Oh Boy

There’s been a bit of a development in the land of Finley over the past few weeks.

And it wasn’t until I witnessed it first-hand, that I saw how serious it was. You see, now that Heather has a full-time teaching job, we’ve gone back to our old morning routine.

It’s the one where Heather gets up a bit earlier to make her longer commute north and I get up with Finley and get her ready for school, then take her to school. It’s been several months since I’ve had to do this duty and I’ve noticed things have changed at Finley’s daycare.

As is the system with most daycare centers, the kids move up into different rooms or different parts of rooms, depending on their age. Finley spent just under a year in the infant room and was able to move into the 1-year old room once she reached one and could survive without a binky. She advanced to the 2-year old room just about a year later and once she gets closer to three and is set in the ways of the potty, she can move to the “A” room, where the bigger kids are.

And as she has made transitions, so have the kids around her. This is how they keep the kid-to-teacher ratio as manageable as possible. But when I dropped her off this morning, I noticed there was another ratio that was a little out of whack. Finley is the only girl in her class.

And here’s how I notice what’s going on. We walk in and head over to the 2-year old side of the room… They have this little door that separates the ones from the twos. As soon as they see us coming, the boys start rushing over to see who can open the door for Finley. