the children's place
(if by children you mean children of low to middle-income families that don't expect too much attention, too many state-of-the-present educational tools, 21st-century-looking classrooms or teacher-to-child ratios that fit within dhr standards)
(hannah and me, part eighteen)


i am something of a reactionary most of the time. i don't really see this as a fault as much as i do the product of not wanting to worry about any little thing all of the time. what could happen is something that i will think about, but never obsess over. could i die in a car wreck from not putting my seatbelt on when traveling across a parking lot? well, yes, i guess i could. most likely, it's not going to happen, so i don't worry about it. could i be less sore after a softball game, basketball game or football practice if i stretched beforehand? sure i could, but the sore isn't too inconvenient, so i usually don't. could i be taken over by the impulse to rob a bank on my way to work this afternoon? i most certainly could, but my lack of forethought in not having a ski mask packed away in my glove compartment and/or my lack of owning any weapon threatening enough to rob a bank with will save me from years of imprisonment. now there are exceptions to this rule, but that is a subject for another post when the exception proves relevant to being written about.

sarah is different. she is worried all the time. what could happen will keep her up at night. sometimes, such as in arguments over wearing a seatbelt in the parking lot, this drives me crazy. there are other times, though, that her worry makes sense. case in point. yesterday, i picked hannah up from daycare and her classroom was like a scene out of any movie you can think of where there is one parent/teacher/guardian repsonsible for too many children and are obviously in over their heads. right now, i am thinking of kindergarten cop. the teacher knew she was in trouble. she was serving as potty patrol for one kid. a jungle gym for another. and a handwasher for another. all at the same time. meanwhile, one of hannah's friends is tying something around hannah's neck. she isn't hurting hannah. so, i don't really think anything of it. i make a comment to kearra that she looks like she has her hands full. she tells me that she is currently watching 15 kids. by herself!!! i thought, "man, that sucks for you." and hannah and i headed home. not until i told the story to sarah last night did i think anything of it. the kids seemed ok. no one was bleeding. the worst case scenario didn't seem to be playing itself out. i am cool. well, of course, sarah freaks out. she gets online and sees that, according to dhr rules, hannah's class yesterday afternoon seems to be breaking 90 percent of them. turns out, according to a conversation sarah had with her teachers this morning, that the teacher-to-child ratio in her class is supposed to be 7 to 1. yikes.

so, what do we do? what do i do? the children's place (our church's daycare and hannah's daytime home since she was a baby) has struggled mightily in the last couple years. they don't have the budget to hire capable people, so turnover is always high. when they find a diamond in the rough, they don't have the money to keep them. and because they are always shorthanded, the dependable teachers are always left to cover for others by pulling shifts longer than they should. even people that love kids need a break and they all have a breaking point. i walked by the baby room last week and saw the interim director sitting in a rocking chair with her eyes closed. did it strike me as odd? kind of, but there weren't any babies screaming, so i am sure she just wanted to find a quiet place to get away for a minute.

the children's place, much like humc on the whole, has been floating by on reputation for years now. i know this. sarah knows this. any long time member of the church must have an idea. but the worst case scenario hasn't played out, so why worry about the slipping quality if you are still bringing in kids and money and parents that don't know any better. well, the answer is easy. with the children's place and the church. what's the old saying? "if you aren't moving forward, you are moving backwards." something like that. and people that care about not moving backwards, people that care about the well-being of their children are not so naive to believe that the worst case scenario will not, one day, play out. and so the aware and the enlightened parents will move on. many already have. there are only a couple kids, hannah's age, that are left at the children's place. most have seen the flaws and moved on to daycares that make them feel safe. places that make them feel that the worst case scenario has a far greater chance of not happening than happening.

we have stuck with the church and daycare out of loyalty and love. it is our home. these people. these pastors. these teachers are our family. but hannah's physical and spiritual well-being coming into question changes things, doesn't it?

i may be the yin to sarah's yang when it comes to worry, but in this case, hannah's case, i am on board with her. things have to change.

for the better.