If you’ve ever had the pleasure (or sometimes misfortune) of working with kids, you know that they have a real knack for saying and doing incredibly strange things. Said strange things can come from anywhere and when you’re a daycare worker, the best part of the job is figuring out just where they learned it from.
I’d like to think that after eight years of working with kids, I’ve managed to put together a good list of my favorite habits I’ve seen from kids and the more specific stories behind them.
1. Kids will always lie for self-benefit.
The daycare I work at is split into three separate sections: a baby area, a toddler/preschool age area, and an older kids room for ages four and up. When you turn four and get access to the “Big Kid Room”, you get access to toys like iPads and a Leapfrog game console.
We had a little girl come in one day on a mission to get into the older kids room (despite all of the staff knowing she was three). She told us she was four, five, fourteen, and by the time she got to 40, we’d just about lost our minds laughing.
Via Giphy
2. Kids have their own vocabulary of curse words.
When a child comes running to you screaming about how their sibling called them the S-word or said the F-word, the immediate instinct is to panic. Do they mean the actual curse word? Why did he call her that? Where did he learn that word in the first place?
You then have to clarify, “What was the F-word?”
“Fart.”
Via Giphy
3. Babies don’t understand weight distribution.
My daycare has rolling drawers to store toys for the kids. Said drawers go underneath of a child-sized table and need to be rolled out to get the toys.
One night, we decided to let the babies that were getting the hang of walking play in the preschool age area since there weren’t many kids. One baby apparently hadn’t quite mastered weight distribution.
I looked away for less than five seconds before I heard a thud and crying. A baby had managed to flip himself into one of the rolling drawers trying to find a toy. Facedown, legs up, flailing out of the drawer. (He was perfectly fine, by the way.)
Via Giphy
4. “Kids say the darndest things.”
Wanna know where they learn those things from? Mom and Dad.
It was the end of the day and I was the only staff left with two kids whose mom was helping with summer camp down the hall. A storm was rolling in and, eventually, it was pouring rain on the daycare. The younger of my two kids ran screaming to a table, promptly hid under it, and screamed, “THE SKY IS PEEING!”
“The sky is what?!”
“It’s peeing!”
Some parents teach their kids that during storms, God and the angels are bowling. This mother taught her kids that the sky is actually peeing. She is one of my favorite mothers.
Via Giphy
Not everyone likes children, which is understandable considering the amount of stress they can bring on a person. They’re loud, messy, and generally a handful and a half, but throughout all the screaming and crying, there’s a silver lining to childcare. The sheer amount of unexplainable and downright strange things children do and the stories you get to tell afterward almost single-handedly make it all worth it.