Cleopaetra, Queen of Denial also works at a preschool

M is Boy's nursery school director. Despite the impressive pedigree she unfurls at you at first meeting of having advanced degrees in child this and that, she seems to have lost her love of the kid. As I've told other Mommies who are at the school that I'm friendly with, I think M is phoning it in. There have been too many incidents that give me pause for thought. It's also my raison d'etre for getting Boy ready for a new preschool in the fall that I won't have to sweat Boy's happiness with.
Boy took awhile to like the school. He loves the teaching assistants (who are really just glorified babysitters since none have a degree in child development or anything) and he likes many of the students there. But he doesn't like M. She constantly tries to convince him that she loves him by grabbing him for a hug but you can see Boy is tolerating it. Sure, he's not the most articulate of the little overachievers at M's school but he's pretty easy to read.
I didn't like M from the get go but because we were unaware of the hoops we had to leap through to get Boy into a program for two days a week to ease me out of insanity, we had to settle for the one Boy's best friend was in. Valentine had put her son in the school a few months before and when we first arrived for the looksy, her youngster was wailing inconsolably. M was really ticked off that little George clung to me like ivy on a wall.
"No, no, no," she said, prying a wailing George out of my arms, "he has to get over this. He knows me. He has been around me for three months now."
I kept my tongue by not telling her that I'd known George for a few months longer and he was very comfortable with me. She was the expert.
Boy was with Husband and comfortable because he had Daddy, Mommy and his "Johge" near him. But now, this lady had taken George away from Mommy so he was agitated.
Later, as both Boy and George ran around outside, M told me the reason Boy was agitated was because I was wound up tighter than a clock. She said once he was there, he would be fine.
Fast forward three months and eventually, Boy did get used to the school. Not M.
We are seven months into Boy's tenure at the academy (as she calls it) and the more time I spend with Boy there, the more I realise that this isn't the right enviro for him. He's gotten more articulate; he knows his alphabet and numbers well but he isn't getting structure. There is a laisssez faire attitude the staff has about being there. Until the newest instructor started who lives around the corner, staff would arrive 10 minutes after school began. M would arrive some times five minutes late but mostly about 20 minutes late.
(Of course, if you're five minutes late, M chirps quickly that you owe her $10 because you were late. Because M is a really mercurial person, I pay rather than remind her that she should be paying me for all the times her staff is late and she's late. I just want her to shut up so I can leave.)
The only time M has really anything positive to say about Boy is when he's either been entirely docile (as her favourite students tend to be) or if he's managed to hurt himself pretty badly. He's an active kid so it's expected. M tells me a story of how it happened and I hear from one of the other kids about what happened to get Boy to the point where he hurt himself. When he smacked another kid in the head, I didn't get to ask what was the lead up to it. The child he smacked tends to be a bit of a whiner who spends the better part of the day curled up in M's lap making mewling noises (he's the youngest of five kids and his Mother always looks like she could use a good antidepressant with a cosmo and a gift card to Good Vibrations). M was incensed. She said that Boy should be evaluated for behaviour problems.
Sure, Boy has his issues but he's 2 1/2. They aren't exactly the souls of negotiation and patience. Boy tends to get physical when he thinks someone is a git. He was mad tonight because a pretty girl tonight he had extended his attentions to was ignoring him. He pushed her. We told him that was wrong. He glared at her Father. Even with George, who is his best friend, he has figured out how to deal with him. If George has gotten in one of his "all that I see is mine" moods, Boy will play with an item and distract George long enough to grab what he wants. If George gets petulant, Boy will mess up George's hair. Boy has shoved or hit George twice when George hit or shoved Boy.
Picking a setting for a two year old is hard. Up here in NoCal, you tend to have to choose schools that are prohibitively expensive (or as a friend puts it, the school you put your kid in because you feel guilty for not spending any time with them) or the cheaper schools that require you to just give them a check on time. Almost all require some sort of getting in line (either literally or figuratively) before they consider your kid for their school. And if you're not aware of it, you are, as my late Daddy said, SOL.
So, we have M and her interesting ways that we want to move Boy out of. Hopefully I won't have to write about anything else on her.