Eat Like A Child, I Dare You

Do 80 percent of the children today have ADD or am I just getting old? I used to think I had so much energy until I started working with young children. They win.

Once again I am amazed how it can take up to an hour at lunch time to eat a mandarin, a corn dog and a yogurt. Probably has something to do with the fact that most of that time the child is doing everything but eating. Sadly the average child rarely eats even half of the lunch their parent’s took the time to prepare. Besides the food items becoming play toys or talking creatures, they must stand up every time they have a minuscule thought. I seriously wonder is this because they think they will be heard more easily or is it because they feel too short to be heard or both.

I am actually envious of this talent to be near food for such a lengthy time with no temptation to devour it. If I could find a way to somehow muster this ability to use my imagination in a way to just play with my food as if they were animate objects never eating much, I could really lose a lot of weight. Great diet plan. I'm on it.

The paranoia happened again today:

No broken crackers, ever. Every teacher must realize that when serving snack, if a chocolate teddy bear graham cracker is missing any body part even if only half of an arm, the child will notice and immediately assume that some other child sneaked into the locked snack cabinet when no one was looking and intentionally bit the arm off on purpose out of spite. Understand the concept that it broke in the box, as many crackers do, is way too logical of an explanation for a four year old.

Either it was the full moon or merely that it was one of the first cloudy rainy days but it was one of those days where the mantra ‘walking feet,’ was said so often that I began saying it when no child was even running.

Question of the day:

I announced today that tomorrow will be our Pajama Party! Naturally meaning that all the children will get to wear their comfy clothes and slippers tomorrow and carry around their teddy bears. We may even serve hot cocoa. Boom, you got a party. Why is it that there is nothing more exciting to a child than the word, party? You do not have to even do anything to make a party in a child’s eyes. I could tell the children that on Friday we are going to have a book party and ask everyone to bring their favorite book. And that alone would get them to react in the same way as if I had just announced that we were having a bounce house with Santa Claus, his reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. This is usually when I hear ‘I love you Miss Lori.’

It is so easy to light up a typical child’s eyes. Their extreme almost manic enthusiasm is certainly what makes teaching at this level worth while.

Having a party day redeems me in their eyes, as long as I remember to never serve a teddy bear graham with a decapitated body part.