Let me start by saying that I do not have kids. So my views may be
skewed right from the very start. I worked for the past three years at a gym,
let us call it Little Chocolate. At this job, I got to interact with a lot
of parents and kids. I got to teach little kids from the ages of about three up
to eight years old how to swim for about two years, and I worked at the summer
camp with kids between the ages of 3 and 12 for about 3 months. Now, for the
most part I understand that it must be stressful to raise kids. You have to
take into account what actions could be dangerous or scary for children, but
there is a level of extreme that several people seem to pass.
I would get bored between my shifts and would visit the daycare
room at my job between shifts. They played Old Disney Movies all the time, so
it was a nostalgia trip plus I got to visit some of the kids I knew
from the pool or lessons or whatever. One such visit I was yelled at by a lady
who worked there. She told me I couldn't be there. Asked her why. She stated
that because I was a boy, I couldn't be there....The fact that I have a Y
chromosome makes me more of a risk around children. What a load of manure. It's
not that I don't understand the fear, but really? You think I'm some kind of a
creep just because we have different bits? Generally when I showed up
it was when the girls on shift had reached their limit and were tired and
unwilling to play anymore. I'd show up and become the entertainment at the
time. We'd play hide and go seek, or legos, or watch movies, or the kids
personal favorite, climb on the human playground.
I didn't voice
my annoyance to this woman. I told her that I was friends with her
boss's son, who also would frequent the daycare to hangout. So she grumbled
something about how she would look into that, but she'd let me come in only if
I covered up my offensive shirt.
This is what the
shirt had on it
(Mind you I don't own the rights to this
shirt, it was designed by a Mr. Greg James and distributed by threadless.com)
What about this shirt is offensive? Apparently because
the two individuals have fangs I had to cover them up to enter the room. Why?
Because it was going to scare the children. I don't know about you, but I know
very few 2-8 year olds who have seen a scary vampire or werewolf
movie. So the fact that the original design of the characters are older than I
am wasn't going to even register in a little kids brain. What they did notice
was the bright yellow sticky notes I was made to wear on my shirt to cover the
teeth. A few kids asked me why I had the sticky notes. I tried to be creative
and say that I had spilled something on my shirt and I was covering up the
mess. But this lady was determined to destroy my plans. She said very loudly,
"He is wearing those sticky notes to cover up the SCARY fangs on his
chest." Oh good, now you have taught these children to be scared of
something, even though they don't know what it is. They had no reason to ever
equate the faces on my shirt with terror, but no she couldn't let them live
without knowing that these faces were terrible. She couldn't have let it go, or
could have said the images on my shirt were not real. Nope, dropped the bomb
and walked back to the baby room without so much as a backwards glance.
What I am trying to get across dear reader is that little kids
don't know to be afraid of things until they have personal experience or until
we tell them to be afraid. They would have been blissfully unaware of anything
bad and been perfectly fine with that. Unfortunately that wasn't the
case. The best scenario would have been to ignore the
shirt completely and let it go uncovered. But by trying to hide the
contents of my shirt, you just strengthen a kids need to know? And instead of
coming up with a logical explanation, you devastate them with fear. I'm
not saying that my way is the best way, but just telling someone that something
is bad and not explaining why isn't helpful either.
