Received Wednesday, October 10, 2007
When: Monday, October 8, 11am
Where: Indian Boundary Park, Lunt and Western, Chicago
Description of Nanny: Early forties, curly black hair in a ponytail, wearing denim shorts, white polo top, and white Keds(?) sneakers.
Incident: While playing with my charge in the park, I observed a girl (short brown hair, wearing a waaayyy too short skirt for her age) of about eleven years old bossing around four boys (all wearing safari-like baseball caps with the fabric flap covering the back of the neck, all around the age of four). The girl demanded that the boys follow her up the slide, then down,which they all did. Then she climbed the ladder to the top of the slide but demanded that a boy named 'Eli' stay below and climb up the slide itself. He protested and told her that he was not allowed, she told him to 'do it now!' The two exchanged this argument a few times until I stepped in and told her to respect that he does not want to climb the slide. She glared at me in response and told the four young boys to follow her. I observed her walking toward the swing set until I saw an amazing sight. She walked straight to a woman (the caregiver) who was holding a baby, pushing two in a swing, observing two more in a buggy, and watching the eleven year old and four young toddlers, all by herself!!! I politely informed her that her 'little helper' might not be the kind of help she wants. I told her what I had observed. In response, she told me to mind my own business and that 'the boy' climbs up the slide all of the time at home. I asked what the name of her daycare service was and she told me to 'mind my own F*%^ing' business, this all said in front of the kids she was watching!!! I will be back at that park with my camera, and hopefully I'll be able to snap a shot of this caregiver which you might post later. I know that if those were my children, I would never want her watching them.
Other than the caregiver taking offense at you demanding to know her business, I'm unclear on what the problem is.
ReplyDeleteare you sure she was a caregiver and not the mom?
ReplyDeleteI agree...so the eleven year old was bossy, not the caregivers fault. And the number of kids may be alarming but I'm pretty sure the paretns are probablly aware of that. Now the launguage in front of the kids is the only thing alarming but with that many kids and none bleeding or throwing a temper tantrum I would have to say she is doing a decent job.
ReplyDeleteGreat sighting OP. Thanks for actually doing something to try to help for once. Most OP's just watch the abuse until they cant hold their fingers still anymore and then go home and type it up.
ReplyDeleteWhat abuse?? for crying out loud here! Older kids are bossy with younger kids, that is the way of the world! didn't any of you have older siblings? It sounds like the younger kid stood up for himself. Seriously, give me a break here! let's worry about children being beaten and dieing and starving instead of being a little bossed around by an older child.
ReplyDeleteI think the issue here is too many children (10) for one person to reasonably keep safe in a public playground. I doubt the parents of the children are aware of this situation. A licensed daycare would be required to have more caregivers for that number. My guess is, she has others there at drop off and pick up.
ReplyDeleteI went to school with someone that had eleven brothers and sisters, so you never know. It could be a mom or aunt watching this group of children. Maybe, thats why she told you to mind your own business.
ReplyDeleteMaybe she does not normally have that many at once....the eleven year old and four boys could possibly be in school all day. So maybe she just has the four babies which in witin ratio. Maybe since the older ones were out of school that day she was a little overwhelmed number wise.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe the little girl was her daughter/niece, who had been charged with "watching" the little boys. 11 yo girls are bossy critters, and the mom/aunt/sitter likely knows that and uses it to her advantage when she has that many kids to take care of.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, I don't see the point to this post. If the OP hadn't been rude to the mom/aunt/sitter, there wouldn't have been any bad language issues.
Now, if the mom/aunt/sitter was smoking, feeding the babies bread balls and Coke, and yanking the older kids around while yelling at them, that might have been noteworthy. Add in a poopy diaper explosion that was spread thru the playground, and the woman would win bad caretaker of the year.
Unreal...sorry if it sounded like I was saying this post was abusive. I did not mean that.I meant other OP's watch terrible abuse, but don't step in to help. They just run home and blog it.
ReplyDeleteThis particualr post was not abusive per se, but I do commend the OP for at least stepping in to try to warn the nanny/sitter with the safety of the children in mind.
If she is a licensed childcare provider she may NOT be over her capacity. She might have been licensed as a Large Capacity Child Care. ( up to 14 in some states) Maybe that older girl was an assistant. In some states that is still within licensing guidelines if in fact she was really 14yrs. and NOT 11 yrs. In some states her own children do NOT count against capacity if they are over 10 years old. Some do NOT count at all. (weird though) Or she maybe be just babysitting unlicensed or over capacity and hiding out at the park so she doesn't get an unannounced licensing visit.
ReplyDeleteThe language is another story. There, your dealing with poor quality Child Care. Regardless, the language is in very poor taste around ANY CHILDREN.Who knows, but I commend you for saying something to her. She doesn't need to be influencing young children with her poor childcare and ill trained "helper".
thank you brandy.
