Sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong

I have a terrible habit: I tend to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.

In my defense, I’m never malicious, my intentions are always pure and 99% of the time it is to the benefit of someone else.

Point in case: the kids’ aftercare at school.

Recently I collected Daniel from aftercare and his top lip was red. When I had a closer look I realised that it was something that he drank and I cast my eye over the drinks available to the kids. There, lurking in the shadows, was a large container with red cool drink that made my skin crawl. Being the OCD I am (and proud of it) I promptly snapped a pic of my child’s stained face and smartly emailed it to the aftercare manager with the suggestion that, if my son’s face looks like that, it would be interesting to see what it does to his stomach. There were vague mumblings of ‘we’ll look into it’ and I got sidetracked with life and promptly forgot about it.

Then the kids came home during the holidays with a bag of sweets that made our hair stand on end. Before we even had a chance to complain our new Au Pair mentioned that they were getting liquid chocolate and sherbet thingies (that are absolutely forbidden in our house) as a treat at aftercare. If you have ever read those food labels, when and if they bother to have them, you would have seen that those things are tantamount to poison for children.

So, I called and was poo-pood with more vague promises to look into it. At which point I thought, nah, I’m escalating this. Which I did. They were very good about it and no longer do kids at aftercare get cool drink that stains their faces and sweets that are potentially harmful to their health. I do suspect they grind their teeth when they see an incoming email/call from me, but not only do they now save money, they can control the kids at aftercare better because they aren’t pickled in sugar, Tartrazine, MSG and additives.

Yes. I am THAT Mother. If your child no longer gets cool drink and shitty sweets at aftercare and only water and fruit, you’re most welcome. It’s a pleasure.

But wait. There’s more. (I’m on a roll, can you tell?)

When I arrived home this evening Etienne tells me that our Au Pair was waiting for the girls to finish ballet and had Daniel with her. She then saw 2 little boys, the same age as the girls, approach a very shy little boy and tell him how they were “going to come to his house, slap him through the face the whole time and then kill him’.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Daniel apparently heard this, went over to the boys and told them to leave the little boy alone, they were very nasty. And they did. (My son, he’s a hero)

The Au Pair then reported this to the aftercare teacher who apparently dealt with it.

This would be acceptable to most people, yes? Well, not me. Oh no, not me, because clearly I stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.

We know who the boy is that was being bullied (and who was doing the bullying), he is in class with the girls, so I had a choice: I could assume that something was said to that parent or I could call the Mom to check.

Yup. You guessed it. I called the Mom. Nothing was said to her when she collected him, so even though she knows that, because he is quite shy he is an easy target, she would have had no idea what happened or to deal with it.

I may be way out of line here, but if my child was being bullied I damnwell want to know about it. Even more importantly: if my child was bullying another child I would want to know about it and there would be some serious re-thinking of how we were parenting our child to act in such a way.

What do you think?