This story starts when my daughter was in kindergarten. Her school allows all the kids to wear their Halloween costumes on the Friday before Halloween every year. When [Daughter] got back from her first school dress-up party, she was excited to tell me the tale of witnessing a knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress.

It seems that the two teachers who handled kindergarten classes had dressed up as a knight and a dragon, respectively. During lunchtime, their principal had shown up dressed as a princess and was “captured” by the teacher dressed up as a dragon and then “rescued” by the one dressed as a knight. This show was apparently the highlight of my daughter’s day, and it made me smile a bit just hearing her excitement retelling the tale.

I should probably also mention that while her teachers were both female, her principal was male.

A year later, my daughter got to do her second school Halloween dress-up. That year, her principal was dressed up as a princess once again, and at one point, one of her peers, who was dressed as a dinosaur, was encouraged to capture the principal. To [Daughter]’s surprise, her teacher then came running up to her with a foam sword and told her that she could rescue her principal by “slaying” the dinosaur. [Daughter] was ecstatic as she told me how she got to rescue her principal that night.

At my next conference with [Daughter]’s teacher, I learned that [Teacher] had been assigned the duty of selecting the child who would be entrusted with a foam sword. Apparently, it was a special privilege that was only offered to a girl who did well in classwork and could be entrusted to be restrained and not go too wild, assaulting her peers with a sword. I was assured that it was a tremendous compliment that my daughter was the one selected.

I assume you all can guess what happened the next year. By fourth grade, all the kids knew that their principal would be dressed as a princess, and the moment he came out to the playground, all the boys rushed out to join in “capturing” him. Then, out came a teacher to “knight” a handful of girls — and it was always only girls who were knighted — who promptly slew their peers and rescued their principal. The kids all looked forward to this routine by then.

I finally got to talk to [Principal] about his damsel-in-distress act recently. Apparently, it started out as a joke. His kindergarten teachers had been jokingly arguing over what thematic costumes they should wear when [Principal] had offered to be the princess to complete their theme. His original capture — and rescue — had not been planned and was just the adults having a bit of impromptu fun, but the kids loved it so much that they decided to make it a routine.

Eventually, this branched out, and [Principal] is now committed to one capture and rescue for each grade in his school. [Principal] joked that he regrets starting the routine as it’s impossible to get any work done on dress-up day when he has to somehow fit in six captures along with his usual workload. But the kids love it so much that he doesn’t dare stop it now.

He also said that while it was not his intention originally, once he realized he had the opportunity to subvert standard gender roles, he figured he would lean into it. So now, once a year, the big, strong man who leads the school wears a dress and gets captured, and it’s up to the girls, and only the girls, to rescue him from his untimely demise.

By now, the whole school is getting into it. My daughter had a project not too long ago where she had to participate in a mock debate on whether the school should keep its actual mascot or replace it with a very masculine-looking princess. Another teacher apparently always does a test around Halloween on which the questions include multiple examples of their principal being dragged off by various threats while wearing increasingly ridiculous outfits, and the only way to rescue him is to correctly solve the appropriate math problems.

My son will start school in two years. My daughter and I have discussed it and decided not to tell [Son] what to expect during his first school dress-up party, as it will be more fun for him to be surprised. [Daughter] is adamant that she wants to try to convince [Son] to dress up as a princess that day in hopes that the teachers will decide to “capture” him along with his principal. I highly doubt she’s going to succeed at this plan, but it’s more amusing to me to sit back and watch than to try to talk her out of it. Whatever happens, I’m sure [Son] will enjoy the show as much as [Daughter] did.

A number of years ago, I worked in a nursery as bank staff. I was effectively the nursery equivalent of a floating teacher; I worked in whatever room needed an extra body, for as many hours per week as needed. I enjoyed it because I got to work with children of any age between six months and five years, and the variety kept me from going out of my mind, having to deal with the same idiot coworkers every day.

Unfortunately, management considered bank staff to be less important than staff members who stayed in one room all the time, even though I had the same qualifications (and sometimes more experience) than the fixed staff members. This is just one of the times I was treated as expendable.

Manager: “Hey [My Name], do you want to do a first aid course? It would be paid for by the nursery, but you’d have to give up a few hours on two Saturdays.”

Me: “Absolutely!”

Manager: “I love the enthusiasm! I’ll let you know when and where in the next few weeks.”

A few weeks pass, and I hear nothing from the manager. However, a number of fixed staff members mention that the first aid course will be at [location] at [time] next Saturday. I assume the manager forgot to let me know, and not wanting to embarrass her by pointing it out, I just turned up at the right time anyway.

Course Leader: “Oh, you’re not on the register, but I’m sure it’s just a mistake.”

I do the course along with more than half a dozen coworkers, ace the test at the end, and go home feeling pleased that I got my qualification and avoided embarrassing my manager for her mistake. The next working day, she pulls me aside.

Manager: “[My name], why did you go on the first aid course on Saturday?”

Me: *Confused.* “Because you asked me if I wanted to, and I said yes?”

Manager: “Oh. Well, actually, we only had a certain amount of funding from head office for the course, and we thought it was better if [Fixed Staff Member] got his first aid certificate than a bank staff member.”

