Minor Things That Drive You Absolutely Crazy

[Pestle]

There are behaviors that we have to respond to immediately, and others that we make note of and work on gradually. And then there are the behaviors that drive us up the wall even though they are not, objectively, a major problem.

For some reason, when a child decides they don't want to eat anymore and they stand up and push their plate at me, I get huffy. "I am not a trash
can," I say. "Do not hand me your plate when you are done eating. Get up and leave it at the table. Do not pick your plate up and walk around the room with it." And they just keep bopping their plates full of leftovers at my hands.

I don't know why this is such a universal behavior among toddlers. Is this what they are doing at home? Surely not. After all, nobody would ever do that to a waiter or to their host at a dinner party. Maybe it's just the dining equivalent of handing all your trash to your mom.

[Annalee]

Behaviors that irritate me;

1. kids that stare at their plates like it is disgusting at EVERY MEAL.... but devour snack

2. kids that constantly whine with NO WORDS who actually have good vocabularies but moan and whine with their eyes and with lips puckering

3. kids that constantly commentate on everything happening in the room

4. kids that do not play and stare at the room or playground like there is NOTHING to do

[Pestle]

It sounds like your trigger for being really annoyed is "there is literally nothing wrong, but you are acting like something is very very wrong and you won't let anybody forget about it. Have you considered that the problem may be coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE?!"

Yeah, I have a kid right now who does that. Nonstop. Whining. Moaning. Grunting. And "No fair!" and "Oh no!" and "Noooooooooooooooo."

[Annalee]

Absolutely; it is the home environment!!!! no one does much of anything except lay around and there are NO expectations...thus no self-help skills, no conversation, no adapting, no empathy, no imagination.....on and on and on and on.....I do see an upward positive trend in my most recent enrollees so I'm hoping as the older crew departs, this will get better!

[Sahm121]

For parents -
1. not saying good morning or greeting when they hand me their child.
2. parking like a jack idiot
3. stepping on the grass (in this area, people are super serious about keeping their grass beautiful. And they let their kids run and yank the grass!).

for kids -
1. That whiny sing song grunt they all
do even though they can talk 🤪. I ignore it but some days I need to practice breathing exercises to not accidentally adapt the same tone ar night when I’m home lol

[e.j.]

There are so many little things that drive me crazy lately. This week, though, diapers wipes that don't separate easily as I'm trying to change a dirty diaper are on the top of the list. Another would be highchair and booster seat straps that don't come out of the seats easily so they can be washed in the washing machine. I served meatballs and pasta with sauce one day last week and of course, one of the kids dropped sauce on to one of the white straps and I can't remove the strap. I ended up spraying it with a hydrogen peroxide kitchen cleaner and it did take the stain out but it took an overnight soak to do it. Throwing it into the washing machine with the other daycare laundry would have been so much faster. First world problems but they bug me! lol

[SignMeUp]

Ha, yes! And I spent half of my evening yesterday crouched over a plastic radio flyer wagon stitching new webbing on to the old shreds of the safety straps because I can't see any way to thread new webbing through. All the time wondering why the indoor straps are polyester and the outdoor ones are cotton.