Lessons in life.

It's funny how much working with kids has already taught me. Some observations I have made during my 3 weeks as a kindergarten teacher are listed here.

1. Males start to play with their penises at a very early stage. It is something genetically built in them. Females should not make them feel guilty for constantly touching/playing with their package.
While putting a child (male) to sleep the other day I noticed his restlessness. I was wondering what was wrong. Did he go to the toilet before the nap? Does he need to pee now? What are those weird sounds he's making? Is he in pain? Does he have a stomach ache? What should I do? As I approached him, I realised he didn't have to pee, nor was he in pain... He was playing with his you-know-what. This boy is 3 years old.

While putting another little boy to sleep at work, I made the same observation. This one was a problematic child to begin with. One can never make him fall asleep the easy way (if there's such a thing in the first place). He has the tendency to throw away his duvet and pillow in a very violent manner and scream while others are actually trying to sleep. Fair enough, he is in fact younger than the others in his group. So there he was lying in his bed without a duvet. The next thing he decided to humour himself with was stripping. Just on the sidenote, the room they sleep in is as cold as Siberia in the winter. He started with his trousers, removing them swiftly, so swiftly that he removed his underwear as well. The underwear he put back on though. He threw the trouser away in a very showman type of way. He probably has a future in the Chippendales. He took his shirt off too. Only underwear and socks. Cute. Not really. Then he lied down in his bed saying "I, I, I, I, I...". Soon after lying down it started. There he went. He started pulling down his underwear so that his willy would come out, no, pop out. And after achieving this little spectacle he pulled them back up so that the willy got folded... And then down again. This one is 2 years old.

2. One can tell almost instantly how a child is in terms of personality. We all know they are definitely more straight-forward than adults but I do not consider it to be the same thing. There is a 4-year-old girl, who with the first look and movement of her right hand, convinced me that she is one of those little princesses who always get their way. When I had to put her to sleep, I knew I was in serious trouble. I was right.
One of the first kids I met was this one boy who gave me an over-confident grin. I could tell he was a clever one, even though he was obviously one of those who spends all his energy on clowning and goofing around. So easy to read.
I love kids for this quality because it makes them so easy to read. It's most of the time easy to predict their responses to things. And there I was thinking kids were unpredictable.

3. Males have a lousy taste in women from a very young age. This I have come to realise through mostly one girl and her 4 "boyfriends". This girl is the same little princess I mentioned in the previous section. She will be a hardcore bitch when she grows up, everyone at work agrees. Now, the 4 boyfriends are just the tip of the iceberg, as I have only worked there for 3 weeks. She is not nice to anyone. Not even to her boyfriends. She is not really pretty, sweet, nor charming. So why is it then that she is collecting all of the boys? Do all the boys just want to be recognised as her boyfriend because everyone else has already been, thus it has some sort of social value? What ever but bad taste in women must be in their genes as well since they make such dreadful choices when they're only 3 years old.

4. The up-bringing of children in today's Finland is alarming. These kids are the rudest I have ever met. They can be very sweet as well but most of the time they are completely lacking good manners and a sense for discipline. They never use the conditional voice when they want something. It's directly "I want! Give me! Do this! Go! Take!". I mean, if I had ever talked like that to anyone, my parents would have made me shut up until I said things the way they should be said. They hardly ever say "Thank you" nor "Please". Table manners are one thing I am concerned about as well. These kids eat with their mouths open, with food dripping from their mouths. Yummy. Try to have lunch in the same table with even one of them, not to mention 5 of them. Funfunfun. They need to be taught early enough, otherwise they just won't learn at all.
One of their biggest problems is aggressiveness. They hit and kick, they scream and yell. And when you punish them, they say you can't do it because they don't have to obey anyone or anything at home either. Great.
A lot of these kids are loved with money and gifts instead of time and actual affection. As the productivity level gets higher and higher, people get more and more stressed. Parents have to put in extra hours at work and yes, maybe those extra hours pay a bit of extra but that extra cash comes staright out of their children's up-bringing. I don't blame the parents that much though, it's the general atmosphere that feeds this kind of pattern of behaviour. It's just very obvious with some kids that their parents really don't have much time for them and they try to fix it by buying a lot of nice things for them. And as the parents feel guilty for spending so little time with their kids, they often feel that they can't refuse anything from their kids. The kids always get what they want and they never learn to appreciate the things they have. As a result they become obnoxious, disobedient and disrespectful. I don't think the parents meant it that way but that's the result.

Those were my main points. I can just finish off by saying:

Thank God, I was never like that myself!

57 seconds of patheticness at a play school

So I have started work in the English speaking play school now. It's a whole lot nicer than I thought it would be. I feel useful and needed and it never gets boring, there is always something to do.
But this post is not going to be too long, I just want to share a very shocking and traumatising realisation I had at work a few days ago.
The kids very eating their snack, they get it after the nap. Well, I was on kitchen duty and had to make sure all the kids finish eating and get their dishes into the dishwasher. There were only two kids left in the dining room, a three-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl. They were sitting next to each other in the same table. They hadn't even nearly finished eating. They were constantly staring at each other with these stupid grins on their faces. Yuk. But at the same time so sweet. I didn't feel at all bad nor pathetic at this point. Not at all. Mostly amused. Well, as they were most definitely not concentrating on eating, I went over to them and tried to tell them that the other kids had already been playing for more than half an hour. I encouraged them to finish their snacks and then join the other kids, so I could finally finish the dishes and the rest of the cleaning and go home. The second I took a step away from those two kids, they held each others' hands and smiled and the girl told the boy to repeat the words OH MAMMA MIA. And they said it together. Oh god damn fucking mamma sodding mia! Then the girl moved her head closer to the boy's... Oh God, please don't let them kiss in front of me! I figured that God might think differently so I just turned around to I avoid seeing the utterly sugary scene of two kids kissing. And as I turned around the girl said: you know, we're holding hands... The boy just made this accepting sound, which let me know that he was just about as close to ecstasy as he'll ever get. Then the girl (who seems to be doing all the talking here) says: when we hold hands, it means that we're going to get married. The boy just giggled a bit and so did the girl and then the boy just goes: we're going to be married now.

I froze. I fucking froze.

I stood there, my back towards the two kids and couldn't move.

Oh my fucking God. These two three-year-olds have more things going on in their love lives than I do!

How pathetic is that?!

I'll tell you how pathetic it is.

VERY!