And so it starts...

 My new gig has a lot of boys.
And boys are, well, boys.

I know it's trendy to pretend they're not that different from girls, but they are.

Yes, there are areas where they cross over, boys who like to do 'girl' things, girls who like to do 'boy' stuff.

I endeavor to avoid terms like that in program, they're not boy or girl toys, they're just toys.

Pink isn't a girl color just as blue isn't a boy color.
Art table activities are for everyone, too.

You get the idea. I encourage them to do whatever activities they're interested in doing without being concerned about who should play with what. It works well most of the time.

Thing is, boys are generally much more physical than girls. They argue more, they get loud faster, they crash into each other, they try to dominate the other boys. It's normal behavior. Normal in boys, and sometimes in girls.

The group in my new program has 38 kids.
I think 8 of them are girls.

It's chaotic after school. They pour into the cafeteria, every single one of them making noise, running, shoving each other around. I put a stop to backpack throwing (stand behind the blue line by the sink, throw your backpack the 10 to 15 feet to a basket) the second day, they didn't try it the first day.

They do have a routine of sorts.

Their stuff is put into laundry baskets. On Tuesday, which was day one for me on site, those baskets were lined up under the stage in front of the right hand double door, thus blocking half the fire exit. When I questioned it, the girl who's been working there since October said that the previous site director had done it that way.

When I pointed out the blocked exit door, she shrugged it off.
"That's how Beezee did it."

So on Wednesday, I moved the entire stack of baskets down to the other end of the room. The kids came in and figured it out. Not difficult.

The first day on site, I was working to learn names, get an idea of their routine and find out how they set up the cafeteria.

After snack time and a 'team meeting', both of  which are a full group things, Group 1 goes outside while group 2 does 'quiet activities' in the cafeteria.

Yep, two groups. We'll get back to that in a moment.

Quiet activities are in short supply. It's understocked with just regular program supplies, forget actual crafts or construction or science activities. One tiny little basket of LEGO, some wooden dominoes that won't stand up on edge because they're cheap crap, and a bin with puzzles. Not many games, it's hard to tell what's there because things are in baskets. Brown woven baskets. It's drab and colorless, which is something I plan to fix as soon as I can.

The office staff/directors have the professional demeanor (good heavens you should have seen the interviews I was put through!)  and say all the right things, but the program I'm getting is the same mess I've walked into over and over and over during my child care career.

Programming isn't thought out or supplied.

What they've been doing is going out right after snack time and staying out until nearly 5, when the groups will switch. By the time the second group is out there, it's getting dark, it's cold, and the kids are being picked up.

In other words, the site director had no idea what to do to keep kids entertained so she put them outside and let them entertain themselves.

I'm an advocate of lots of space to move around and many opportunities to do so, but there should be other things offered. What's been going on there is a babysitting service.

The now-departed site director separated the kids into two groups. I questioned that on Friday during our group discussion.

They were straightforward. "Well there was a lot of fighting and people got mad. Lots of kids got hit."

Because most of them are boys and we all know (or should know) how boys behave, that's how she chose to 'fix' things.

It's been that way since the end of September.
They divide all the friends and keep them apart.

"Yeah, we don't even have enough kids in group to play soccer."

Several of the other kids, who don't want to play soccer but still would like to play together haven't been able to, either. The kids who were having problems weren't the only ones forcibly separated. Had to balance the numbers, so they just arbitrarily decided which kids would be in what group.

Because the adults in charge were too lazy to teach the kids how to work things out, I guess. I'm not clear on everything that happened.

But if you don't give kids the tools to fix their issues, they're never going to learn. Keeping them apart was causing them resentment, anger, sadness and frustration. To me, the worst part is that they were powerless to do anything about it. They had no choice but to comply with what the adults made them do.

Our conversation during group time on Friday was about those issues.
I listened to them for about 10 minutes, calling on one after the other as they raised their hands. They told me about the hitting, the arguments and the anger.

Then, when they started to repeat things that had already been said, I said, "Okay, I think I understand. There was a lot of rule breaking and that meant you weren't playing together. Without yelling, tell me, would you like to try to keep us all one group today?"

They looked at each other and back at me, checking to see if I meant it. When they realized that I did mean it, they were really excited. Their volume did increase a bit, but they didn't yell.

So I said, "You all know what the rules are.
The rules are on you, not on me. You're all very capable of remembering a few rules without me going over them again.
Knowing that we don't hit our friends and that if you can't solve a problem without hurting someone you can come to me or one of the other adults for help, let's try hanging out together today."

Guess what?

Yes, you're correct. They did fine.
We didn't go outside for two whole hours, either.

We went out right after snack time because they've all been cooped up in their classrooms and they're ready to get out and run off some energy. It just makes extra work for the adults to try to keep things calm when the children aren't capable of being calm at that time. Why ask them to do something they can't physically do, then be grumpy when they don't do it? Geez.

Now I can understand separating kids that are having problems for a day or two, even a week in extreme cases. But punishing the entire group for a whole school year because a few of them were having communication issues and acting like boys and pushing each other around and hitting on occasion?

I can't see how that's a helpful thing to do. Not even helpful for the adults, as they had to take paperwork every afternoon and divide the kids. Four clipboards are in use. A master one that has child information/files and the official sign in document, another one that sits on the parent table, and one for each group for a face to name count every half hour.

I'll be changing that permanently.
Also being tossed out? Stars as a reward and little fucking trinkets for compliance.

More on that later, I was going to be in bed an hour ago.

I keep walking into the same damn stuff.
Of course.