I'll warn you in advance, I'm feeling "spicy" today.
My motivation? The kindergarten drop-off at my kids' school.
Since the Ontario kindergarten program lasts two years, I currently have two kids in kindergarten at our local public school. The "JKs" go on Monday, Wednesday and approximately every other Friday. The "SKs" go on the opposite days. That means I have someone to drop off at the kindergarten yard every morning.
The way our school's drop-off works is that the main drop-off is a line directly in front of the main part of the school. There is another lane which by-passes this drop-off lane and can either exit the parking lot or go to a circle at the end, by the kindergarten classrooms. This Circle of Hell is the kindergarten drop-off.
Public school drop-offs are bad are the best of times, but this kindergarten drop-off is a new level of torment. The circle can comfortably accommodate about 7-8 cars at a time. The very fact that it's in a circle makes it very difficult to parallel park to begin with, so when someone vacates a spot in the middle that you have to squeeze into, it's never fun.
The worst problem of all, though, is with parents who get their kids out, take them over to the fenced-in kindergarten yard, let them inside of said fence, and then STAND THERE. They will stand and chat with other parents, all the while watching their little darlings chat with THEIR friends and run around the concrete "yard". Some of them will stand there until the bell rings, or even longer.
As I said, there is room for about 7-8 cars at any given time. There are, I believe, four kindergarten classes each day, each with between 17-20 children. Not all of them come by car, obviously, but suppose that even half of them do: that's about 35-40 kids needing to be dropped off in the circle of hell. If 4 of those 7-8 spots are claimed for the entire 10-15 minute drop-off period, you can imagine the chaos that is caused.
Last year in one of the kindergarten newsletters, the teachers gently encouraged parents to "foster independence" by dropping off their children in the fenced-in, ADULT-SUPERVISED yard and then leaving. This worked, for about a week. There is never anyone outside the yard, "encouraging" parents to not stand around, so the chaos returned in no time.
As I navigated the COH this morning, I contemplated what this all meant. Okay, maybe contemplated wasn't a good word. More like fumed.
I wrote a post a while back about the child-free movement, and how they needed to back off those of us who choose to raise the next generation. I still stand by that, but when did we become entitled to so much selfishness purely by the virtue of being a parent? When did the perceived safety - giving the benefit of the doubt that these parents aren't just standing there to chat with other parents - of our own children become permission to disrupt everyone else's life? Yes, we need to be given some leeway to get through life as a family of 3, 4, 5 or more, but when the others around you have the same issues, why are yours more important? What about the parents who need to get in and out of the COH to get to work? Or people who may end up having car accidents trying to navigate around those who park in strange places because none of the actual spots are available?
This isn't just a parking lot rant, although I could go on much longer about this (believe me!) It's just the little things that I see every day. For example, why does a parent feel they need to pressure a nurse at a walk-in clinic to hurry everyone else up, when all of the people ahead of them are just as sick?
I think it comes down to common courtesy, which is, sadly, missing in so many cases these days. I know I've been guilty of it at times, but perhaps, as parents, we need to learn to BREATHE more, and think that not every situation is life-threatening (ie. being in a fenced-in playground with adult supervision!) and our children, while they mean the world to us, are not more important than everyone else's.
