13. No, You Can’t Have More Snack/Lunch

We get our food, like most other daycares and summer camps, from a company that produces school lunches.

These are free foodstuffs, and that’s the reason we get them.

If we bought food for taste, we wouldn’t buy this stuff at gunpoint.

(Example here: a note on their lunch menu says that they don’t use any meat but turkey. Yet it says ‘chicken nuggets’. Do you want to know? I don’t.)

So here’s the deal: there are about fifty of you an any given day.

We have fifty snacks and lunches.

After you’ve put what you don’t want on the Share Table and traded out your orange for a juice (this is the most popular trade. Kids hate milk and oranges nowadays.), that’s it. There are four hours between lunch and snack. There is no food served between noon and four.

We know you’re hungry by the time we roll out the snack cart.

We know that the portions they give you are akin to that of a swallow feeding its young.

But we don’t have any more snack.

The snacks you see left in the bottom of the box are for the kids who are in the restroom or at the movies and will be back shortly.

The following will not get you seconds on snack or lunch:

- biting

- kicking

- screaming

- punching

- calling the teacher names

- stating that your mother gives you seconds

- stating you’re allergic to the snack we’re giving out

- bad impersonations of Michael Jackson

- stating you’re a Pagan and that by right you need more food for Mother Nature.

(That last one was actually used on me a few days ago. I asked the child in question why, if he was Pagan, he was in a Presbyterian church’s afterschool program. He ate his snack shortly after).

You’ll somehow live those two hours between snack and your return home.

I promise.

So get over it.

14. When In Rome, Do As the Romans Do. When In Our Program, You Will Watch Our Movies

“Miss Patricia, my mommy says I’m not allowed to watch Michael Jackson.” (in protest to watching The Wiz)

Somebody said that one to me a week ago, and I had to look at the little girl in question a couple of times before slowly replying that if they brought in a note stating how much they’re not allowed to look at Michael Jackson, then we’ll consider doing something.

There are sixty kids.

There is one movie room, one DVD player.

This would mean one movie for sixty kids.

Not everybody will be happy with the movie choice, that’s a fact of life.

But for God’s sake, the drama has got to stop.

Watch the movie.

It’s two hours of your incredibly long life.

Be enriched.

Fall asleep.

Learn to knit.

Annoy your neighbors by singing along loudly to Circle of Life.

Even if we’re watching Mulan.

Just don’t sit there and scream at the top of your lungs because if you “see Brother Bear one more stinkin’ time, you’ll gouge your eyes out”.

No you won’t.

Shut up.

15. Stop Telling Your Parents Lies About the Staff

I overheard one kid telling his mother today that “Miss Patricia and Miss Christina force-fed him his lunch.”

Um.

No we didn’t.

We told him that if he didn’t eat at least half his sandwich, he couldn’t go get a soda from the soda machine. There’s a big difference there.

I mean, what teacher would force-feed the kids their food?

Yet for whatever reason, the mother stormed back into the game room ranting about how this was no way to run a daycare and that if we couldn’t leave her son be, she’ll take him out.

Said mother scared one of the six year olds so badly that she sought refuge on my lap with her face hidden in my shoulder.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the mother saw all of the dirty looks I was shooting her.

The other problem parents overreact to is if we write your kid up.

If it was a bad problem, you kid would be suspended.

All it means if we write Johnny up is that Johnny did something we told him not to do repeatedly, and it was something that lasted longer than one day; perhaps he’s been hitting other kids consistently for a week and we were finally sick of it.

Call me crazy, but if I have an eight year old daughter and I get a note saying that said daughter of mine has been socking other children in the stomach on multiple occasions, I’ll probably be concerned and want to talk to my kid and the staff members that saw her hit the others.

I would not ask my kid if she did it.

Like she’ll say “Yes, mommy, I hit Rebecca seventeen times this past week!” Are you crazy? She’s going to feign innocence like any kid in their right mind would do.

If we write her up, it’s the truth.

So don’t spaz out, Mom.

You scare the babies.

Author’s Notes: I’m shocked by the reviews this gets. Hope you enjoy this installment. Review. Kthx.