I've Been Bullied at Daycare

I’m back as a stay-at-home dad for a few months. Darth Baby had me to himself for three months last year, so it’s only fair we offer the same level of so-called care to The Bobble Head, his little sister.

As well as me retying the apron strings, Darth Baby (which he isn’t anymore – let’s call him “The Boy”) started at his new daycare centre. When you are introducing a little person to daycare, a parent attends for a few hours on the first couple of days, which is how I found myself being bullied. Not once, but twice.

At lunch on day one, I was sitting at the miniature table next to The Boy (now two), enjoying watching him do his free-form thing to outmoded ideas such as portions and possession, when a coterie of three, three-year-old girls flounced in and sat around us. 

If ever I’ve had a terrifying vision into past, present and future, it was delivered perfectly by these three. I was sort of blindsided by the simultaneous impression of what these girls are now and what they will become and what they’ve always represented to me. They were so far from being blank-slates, I felt fairly sure I could’ve walked out into the car park and pointed out each one of their surgery-enhanced mothers in their giant four-wheel-drives just from the high angle of the ponytails and clouds of Givenchy.

Mean (three-year-old) girls.

The girls size me and The Boy up, and the ringleader whispers into her lieutenant’s ear. The lieutenant speaks,

“What’s that on your forehead?” she asks, pointing at an old scar that I don’t think about from year to year.

“What, this?” pointing to where I think it probably is these days.

“Noooo, *sigh*” corrects Ringleader. “Here,” she indicates on her head where it is and how stupid I am in the one, simple movement.

“It’s, it’s a scar,” I stammer, already badly on the back foot. The effrontery! (It’s a bloody good story, how I got this scar. Should I tell it? Probably not appropriate and a little too long for this audience.) The Boy, oblivious as all good innocents should be, hides something he doesn’t like from the inside of his mouth on the third girl’s plate. “Go, Boy”, I think.

Ringleader, after a nanosecond of consideration, says, “My mother had a scar on her face, but she did something about it.” Am I allowed to admonish them about their manners? Come to that, am I allowed to punch them?

“I’m certain she would’ve.” I’m getting arch and defensive with a three year old. Meanwhile, The Boy leisurely eats a yummy looking thing off Lieutenant’s plate without her noticing because all three of these vicious little pieces-of-work are focusing on me. “Go on without me, Boy,” I mentally encourage. I’m a goner, but you don’t have to be.

To shift gears, I ask their names. Ringleader speaks for all three and I would love to list them but it’s not legal to publicise underage criminal’s names, so probably not cool to accurately identify horrible little Uber-snobs. What I can write is that their names so hilariously occupy the centre of a Venn-diagram of intersecting circles named, “My astrologer says it’s a power name” and “Cashed up Bogan”, I had to stop myself from asking if they were joking.

Introductions made, Ringleader’s predatorial gaze falls on my beautiful, little lamb of a boy as she hisses,

“Why is that kid using a sippy-cup?”

“’Cause he’s… he’s little… and can be a bit messy. And he’s my son,” I bleat, starting to feel the heat of a blush rise to my cheeks for the short-falling in my parenting and The Boy’s abilities.

“Pfff,” says Ringleader meaningfully to the other two. Mercifully, at this point, The Boy hands one of them a half-eaten piece of cucumber in a gesture of sharing (she didn’t have any) which requires a staff member to come and intercede to correct the social infraction.

On day two, the bullying was far easier to take. I was mobbed by about eight kids who all wanted to rub wet sand on me, telling me it was different kinds of poo. The Boy stood to one side, leaning on a miniature shovel, laughing fit to burst. The staff were required once more to correct things as it appeared that several of the kids had got so worked up while battering me like a sav, they’d started throwing sand - and that’s a no-no. Rubbing poo into people, well, that’s not covered in the rule book.

Not long after that, while sitting on a rock getting the sand out of my shoes, a kid I hadn’t seen before came up to me and said, “What’s that on your forehead?”