to the kids about eating wild mushrooms. As in, this is something which either kills or sickens several people every year in this area, so we don't do it.
Finally, Babar abruptly married his cousin, which I'm pretty sure is illegal in some states. That was after seeing her naked and being shocked by her lack of clothing. The end.
"Well," I said rather feebly, "My goodness. Wasn't that interesting. Say, it's a beautiful day out there! How would you guys like to go outside and play?"
I know that Babar is supposed to be a classic, but that is the last damned time I read a book to a bunch of kids unless I've read it first myself.
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9 comments:
Hahahah...
"Mummy, mummy! Miss T read us a book today!"
"That's nice dear, what was it about?"
"Well, Babar's mother was murdered by men with guns, and then he saw a naked wrinkly elephant and decided to marry her and then he killed off his uncle so he could be king!"
"ummm... WHAT did you say the person's name was who read that to you baby...?"
My helicopter parent experience was in Boy Scouts. Every year there's a car competition where the little boys are given a chunk of wood in roughly the shape of a car, and the idea is to make a race car out of it. On the big day there's a race and whoever's car goes the fastest wins the derby. I was appalled to find out that a lot of the dads did a lot of the work on their sons' cars! Which was, of course, against the rules. And it is pretty disheartening for the little boys who don't get "help" from dad when the cars of boys who do, win! So the Bean worked on his own car one more time without much hope of winning. It was a very rough and amateurish looking affair, but by some miracle his car went faster than all the souped-up Dad cars! That convinced me there IS a God! But we didn't continue with Scouts.....
I have always been creeped out by Monsieur Babar!!
Aunty - You know, I'm pretty liberal in many ways. For example, my kid knows that babies come from mixing a sperm with an egg, and that the result stays protected in a mommy's uterus until it's big enough to come out. Evidently the trend in this milieu is to call the relevant organs things like "pee pee" and "hoo ha" and avoid all discussion of biology.
However, there are some things I think children should be protected from. Cruelty and violence rate pretty high up on that list.
I'm not a big fan of censoring books, but I was kind of shocked that the classroom library had a book which featured the lead character's mommy getting shot. That is potential nightmare material for little kids. I know that if my son had heard it, he would have been plotting and scheming about how to stop the hunter and save the mommy elephant.
I probably used really bad judgment in not stopping the story when we got to that part. (Shades of my former mother-in-law, who once complained at great length about the vulgarity in a movie she'd seen. "Did you stay for the entire movie?" I asked, curiously. Yes. Yes, she did.)
Molly - Well done, Bean! Yeah. I think it's generally positive for parents to be involved in their kids' projects and studies, but there's a point at which we need to step back. We won't be around forever, after all. How will they function and think for themselves if they haven't had practice?
The real lesson Bean probably derived from the car derby was that the deck was loaded and the adults were hypocrites.
Sadly all through your son's schooling you will come across those idiotic parents who think doing their kids work perfectly for them is better than letting their darlings make mistakes and learn. They then blame the school that their sweethearts can't read/write/do math....... Gee wonder why that is??
Bwahahahaha! I have one Babar book on the shelf and I don't think I've ever read it to my kids. Sometime you'll have to look for the older Richard Scarry books. They're a real treat!
And yes - this is classic burnout time. You're in good company all over the country.
I take it you and the boy don't watch Bambi together?
Those parents sound terribly annoying, I have to say. I hope his next stage of schooling moves you into a better set!
Just wait til you get to Junior high books! There seems to be a correlation between death of a parent or child in the story and the book receiving a reward. My sister-in-law used to butt heads with English teachers over,e.g., a book opening with a school bus being hijacked, some students killed, others taken hostage...because her daughter had nightmares (never mind getting on the bus in the morning)
Meh, generations of kids have read Babar without any ill effects. Unless they're the ones who have become the helicopter parents...
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