Misbehavior

I took my kids to the free movies today. During the summer all the movie theaters pick a day or two a week and show a free family film at 10am. Today was The Bee Movie for us. I would really prefer to just pay for tickets and go at any other time because of the mass crowds that this freebie deal draws, but the kids think it is a blast and it gets us out of the house. So we went.

The movie begins at 10 am, but they open the doors much earlier and allow people to come in. If you don't get there by about 9:20 you can pretty much be assured that you will be sitting in the front of the theater. The biggest part of the crowding is the daycare centers that bring bus loads of kids to these movies. It is pathetic, they load 40 kids between the ages of about 5-11 and they only bring 2 or 3 adults. The kids are typically unsupervised and many of them are just plain misbehaving. Of course, we sat behind a group of such boys today. The one little boy right in front of me was literally upside down in his seat - all I could see were feet. They were loud and jumping around, tossing popcorn and just plain annoying. I do expect at a free kid movie that the theater will not be completely quiet and that kids are kids, but these kids were out of hand and no one even noticed. I watched and then finally alerted one of the adult daycare workers that they should notice what was going on.

I felt a little bad after I told on the kids, not because they didn't deserve to be reprimanded, but because apparently I unleashed a monster on them. I could not believe how this worked treated these kids!! It was an older male chaperone and he grabbed little mr. upside down and jerked him around to sit upright. He then proceeded to tell these little guys that "this is exactly why I did not want to bring you boys here, you are trouble and you should have stayed at the center!!" and in my opinion he was yelling at these kids. I honestly believe that this man's behavior was worse than these kids. He was clearly irritated with the whole chaos of this event and was yelling at kids left and right. He was not a positive person in the least and he continually reminded many of the kids how bad they really were. It was amazing that someone who clearly has had no early childhood training is allowed to take charge of a daycare group. This man had not the patience or the knowledge on how to handle this crowd. It makes me extremely thankful that I have had the priviledge of being with both of my children from birth and have never had to put them in daycare. This just makes my heart ache to know that people emotionally mistreat children. I know that it must be very hard to find good childcare and just when you think things are going well you have no idea what your kids are being subjected to! It is scary!

I plan to call this center tomorrow and speak with someone about what I witnessed and hopefully this man can remember that these are kids and the way he dealt with it did much more harm than good! People never cease to amaze me.