ReplyDeleteI think the OP is inflating the number of charges thi woman was watching, and I think she added the profanity for good measure.
ReplyDeleteI am the OP how posted this comment, and did not inflate the number of children or falsely add profanity for good measure. Why would you say something like that and try to cause trouble on here?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds crazy. If all of a sudden, my extended family dropped off 10 children for me to take care of in one day, I'd just stay home with them and play really fun games than drag a large number of babies and toddlers out in public. There was a story in the news this evening (saturday evening) of a woman who nearly snatched a new mother's baby at a supermarket even though the mother was right next to the baby. Crazy.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we can hold the cursing against the caregiver given how the OP approached the caregiver. In the OP's own words, she told the caregiver "her "little helper" might not be the kind of help she wants." If OP was going to say anything, she should have just stuck to the facts of the situation (the older girl trying to boss the younger boy into climbing the slide) without passing judgment on the 11 year old. As people have mentioned, the 11 year old may have been a relative of the caregiver, so she may have become more defensive.
ReplyDeleteYes, why hurt the poor babysitter's feelings by pointing out to her that her (potentially) own beloved flesh and blood daughter was abusing the children in her care? I mean, really! Her little precious should be able to do whatever she wants,no matter who gets hurt. Screw the other kids.
ReplyDeleteAnd certainly, if somebody DID have the audacity to point it out, after seeing that she was not handling her charges responsibly, and that shameless busy body did not choose very gentle, sweet , nonaccusatory words to tell her...by all means the nanny had every right to ley fly a string of profanity in front of all the children at the park that day!
Why are all of you people so harsh and judgmental anyway?
Dang, if what the 11 yog was doing was "abusing" the younger boys, you'd better get ready to charge every single 8 - 12 yog with "abuse" if they have younger siblings or younger kids around them at any time.
ReplyDeleteGirls in the range of 8 - 12 are bossy at times. That's life. The little boys could have told her to shut up, asked the baby-laden cargiver for help, or just gone and played elsewhere, right?
And the OP needs to know that the old saying about flies, honey, and vinegar is true.
I bet you are one of the people out there who wants to ban kickball and dodgeball from schools because a kid might get hurt feelings or might be depressed if their team loses a game. And we certainly don't ever want the little darlings to suffer hurt feelings, or lose at anything, or be in any way put upon by life and it's realities.
We want to raise coddled little kids who can't take care of themselves, who don't understand that actions have consequences, and who think the world owes them a couple dozen favors because they are oh so special and brilliant and wonderful.
Pshaw. What idiocy.
Chick,
ReplyDeleteI wrote the 1:24 post, but I have to say that you make an even better point here.
Kids do need to be kids sometimes. I sometimes feel sorry for kids today because, while we were able to play outside alone and learn life's lessons the hard way (which made them stick pretty good)whe we were kids, our children are so "supervised" that they don't really get the true experience of doing something mean and suffering the natural consequences of the other kids not liking them, or hitting them back, or whatever. Unfortunately we cannot just let our kids run loose anymore because the world is so much less safe than it was for us. And as parents, it is very hard to sit and watch our kids do something rude and not immediately step in to correct them and make them apoligize, or whatever.
I hate that they take away Dodgeball and give every kid a trophy for every little thing just because they participated (as opposed to the winner only and don't even keep score in YMCA sports anymore! Where are our kids going to learn the art of setting and achieving goals, earning their own way, winning and losing graciously, and trying harder the next time? And what ever happened rubbing a little dirt or spit on a scrape to make it better and continuing to play, as opposed to a trip to the doctor and an excuse from gym for every tiny bump and bruise? No wonder people can't cope with life so well anymore.
I am the one who wrote the post and just for the record, I love kids to get dirty, climb trees, learn lessons, and I play Dodgeball at my college :)
ReplyDeleteI think that it is good to let children learn lessons and go through some scrapes and bruses. But what kind of lesson are we teaching children if we stand by and do nothing if someone is bullying them? Not only are we teaching the child being bullied that no one will help them (even if there are people to help), but we are also showing the bully that their actions are not wrong. What kind people are we raising when we don't set an example by standing up for those who need help?
I think it is far worse to raise a child who does not believe in compassion and responsibility than one who is a bit 'too loved' or 'sensitive'.
You're right, we all need to stand up to bullies. That's what I meant about letting them reap their own consequences. Eventually the bully gets it too. But kids need to figure some of that stuff out. if we take care of every little problem, they don't learn how to problem solve.
ReplyDeleteI help my kids think of solutions to their problems, even bullies. But it would have to be something out of control before I stepped in to fix it for them. So they have to take responsibility for working out their own problems, but they do have the assurance that there is help if things get too far out of hand.
That's good to know. And in my opinion, that situation was out of hand.
ReplyDelete