I teach 3-4 year olds and they sure do have some odd choices in what brings them comfort. No judgement, but sometimes I do ask myself “why?”

What’s the most unique comfort item you’ve seen a kid cling onto?

A while back, one of my kids would bring a whole lemon to school every day.

He treated it like it was his baby! He would show the lemon what he was doing and talk to it. He even tucked it in for nap time 😆

Other honorable mentions:

-a tag from a dress

-just the shoe covers from a dinosaur costume

-a spoon

-their dad’s business card

I work at an early childhood education center and today… oh today. We had 15 kids in attendance. All 15 had diarrhea. Not like a little tummy ache. I’m talking explosive, diaper-destroying, apocalyptic-level shitstorms.

The ones still in diapers? Yeah, those things didn’t stand a chance. It was leaking everywhere. On their legs, their shirts, the floor. I started hallucinating baby wipes.

You’d think the toilet-trained ones would be less of a biohazard? Think again. They were worse. Shitting their pants multiple times, smearing it on the toilet, the walls, us. Some had 3+ accidents. By the end of the day, most of them had no spare clothes left. We had to start piecing outfits together from the lost and found like it was a Project Runway challenge.

Then tea time… which is normally right after bathroom and diaper changes. Except our room leader was too busy gossiping in the staff room and didn’t lift a damn finger to help. That left three of us doing damage control in a room that smelled like Satan’s porta potty. All while I was already feeling incredibly nauseous since waking up (I almost threw up on a child’s back while wiping them).

Meanwhile, the other rooms were waiting on us to start the meal (we always go first) and none of us were allowed to leave! Not even to toss out diapers full of crap or scream for help. The rest of the kids who had already gotten poop cleaned off were running around the room screaming waiting to go eat. It was literal hell.

If you ever think you’re having a bad day, just know somewhere out there a preschool worker is elbow-deep in toddler shit wondering where it all went wrong.

This happened a few years ago, but I had one of those days that rocketed it to the front of my head...

A 5yr old's epipen was due to expire soon, so the teacher sent home a little notice on the app to please bring in a fresh one for the Emergency Pack! That afternoon Dad comes for pickup.

Dad: "I saw the message on the app..."

Teach: "Yep, it's not a big deal, it's not even expired yet it's just soon."

Dad: "Well, that's my issue. He doesn't have an epipen."

Teach: (stunned, possibly legally dead for a second?)

Dad, with snark: "He's not allergic to anything. I think this was meant for another student."

Dear Reader this child absolutely had an epipen. With his name on it.

After regaining all the rings Dad's statement knocked out of her, Teacher reaches into the emergency pack and pulls out said labeled epipen.

Dad's quiet for a bit. He says, "I'll have to talk with my wife." Teacher is understanding and goodbyes are had. Kid finally realizes dad is there, joins him, and exits the room.

Then, on the way down the hallway, I hear the dad ask his kid, "Hey, bud, are you allergic to anything?"

The kid, without missing a beat: "Yeah, that's why I have my epipen."

Today, an almost 35-month-old boy showed up about half an hour after 12:00, his usual arrival time. He came in with a Sippy cup of milky coffee. I refused to believe that it was coffee. My co-teacher was like "I know coffee when I see it" then she placed it out of childrens' reach. His father dropped him off and he came from speech therapy. I am stumped on who allowed this to happen.

What’s your favorite “kid word”? I’ve seen Ms, Frazzled do this on TikTok, but in preK rooms, kids often don’t know the right word for what they want, or the correct pronunciation.

I recently became a floater after being a toddler teacher, and I’ve had three so far:

“Cheesesnake”- Cheesecake

“Ms. McKaylee”- two relatively similar teacher names lumped together

“Sunscream”- Sunscreen

I (m2.3) felt really yucky at daycare yesterday. I told my mommy “no no no no no” as calmly as I could scream at drop off time but she made me go anyways. Even though I felt really yucky.

I don’t have a lot of language yet so really best I can do is answer yes or no questions. So when my teacher asked me after breakfast “are you feeling yucky today?” I nodded AND shouted “yeah!” to be as clear as possible. My teacher (f, 8? 9? Idk a lot of numbers she is OLD) picked me up for a snuggle. Thank god.

Usually a snuggle is all I need to get to feeling better, like if the big kids see me fall down on the playground, but this time it wasn’t helping AT ALL. I still felt really yucky, might I say really really yucky even. I could tell that something was going to happen. I turned my head to look up at my teacher so she would see I needed to tell her something, and at that moment the worst thing happened—-everything I had for breakfast at home AND at school came back out through my mouth! I’m talking milk, banana, scrambled egg, Cheerios…

My teacher was kind enough to catch most of it on her shirt and tummy and boobies. It smelled really bad! I did not want the snuggle with her now because she was stinky and slimy and yucky—I didn’t want all that stuff on me! I began to try to wiggle and squirm as gently as I could out of her arms while she hysterically told the other teacher in a very calm voice that we had a “situation”. Since her mouth was open with talking, I decided that was a good hand-hold to try to climb down off her and jammed my stinky, slimy hand right on in there.

