(I teach a preschool class with four-year-olds. On the way in from the playground, one girl is excited to talk about her sister.)
Girl: “Miss, guess what? My sister knows how to snap. She showed me.”
Me: “Wow, that’s so cool.”
Boy: “Oh, yeah? Well, my sister knows how to Snapchat!”
(I teach preschool full-time, and volunteer for a cat rescue in my free time. Today I am subbing for a teacher in the three-year-old class. The teacher has let me know that a newer student is on the tail-end of potty-training and is still in a pull-up diaper, which will need to be changed at four pm. Four pm rolls around, and I have no co-teacher to leave the other kids with, so I decide to take them with me to the bathrooms so I can change this boys pull-up.)
Me: “Okay, friends. Please line up.”
Child #1: “Why? What are we doing?”
Me: “We’re going down to the bathr—”
Child #1: “I don’t have to go potty!”
Child #2: “I don’t need to use the potty!”
(I have to raise my voice to be heard over the cacophony of nine little kids.)
Me: “You don’t have to go, but you need to go with us. You can stand in the hall outside the bathroom.”
Child #3: “Why do I need to stand in the hall?”
Child #4: “I don’t want to stand in the hall!”
Child #5: “I don’t need to go potty!”
(As we are walking to the bathrooms, I pass a coworker, who laughs at my little class of complainers.)
Coworker: “Just like herding cats.”
Me: “I prefer the cats! None of them ever says, ‘I don’t NEED to use the litter box! I don’t WANT to use the litter box!’”
(All told, they spent less than a minute in the hallway, complaining about having to stand there. Good grief.)
(I work at a preschool/daycare. A particular six-year-old boy has slightly more trouble understanding boundaries than other six-year-olds, and is constantly grabbing things that do not belong to him and touching people who don’t want to be touched. On this day, he’s been trying to reach into my pockets to grab my car keys and phone.)
Me: “Will you please stop grabbing things out of my pockets?”
Boy: “Why?”
Me: “Because I don’t want you touching my things without permission. It’s inappropriate.”
Boy: *shocked* “Inappropriate?! THAT MEANS SEXY!”
(I had to try hard not to laugh before explaining to him that the word “inappropriate” has more than one meaning.)
(I work in pre-school. One of my colleagues is just preparing paint for an activity.)
Coworker: “Hey, [My Name], how do you mix black?”
Me: “…”
Coworker: *completely serious* “If I take grey and add some white it should work, right?”
(When I was three, one winter I forgot my coat when I go to preschool. It is a bit chilly outside, and the caretakers don’t want to let me go outside without some kind of covering, so they offer me a borrowed sweater.)
Three-Year-Old Me: “I don’t want the wretched sweater!”
(It took them a while to figure out that I was saying “wretched,” since they didn’t expect that to be in a toddler’s vocabulary!)
