Current mood:

discontent

"No way!" and other thoughts on the NBS
"No way!" is what Penelope says now instead of just "No." I can't help laughing at her expense just a little when I hear her struggling against some stubbornness (a magnet that won't stick to plastic, or a baby doll that won't sit up in a chair, or some other such thing) and shouting, "No way! NO WAY!"

This is the end of week 2 at the New Baby School, and I have mixed feelings. On one hand, she's been in a good mood when I've come to pick her up. She's brought home a stack of artwork each Friday. They tell me she naps and eats just fine.

On the other hand, there have been a few events that have given me pause. Let me say before I get into them that I don't think these are... all that bad. They give me pause, and that's why I'm writing about them, but I don't have any fear that Penelope is in immediate peril of physical, emotional, or spiritual harm, so I'm not yanking her out of there just yet. And I hope I won't feel I need to.

Event #1
As I posted last time, on the second day, I arrived in the afternoon to pick Penelope up. To set the scene, you walk in the front door, past the front desk where the assistant director is usually sitting, and down a short hall, and there behind a waist-high door is a large room that is divided in two by a wall of cubbies that's about the height of an adult, at the end of which there is another waist-high door. The near side is for children ages 18 months to 2 years, and the far side is for young 2-year-olds. Penelope is on the far side. Sometimes the two classes combine, like when they go outside, but so far I haven't seen them combine inside. For some reason, I thought they would if one side was inequitably full of children, but I haven't seen it. And on that second day, there would have been a good reason to combine: on Penelope's side, the teacher had just three kids, but on the near side, the one teacher present had NINE, and at least one of them was screaming his head off. Florida law says that in classrooms of children that age, there should be no more than 6 children to a teacher, and no more than 12 children to a class. Even though both of these classes are in one big room, it's still divided, and so it still counts as two classes. I felt like I should say something to somebody... but I didn't. As I was leaving, the assistant director came and got the kid who was screaming and took him to sit with her at the desk, leaving the remaining 8 children with the one teacher, still out of ratio.

I kind of kicked myself for not questioning this, so the next morning, as we walked in the door, I asked the assistant director. "They're supposed to have six per teacher over there, right?"

Yes, she confirmed.

"But she had nine yesterday!" I tried to say it while smiling so as not to appear a humongous bitch. "And she seemed to be having a hard time of it."

"Well," she said, "someone could have been in the bathroom, or going for supplies, or something like that."

I think I just kind of accepted that answer, at least to the assistant director, and then I went and dropped off Penelope. As I came back out again, she stopped me and said, "Hey, I just want you to know that we are never out of ratio!" She seemed flustered, and she went on to explain that the ratios are larger when the children are napping, but otherwise, they take the ratios very seriously, and they never go out of ratio. Someone might have just stepped out for a minute. And as to the kids being upset, a couple of them were just getting through being sick, and a lot of children get upset at the end of the day when they see the other children's mommies and begin to wonder where their own are.

I left feeling at least like I had given the impression I was paying attention, which certainly can't hurt.

Event #2
I want to say this one happened Tuesday of this week. Penelope had gone back and forth in her mood at drop off time. She had good days the first week when she marched right in alongside me and waved goodbye as I left, and bad days when she started crying as soon as we turned the corner and she saw the Baby School. On this particular day, she was unhappy, and I sat with her in the car for a few minutes to try to talk her down. I reminded her of what fun she would have playing outside and playing games and playing with friends and eating snack and blah blah blah. She was not falling for it, and as we got into her room, she began to cry in earnest. In my previous day care experience, the best thing to do when that happens is to leave her in the capable hands of her teacher and depart quickly while the teacher jumps in with some slick redirection and/or comforting words. And in fact, it had worked out that way just fine a couple of times in week 1. But on this particular day, her teacher was chit-chatting with some other teachers and this woman who I did not recognize but who, from what I could gather from their conversation, had just gotten off of some kind of leave. She might have been a parent, and they were all catching up. As I began my quick exit, expecting Penelope's teacher to pick her up, I realized she wasn't going to, because she was busy. But I was on my way to the door, and I knew I wasn't supposed to waffle, so I just left. I lingered outside the door for a while, and Penelope continued to cry, but I couldn't see to tell whether the teacher picked her up. Eventually, I left, kicking myself for not physically placing my child in the teacher's arms, or at least saying loudly something along the lines of, "Oh, don't worry, Penelope! Miss Annette will pick you up RIGHT NOW!"

I did call soon after I got to work to see how she was, and Miss Annette said, "Oh, she's fine. She's playing. I picked her up, and she stopped crying right after you left." Which wasn't exactly how I remember it, but maybe it happened that way.

That day, my friend Kelly at work asked me how the NBS was going. She's the one who encouraged me to make the switch when I was agonizing about it before. I told her about the recent events, and she said I definitely was onto something feeling that these things weren't right. She said particularly that the teacher didn't seem trustworthy since she said she picked up Penelope when I know she didn't, and since she said she stopped crying right after I left, when I heard her crying for maybe a minute after. To be fair, it really was less than a minute between when I walked out of sight and when I actually left, which isn't that long. Maybe she did pick Penelope up soon after. Maybe Penelope did stop crying before long. I wasn't there, so I really don't know.

While Kelly and I were talking, a few others joined the conversation, and I found out that another co-worker had her son at this baby school from age almost 4 until he was ready for kindergarten. He's in second grade now. She liked it a lot and highly recommends it. She also said that the owners are really nice, and the assistant director is "kind of squirrelly" (I did notice that!). She said I should arrange a meeting with one of the co-owners so that I could discuss my concerns. Kelly agreed; "tell her you just want to talk to her about it before you talk yourself out of the place."

