Just some thoughts-childcare and work

Follow the bouncing boy

Moms and kids

hold onto that Marius!

Childcare and work.  The social service center where I volunteer has a predominantly female staff.  Several of them are mothers of young children.  It is not unheard of for these moms to bring their toddlers with them to work.  Sometimes these little ones are let loose on their own and can cause all sorts of mischief.  Sometimes they are the focus of the staff’s attention and they become the main activity of the morning.  When the other older children are at the center in the afternoons, the toddlers are folded into group activities.  Usually it works out that the other children act as big brothers and sisters.

Some recent experiences.   Marius, a little 16 month old, loves to get into anything he can.  I call him the “little destroyer”.   He grabbed the banana gram bag from my desk, opened it, and spread all the letters over the floor of the big activity room.  He also likes to do this with the box of lego pieces.  We have seven or eight separate jig saw puzzles.  Each of them has their own box consisting of 30 to 60 pieces.  Marius thought it would be great fun to empty all of these boxes into a big pile.  The pieces looked like confetti flying in the air as he emptied each puzzle.  What puzzles me is that it seems these parents would rather clean up such messes rather than prevent them from happening.  I think they think these high jinx are cute.  

This 16 month old named Marius was acting up and making noise during our weekly staff meeting.  After a little patience with the situation, the director asked the medical assistant (his mom) to take him out of the room.  She effectively was absent for the remainder of the meeting taking care of the little boy.  Was this a problem in terms of work expectations and expected employee behavior?  I don’t think so.  Actually I don’t think she missed much as most of the meeting was sharing observations about negative parent behavior (gossiping?) seen in the village.

Today Marius’s mom had some errand to run which took her away from the office for several hours.  She left him with our staff and said call if you need me.  One of the staff has been trying to entertain him by driving him around the center in an office desk chair with wheels on it.   This same little guy followed me out to the outhouse yesterday.  Inspite of me telling him to go back to the center and stay with his mother, he just followed me all the way outside and down the path.  Of course I was in the middle of a good pee and Marius was holding the outhouse door open watching when his mother came calling after him.  A slightly embarrassing moment for us both. 

Marius often goes down for a nap after lunch.  The room he sleeps in is next to the sport exercise room.  So the sport exercise room is off limits until he wakes from his nap about 3 pm.  I think this little example shows some cultural differences.  As an American, I’m thinking that these personal needs of Marius are really in conflict with the reasons why there is a sports exercise room for the children at the center.  As a Moldovan, I’m thinking that it’s in everyone’s interest that Marius is napping, and we wouldn’t want to create a negative social situation with his mother, one of the staff members.