Old Yeller

Naomi is in a daycare that I really like. The facility is not too big, not corporate, nice setting, secular, calm, kind, good teacher to kid ratio, etc. Recently she moved up into the slightly bigger tiny kid class (she's almost two!), and now has two new teachers. They also seem kind and caring. Here's the sticking point: one of them is a yeller. She speaks in a normal-to-loud voice to me, but when she addresses the kids, it is all yelling all the time. I don't mean to say that she is mean (when I am there), I just mean to say that she is LOUD. Given that the classroom is propotionately small, even with a busy play buzz going on, you would only have to raise your voice just a bit to be heard at the other end. But when she is right in front of us, when we arrive in the morning, she says hello to me, and then she shouts HELLO to Naomi (who occasionally cowers back into my leg).

Naomi is at an age where she is just starting to understand the concept of rules. She says them back to us all the time, even things we said three weeks ago, sort of off the cuff, that normally we wouldn't think we would need to make an actual rule around ("We don't lick the couch. The couch is not for licking."). This is exciting in a way, because it feels like she recognizes the need to think about her behavior and what effect it will have. It's a little bit discomfiting as well, though, because it shows us how often we are decreeing, and about what ludicrous household minutiae. Yikes. Because it seems like she is starting to sort out her response to authority and internalizing some of it, and also simply because my gut tells me that a loud and shouty environment is perhaps not the ideal one for any kid to spend long hours in, I am uncomfortable with the fact that her authority figure and primary caregiver in the daytime hours displays the "American talking to a foreigner" behavior each and every day.

Which leads me to a fork in the road. Do I accept it's not that big of a deal, and just concentrate on teaching Naomi the difference between an inside voice and an outside voice on my own time, hoping for no hearing damage while she's in this class for the next six months? Or do I say something? If I say something, whom do I say it to? It would take a lot of courage to say something directly to the teacher herself. The alternative is to say something to the administrator (although I believe the owner is off having a baby this week). But unless I convince the person I talk to about this not to mention my name in connection with the feedback, that would mean the teacher knows who the feedback is coming from. My fear, of course, is that she might then see Naomi differently from the rest of the kids, or treat her differently than she did before she found out my opinion of her pipes.

I have read other daycare dilemmas on message boards, and I remember some angry retorts from caregivers who claim that they would never, ever treat a child any differently because of something a parent said or did. I want to believe that. But I know how people are. If you feel resentment, which a person might if they were told that they have a big giant mouth, you tend to let it out somehow.

Now I am flashing back to Crucial Conversations, a book I had to read back when I was in the lowest rungs of management (rungs I let go of, dropping gracefully back where I started). The authors talked about a common mistake people make, which is assuming what I seem to remember them calling "the sucker's choice." This makes it hard for people to deal with a situation because they think there are only two choices- in my case, say nothing, or say something and risk alienating the person who takes care of my kid. But maybe there is a third way? Maybe I can tell the teacher that Naomi has been shouting more at home (which she has a bit), and that we don't shout at home (we really don't, barring the occasional call to another room), and that I was thinking perhaps it was due to the fact that there are so many boys in her class (in Naomi's new class, girls are outnumbered five to one. This is a good ratio to get used to if she ever decides to follow in her mom's footsteps and get a job at a software company...). See how I assume the mantle of sexism and take the teacher out of it completely? I could ask if she would mind just practicing quiet, inside voices with them a few times a day, and see if Naomi adds this to her list of a thousand rules. Could this work?

I can't resist adding here that Naomi has made a verb of the word "loud" and has created a rule out of it, a simple one - "No louding." Ha! Maybe if that rule has already taken hold, we really don't have anything to worry about. No amount of shrilling and louding from Ms. Yelly will shake it loose!