Mixed Emotions

As anyone who has had a conversation with me in the last year knows, I'm interested in taking some classwork in early education and becoming a pre-school teacher at some point down the road. I love kids. I have always loved kids. And most kids respond positively to me. I wear Elmo shirts. I'm spontaneous. I plan fun outings, but I'm structured and I don't take lip.

Today, I took the CARE group to a local candy shop for a tour I had planned three weeks ago. When I made the reservation I was really clear that the kids were young (ages 2-5 for the most part). I followed their rules for limiting the group to 15, and we all arrived pretty much on time. 

The woman giving the tour let us know that she used to be a teacher. She seemed very interested/surprised that all of us with toddlers were mostly in our thirties. I think she was trying to make some kind of comment about how mothers with kids our age were usually younger... Anway, MacTroll swears she probably did older grades, but she didn't seem to get that toddlers don't care about history. She was openly frustrated with them. 

What they want to hear is that she's the modern day candy woman. They want to see the big jars of cherries and the cool dipping of the chocolate. They'd want to see her drizzle chocolate over pretzels and then pass them out to the kids. They'd be thrilled with the giant bowls and the huge mixers... lots of things they could see without having to deal with any cooking or dangerous kitchen implements.

But there didn't seem to be any prep for that. And I could tell, in comparison to our other awesome trips to the bakery or the grocery store or the pizza kitchen that parents were disappointed. I know it wasn't my fault. But I felt responsible... like I'd dragged everyone with their small children to a town 20 miles away for something less than stellar. Even though my family enjoys going down there for lunch and gummi bears and almond bark on occasion. I was disappointed.

I guess, there are people who are good with little kids and there are others that don't understand them at all. But I knew in the first 30 seconds that the woman started talking that I probably could have done a more age-appropriate job even though I didn't work there. 

This has happened before: Our trip to the Champaign Police Department was similarly not a great fit... when it would have been really easy to adjust for smaller kids. I mean, hello, police cars, police motorcycles, McGruff!

The guilt for the trip faded away though over two martinis with MacTroll and some Tapas at Radio Maria for MacTroll's 33rd Birthday dinner (his birthday is the 27th when he's away at a conference), while X-man got to eat dinner and play with the Quigs fam and the Freak family. Adult-only dinner was really awesome. And we appreciated it greatly. Especially when X-man pretty  much fell asleep on the 8-block drive from Quigs house to ours.