Me: “Huh, okay. When did you tell me this?”

Manager: “Never mind, it’s done now. *Leaves quickly.*

That was just one of the many ways the management team let me know I wasn’t valued as a staff member, despite how hard I worked and how many hours I put in.

I left less than a year later after losing patience with their disrespect, and I’m now self-employed as a nanny. It’s amazing how much more I enjoy work now that I’m treated with respect and not forced to play politics instead of looking after children.

I work in a small, relatively upmarket preschool where we encourage the kids to have a “news day”. Basically, show and tell, being something from home, a photo, a book, even an interesting leaf, and talk about it in front of the class.

Other kids brought craft projects they had done, a souvenir from their vacation, and other things like that. But one day, a parent traipsed in with an old beat-up toy bucket, the kind kids make sandcastles in at the beach, and handed it to me, saying it was their son’s news.

This thing STANK. I reluctantly take it from them and find it contains a dead, ROTTING jellyfish!

They’d gone to the beach, found a dead jellyfish, and made it our problem by scooping it up and bringing it in. Our head teacher (who is too lovely for her own good) just smiled and said we’d put it on the side until news time.

Best part is it was left to me to slop the disgusting thing into the bin at the end of the day, and the slimy tentacles caught me on the wrist, giving me a raised welt for days!

To this day, I don’t know what they were thinking…

I am picking up my twin boys from kindergarten. I’m asking them about their day, and they’re excited about all the new friends and opinions that are now in their world.

Son #1: “Mom, how do girls pee?”

Me: “Same as boys, but we need to sit down while doing it.”

Son #2: “So, girls pee out of their butts?”

Son #1: “Don’t be stupid!”

I’m about to mentally praise [Son #1] for being the sensible one when…

Son #1: “Girls don’t have butts!”

When we are out walking with our four-year-old son, we sometimes encounter an older gentleman in the area. He hasn’t done anything specific that would be cause for alerting authorities, but he gives us a very bad feeling.

The first time we noticed him was when our son was not yet walking but aware of the world around him. The man came up as he was walking in the opposite direction.

Man: “Oh, what a cute little boy! You are so cute!”

At first, we didn’t think much of it other than being a bit awkward as we aren’t very socially outward. But the man kept mentioning our son’s cuteness, to our son, without ever looking in our direction. I tried to think positively, that it was my social difficulties that made a bad feeling about this man grow, and I tried to calm down and smile. However, once I noticed that my son looked terrified, we firmly walked away.

This kept happening. We avoided eye contact and didn’t slow down our walk, yet the man always took whatever seconds he managed to get to talk to our son, even to the point where my husband told him to stop. He didn’t; it was as if we didn’t exist. He never followed us or anything; it was only that creepy behaviour when we happened to walk past each other.

Since then, our son has forgotten his first fright of the man, but he does notice that we don’t like to linger when approached by that man specifically. On an unrelated note, but relevant to the story, this man was not of Scandinavian ethnicity looks-wise.

One day, my son came home from kindergarten.

Son: “Mom, we are bad people.”

Me: “Really? Why?”

Son: “It is bad to avoid someone with darker skin.”

At first, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but once I understood he meant that man, I explained to him that, yes, you shouldn’t avoid people because they have darker skin, but that we avoided him because he had scared him when he was little and given Mommy and Daddy bad feelings about it. Since we have friends of different ethnicities, even family members, he seemed to understand that we only avoided that man, not dark-skinned people in general.

Of course, we used much simpler terms, but I tried to explain the difference between avoiding someone with dark skin and avoiding someone BECAUSE they have dark skin.

Later, there was a reminder to all parents sent from kindergarten about their policy that they didn’t accept any discrimination of any kind, among some other policies they mentioned. We did not think much of it until we had a meeting with one of the teachers.

Teacher: “I must say, I am worried about what your son is learning. He has told us that you avoid dark-skinned people because they give us bad feelings.”

Husband: “What? That’s not true!”

Teacher: “Look. I need to remind you that we do not accept discrimination here. Your son has several friends of different ethnicities, and that is a good thing.”

Me: “Is this about that man? My son thought we avoided a man because he had dark skin. Did he get that from kindergarten?”

Teacher: “We teach the children not to discriminate…”

Me: “And so do we.”

Teacher: “Then why are you teaching him to avoid a person with dark skin?”

Me: “We avoid that man because he scared our son on several occasions when he was younger and doesn’t listen when we tell him off.”

Husband: “Why would he think it is because of his skin? I don’t even know why he would get that idea?”

The teacher grew quiet for a moment and then excused herself to make a phone call. Coming back, she explained that there had been a misunderstanding. Apparently, our son mentioned the man once after we had met him, and one of the teachers had asked what he looked like. Then, when our son proceeded to say that we always avoid him, she jumped to the conclusion that we were racists and then had a talk with all the children about how it is bad to avoid someone just because of their skin colour. Unfortunately for our four-year-old, he didn’t quite grasp all the reasoning and took that as us being bad people.

We never found out which teacher it was, and I am sure she had noble intentions. But next time, I hope she talks to us before teaching our son that he is a bad person.