Playgroup Rant

Jack and I go to this playgroup on Thursdays, for him, not me. It consists of mostly 2-3 year olds and their Mommies and sometimes the odd sibling or two. Take today for example, Annabelle was there as well because her school was closed do to yet another Jewish holiday, and her school, although not religious, is owned by a temple and therefore follows their schedule. Anyway, that's not the point of today's rant...

So today, Annabelle is with us at Jack's playgroup and we (Annabelle, Jack and I) are at the Play Doh table making shapes. Jack for some reason is completely obsessed with shapes, his favorite being the triangle, so naturally he has gathered up all of the shape cutters and is having me make various shapes out of Play Doh so that he can line them up, which is what he does when we are at home.

After a few minutes of this, Jack has all of his shapes lined up just the way he wants them and is happily naming them off when suddenly, Annabelle calls over Miss P. (one of the play group "teachers") and asks if she wants to play Play Doh with her. Miss P. comes over and sits down in between Annabelle and Jack and starts asking Annabelle if she knows what the different shapes are.

This was fine except that Miss P. kept picking up the shapes that Jack had lined up and disregarding the fact that it was seriously pissing him off! Every time she picked up a shape Jack tried to take it back from her and she pushed his little hand away and threw him a lump of clay like he was some sort of moron who wouldn't know the difference. She would say, "now this is a tough one, do you know what this shape is, Annabelle?" and Jack would try to reach for it and be like, "that's my pentagon!" and she would completely ignore what he was saying, push his hand away, toss him another lump and then take a different shape from his line-up!

I am not sure why this angered me so much. Maybe it was because this is supposed to be Jack's playgroup and Annabelle was just there by default, and once again, she was receiving all of the attention... Squeaky wheel. Grease. I get it. But come on, she should have realized what she was doing. They (the play group leaders) put all of this time and effort into trying to inform us, as parents, to be conscious of what our children are doing because they are constantly learning through play and positive reinforcement is supposed to help build stronger more confident children, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, but then she just goes and completely crushes my little boy.

Bitch.

She should practice what she preaches.

All snide insults aside, I think the reason I am so angry, which has nothing to do with the Play Doh incident, is that these "teachers", who have no real teacher qualifications, treat Jack like he is some type of freak because he won't sit in a circle. Seriously. The boy is not stupid yet they treat him that way because he does not want to conform. They have said things like, "Soooo- tell me a little about Jack... Has he always been like this?"

WTF? He is 2 and a half. His sister was THE EXACT same way at that age. She, by the way, is now Princess "circle time."

Last week at playgroup we were supposed to be decorating paper apples to hang on a paper tree... It being fall and all. Jack wasn't really interested in the activity at first, I am assuming because there were way too many toys to check out. Once he did his once around, inspected all the toys and had a little play, he came over and decorated his apple. Miss A. commented, "Wow, did you ever actually think that Jack would do that?"

Why yes I did.

I am sorry; my son is not a robot. He is an individual and he will sit in a freakin' circle and decorate his freakin' apple when he is good and ready.

Clearly I have issues!