The thing about Event 2 is that, while Penelope may be the center of my universe, she's not the center of everybody's. At some point in life, she's got to learn to buck up when Mommy leaves. Yes, almost-two is too young to have to learn that lesson without getting hugs from somebody, but then again, if I'm going to leave my kid with paid strangers, I have to know that the consequence is that paid strangers are the ones staying with her all day. Sometimes, she might cry for a little bit before somebody comes to soothe her. Sometimes, yes, she might cry in a non-danger situation, and nobody might come to soothe her. Hell, sometimes at home she cries in non-danger situations (see the first paragraph of this entry!), and I don't always come and hug her and say, "It's okay that the baby doll won't sit in the chair! IT'S OKAY!!!!"

Event 2.5
When I came to pick her up that afternoon, she was outside with the two combined classes and the two afternoon teachers I recognized, plus one lady I did not recognize. Penelope hugged me, and we stood to leave, and I told her, "Say bye bye!"

She said, "Bye bye!"

Then the lady I didn't recognize said, "I didn't know she could talk!"

Okay, seriously? You didn't know she could talk? Please tell me you have only just spent the last sixty seconds with my child, because if you don't know she can talk, one of two things is happening: you are not paying attention, or she's spending her entire days in stone cold silence. She can't always talk intelligibly, especially to people who aren't me, but she talks pretty frequently.

Like I said, though, I did not recognize that teacher, and I know she's not one of Penelope's regulars. Maybe she's a fill-in, or maybe she normally takes another class and was just hanging out with our teachers during outside time. Who knows.

Event 3
This happened this morning. The teacher in the near part of the large room had only two or three children, so she was good, but on our side, there were already 7 or 8 kids when we arrived, and just one teacher. I stood there, holding Penelope, who thankfully was in an amicable enough mood, wondering what to do. There wasn't enough manpower! It was so obvious! The ratio was way off!

I left her, said good bye, and went to the squirrelly assistant director at the front desk. "Let me just ask you about the ratios again," I said. "Six kids per teacher, right? On each side in there?"

"Yes," she said.

"Okay," I said, "because there are 8 or 9 on that back side right now, and only one teacher."

"Really?" said the SAD. She ran back there, and I heard her say, "How many does she have?"

"I don't know!" the teacher said. There was counting. Then, "Ten."

"Ten? Are they all twos?"

More counting. "Yes."

The SAD came back and told me that, well, one of the staff members just wasn't there yet. And in fact, I looked out the window and saw Miss Annette walking across the parking lot. "Sometimes they all get here before we all do," the SAD explained. "The other teacher just hasn't gotten here."

"Well, I see her coming now," I said, and the SAD smiled as if to say, "see? No worries."

But, for serious, that does bother me. They have those ratios for a reason. I have never noticed one of our day cares to be out of ratio before, and I've spent plenty of time at our respective Baby Schools. I've heard teachers ask for backup so they could step out to the bathroom, and I've heard teachers conferring with each other when they knew they would be out of ratio in a few minutes when the next kid showed up but the second staffer had not. I'm pretty sure that legally they have to make those kinds of plans rather than just shrug off the ratio, even for a few minutes. I also know that in six months or so, Penelope will go to the classroom where the ratio is actually eleven to one, but for now, she's in this classroom. And the ratio is six to one.

After that, I went to Tom Thumb to get a drink on my way to work, and I recognized one of the patrons as somebody who had just dropped off her child in the near class of the two in the large room. I struck up a conversation. She must have heard me talking to the SAD about the ratios, because the first thing she said to me was, "It'll be fine," or something reassuring like that.

"I'm sure it will be," I said, "but this is only our second week, and I've seen them out of ratio twice!"

"And you will in the mornings," she said. "That happens all the time, but everybody is there by 8, and then it's fine."

She told me that her older child went there for a few years, and now her younger is there, and she has always been very happy. And she actually heard of this place because she was at a much worse place for a week. There, she saw a teacher throw a pen at a child, and she called someone with the state to complain and beg for a recommendation. They referred her to this place.

I want to have perspective. I'm not witnessing people throwing things at children. I'm not suspecting abuse. My kid's not coming home with bruises or burns. And I have talked to lots of parents, who recommend the place so highly, and I have seen at least two very positive online reviews--which kind of says something, because most day cares here have no online reviews whatsoever, and this place has two.

For those and all the reasons I talked about when I was obsessing over this before, I really want this to work. And I don't want to yank Penelope out of this place now if she's happy and adjusting -- ugh! She just moved! She would be so confused and weirded out! But WTF with the ratios, people? WTF?

I haven't made that appointment with the co-owner yet, but I probably will. Before I do, however, I'm going to talk to one of my coworkers who was out of the office all this week. His wife does inspections for the state, and I would like him to ask her for me if in fact the law allows for little lapses in ratio, like for bathroom breaks or when your second staffer hasn't made it in yet. I mean, maybe it does. I'd like to be informed.

In the meantime, click here for some recent bathy pictures.

This is her new thing: swimming in the bath water.


Discovering that if she squeezes the little plastic crab, water shoots out, and sometimes it hits Daddy!


Goofball.


Wrapping Penelope up like a baby is the important finale to the bath time ritual. If you forget, she will remind you by saying, "Baby? Baby! Baby!" over and over.


Last weekend, we went to the beach. Here is Penelope, ready to go with all her gear: pink chair, pink flip flops, pink and red hat, Spongebob balloon, and Santa Claus bag.