Mama Bear

If you are a paid child care worker, there are two things I believe are essential. First, you must agree to take good care of the children you are watching. Second, you must recognize your limits and know when you are no longer able to do this. Which brings me to my rant.

I attend MOPS a few times a month and the church provides childcare. Nathan has struggled all year with this. He is upset when I leave and antisocial and sad the whole time I'm gone. I have been called out more than once to come and get him he was so upset. It has been tough leaving him knowing how unhappy he is. The last several times though I have seen progress. No more crying when I leave and happier when I pick him up. Today was a revolutionary. When I dropped him off he walked right in, waved happily good-bye, and went in his class. SUCCESS I thought.

Two hours later I picked him up. The worker in his classroom is always there but usually in a different age group. When she saw me she looked down, presumably at the short person behind the door and said, rudely, "Nathan, your mom is here." Out walks my Nathan, a bawling, snotty little guy. Horrified, I picked up him up and said, "Has he been like this the whole time?!" This was the response:

"YES, as a matter of fact he has. And he has refused to play with any of the kids. All he does is sit in a chair and howl if anyone looks at him. And when we were outside he was so out of control that I had to bring him in. And then he just sat in here and cried some more. And blah blah blah blah blah........." Imagine this tirade of hers in the snottiest, shortest voice you can imagine. The tone of her voice was saying, "Your kid is a brat and you are responsible for his behavior in here." This went on but I tuned her out because I was consoling my poor kid as he continued to cry.

For anyone that actually knows Nathan, he is the happiest kid on the block. Greg always says he has the gift of joy and he never acts like this except at MOPS. I was so upset by the situation for two reasons. One, Nathan had been unnecessarily sad and miserable for two and a half hours while I was 30 feet away. Second, THEY SHOULD HAVE PAGED ME! When I check the kids in I am given a pager and I am one page and about 30 seconds away from being there. He clearly had frustrated the heck out of this woman and all I could think to tell her was, "You should have paged me before it got to this point." I get that he wasn't making any friends but it kills me to think that not only was he so sad but that he was being treated meanly too. Before you get this ticked off at a not yet two year old, CALL HIS MOM! That's the point of the pager, to relieve these workers when they don't know what else to do.

Then, when I picked Aubrey up I asked her what she did. She said, "I helped take care of Nathan." Apparently their classes were outside at the same time and all that separates the play areas is a chain link fence so they obviously hung out together at the fence. Aubrey told me, "I told Nathan, 'Nathan, don't be sad, Mommy will come back.' " My little angel care taker, looking out for her brother. The whole situation made me so upset. Nobody loves your kids the way you do and to think that anyone would intentionally be unkind or mean to one of them kills me. Which brings me back to my second point. If you are being unkind and mean to a two year old, CALL HIS MOM. She will love the heck out of him anyways.