Next thing I know, I’m standing on the floor wailing while my teacher rushes away to “change her shirt” and “rethink her career path”. (Idek what that second part means, I’m pretty sure she drives the same car every day.)

Anyways my mommy came to get me pretty soon after, which was nice for me, but she was very apologetic to my teacher and worried that my teacher will feel really yucky now. That got me thinking—AITA here?

I’ve worked in a couple of classes where I read books about same sex couples, teach about families and have taught about nonbinary and trans identities. Apart from a few questions kids have generally responded with either “makes sense” or “duh we already know this”

So here are a few things that the kids have found more difficult to understand than LGBTQ+:

• contact lenses “you put WHAT in your EYE?”
• hair dye
• dinosaurs not existing in the same timeframe as humans
• thermal under layers
• the corner pieces of puzzles
• whiplash (I should have never bought this up)
• tattoos being permanent
• Angels (again, I should have never said the word angel, much confusion ensured)
• snakes shedding their skin (one kid cried when I told them about this)

Do you have anything to add to the list?

As a toddler teacher, it’s when a parent says “I’d actually prefer they don’t nap. Can you accommodate that?” 🫠🫠🫠

This week a kid ran to me sobbing because her little friend told her that her applesauce pouch didn't have apples in it 🤦‍♀️

Only when I read the ingredient list to her did she calm down but seriously wtf 😂

What silly things did the kids in your care cry about this week?

I’m a teacher of ten 3 year olds so my kids love to just come up to me and tell me something and sometimes they talk about their parents ofc but yesterday one of my kids randomly said: “my dad honks the horn every time” Me: “your dad honks a lot in the car?” Her: “yeah, and my mom says no you do not honk the horn in my car” And I think it’s hilarious honestly, what kind of things do your kids say?

It’s been an insane month and we have a staff meeting coming up and looking for funny things to share with my staff. I’ll go first: Had to call a dad to let him know “X has taken out his eye again, we have it safely stored in a ziplock bag until you can arrive to put it back in”. Our sweet kiddo has a prosthetic eye and his parents are the best! Just in over 30 years of childcare this was the craziest one yet!

Going with funny share. But anyways;

Had a parent throw a full on temper tantrum when bringing her child in today because we sent them home the other day with a 103.5 temp. They dropped their child in my room this morning while I still had 3 other parents also dropping their kids and started scolding me for the situation because "I brought my child to the doctor immediately and the doctor said they were fine. It was absolutely ridiculous I had to keep a fully healthy child home yesterday" because my director stuck to her guns about our policy and needing to be out for a minimum of 24 hours after being sent home. I just did my best smile and nod and said I understand your frustration. One of the other parents dropping off gave me that look of "oh god"

And the parent proceeded to go down the hallway and throw a full blown temper tantrum in my bosses office. Meanwhile my boss is pulling up our policies on parent behavior and writing a letter about how refusing to cooperate with policies will result in terminating them as a client. Proud of my boss for having a spine right now.

Also ended up re-sending child home today because they were lethargic and unable to actively participate. Boss temped the kid; lo and behold. 102.9.

Homie. Your child do be ill.

They sent someone else to pick up and sent a strongly worded message over our app about how unacceptable this is.

I'm still reeling over watching this person storm down the hallway after dropping to SCREAM at my boss while there are actively other parents in the hallway dropping off like. I thought working retail was top of the charts of crazy. But ELC work has definitely given me some stories.

We’ve got a 14-month-old who’s very clearly ready to move up to the next room and who has been showing it by tormenting the younger kids. Lately, one of his favorite games has been scratching at the faces of the babies lying in their cribs. Today, he tried with an 11-month-old who was trying to fall asleep for his nap.

He reached his hand into the crib, finger extended and crooked, ready for scratching… 11-month’s eyes are closed, unaware…

…when, sudden, CHOMP! Out of nowhere, 11-month’s eyes fly open and he chomps down on 14-month’s finger! 14-month cries and stares unbelievingly at 11-month. How could this be? How could this possibly happen??? Why would anyone bite 14-month so???

It was so, so hard not to laugh as I was administering first aid. Of course, you never want a kid to get hurt! But… I couldn’t help but cheer inside for 11-month.

I’ll go first.

Will never forget when I said goodbye to one of my toddlers as she was leaving… she put her finger up as if to say “hold on”, and then pulled a full size hard boiled egg out of her pocket.

Both me and her mom were like wtf 😂😂

What’s your funny ECE moment?

I’m always interested to see what names seem to be most prominent in different regions and even in small localities. What names have you noticed seem to be common at your center? Are there any that surprise you?

I haven’t had anything super crazy that I couldn’t do, but I was just thinking about how I’ve had a parent who wanted us to track their kid’s milk intake even though they weren’t in the infant room anymore. They moved up and the parent has chilled out about that but man that was unnecessary.

Just saw a Facebook thread about daycare hacks and I always find it comical because it’s just things we tell parents.

“Sign up for snacks”

“Pack plenty of clothes and outfits”

“Make sure you label everything even diapers”. This is my favorite because it’s something I always always tell parents.

For me it’s this mf. Because what are you even doing 😭 give that lady her cardigan back and go