To the parents of kids in elementry school, I feel as though I should tell you something. Excel programs suck. Maybe not all, but most. I have seen children in shorts during the winter. I have seen no hats, no mittens, no scarfs. I have seen no jackets. I have seen screaming in the hallways. I have seen standing on the tables. I have seen fist fights. I have wet hands and feet that nobody cares about. I’ve seen kids in trees and kids throwing rocks. I’ve seen bullying. I’ve seen kids being dragged down hallways by other kids. I’ve seen no sunblock. I’ve seen no attention given to your child and I feel I should let you know this. When it comes to child care, you get what you pay for… and next year Excel will be free. Think about that.
—Concerned Parent
This article appears in May 7-13, 2009.
It mostly sounds like all you have seen is kids.
There are a few serious concerns in there, but mostly it sounds like elementary school.
Parents don’t control they’re children, they can only guide and mentor them.
check out Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate.
Kids are kids, deal with it.
It’s not rocket science to manage primary school aged kids. You’ve basically got until puberty to instill your values into your children. After that they either accept and maintain those values or they rebel and form their own. It’s not that parents don’t control their children, ad, it’s that they loose control once puberty rears it’s ugly head. Parents have their work cut out for them if all their child rearing (assuming parents still do that) gets undone once the kids go off to school. I can clearly see where the home schooling idea came from… NS schools run by bullies.
I went to Excel after school when I was a youngster and I found they were quite authoritarian….well at least the people we had overseeing the program. Maybe it’s changed, but eh.
Then again, those were the days when you could still ACTUALLY discipline a child…
No thats not entirely true. Genes are big players in values.
OP – You’ve said all these bad things you’ve ‘seen’ but you haven’t said anything you’ve ‘done’. Did you go to the Principal of said school?, did you talk to teachers?, did you request a PTA meeting to discuss the quality of the program and discipline procedures? …or did you just come on here, write a bitch and feel that you’ve done your part to warn parents? If the safety of a child is your concern, then what you have described here is ‘un-safe’ for children, SO DO SOMETHING MORE than just post a bitch on the Coast!
yeah!
Call the WAAAAAAAAAAAMbulance.
Didn’t we put the nurture/nature thing to bed a long time ago? Regardless of your unique genetic qualities or how you go about expressing them you were built to adapt, like almost every other life form on the planet. We’re a product of our environment and I don’t believe for one second any predisposition is preceded nor is followed by an equals sign. We can all be trained to change. Ask Pavlov or his dog if you don’t believe me.
I had my son in the Excel lunch program once and once was enough.
I’ve worked for several excellent child care services inside and outside of the HRM. I find it hard to believe that any child care program in a place that’s freezing in the winter would consistently neglect to put hats, mittens, scarfs, AND jackets on the kids. It’s more likely OP saw it once, went ‘tut tut’ without further investigation. Kids refuse to wear hats, mittens, and scarfs all the time. Kids get hot playing in the snow and take their jackets off all the time.
Children are supposed to wear sunblock even when it’s raining, that’s how seriously sun safety is taken by HRM programs especially. But, if the craziness of taking 25 kids to the playground leaves one without sunblock what do you do? Play a game under a tree, keep forcing that hat back on, check their extra cloths for pants and a jacket, fill up the water bottles. Sunscreen isn’t the end all be all.
As for the rest of your “issues”, are you serious? These aren’t the telltale markings of bad childcare they are the markings of children. No matter how diligent the staff, shit happens.
Maybe the program does suck but nothing you’ve said here has convinced me.
If you’re expecting an after school program to teach your children how to behave properly, then you deserve to have children who act like idiots. Children who already know to wear hats when it’s cold, or not to throw rocks or hit kids are going to be fine under any supervision, or lack thereof, because they’ve been raised to be smart kids.
Stop attempting to pay someone else to raise your children, sit down with them and do it yourself.
People Are Stupid, I think we can have a reasonable expectation of quality child care when turning our youngsters over to others, especially when “others” is a licensed facility.. Having your child attend an after school program is NOT an irresponsible thing for a parent to do and to do so does NOT invite the creation of a heathen. The expectation that the child will receive quality care, and with consideration to the fact that children are learning every moment of every day, I disagree parents “deserve” to have their children “learn” how to be “idiots”. If you had one I’m sure you’d agree but, indeed, people are Very stupid.
Kay…I think you missed PAS’s point which, if I understood it correctly, was that Daycares/Afterschool/School cannot PARENT your kids for you. It wasn’t a comment on the quality of care, but the quality of the kids going into the care. Parents are/should be the most influential force in a child’s life, not daycare workers and teachers.
Of course quality care includes teaching/reinforcing good manners and the like, but a few hours a day won’t help if they are getting a different message at home.
Miles, it works the other way around too… take a well behaved child and (send them to their Dad’s for the weekend?) send them to a place where other kids behave badly around them… viola, all that hard parenting undone just like that. Bad apples, indeed, spoil the bunch. I would expect an after school program to easily identify “bad apples” and act accordingly. Sending your kids to an after school program/daycare/school/whatever is not expecting others to “raise” your children but to reinforce the values instilled at home while the parent is necessarily absent. No parent “deserves” to have their children go away lovely then return as heathens.
I worked for Excel…and trust me we TRIED to discipline, but so many of the kids were so badly behaved it was unreal – bullying, backtalking, lying, even physical violence (I was slapped across the face by a kindergardener) – and these kids were 4 to 12 years old! Most of the the parents didn’t want to hear about it and gave us no support. We did our best to keep the kids safe and happy.
As for the lack of proper winter clothing, a lot of the time parents sent their kids to school without it – I’ve had to call a few homes telling them their child needs to be properly clothed. Even when they had it, a lot of the time the kids would take it off.
Excel means well, but the staff are underpaid and stretched pretty thin. I’m sure it’ll only get worse when the program is free. I won’t be dealing with it though – 4 months and I was out the door.
Miles got my point exactly. And I disagree that one bad apple will spoil the bunch if the bunch really do know better. If they sort of think it’s a good idea to be a good kid, they’ll be easily corrupted by a bad one, but if you teach your kids that their best behaviour is most important when in the company/control of other adults, they will act like good kids even if a different kid is being a brat. I’ve looked after kids in other situations, and you can definitely see where some kids will look at the bratty kids and just wonder why they’re being so disobedient. Those are the kids who are awesome to look after, because they’ve been well taught at home.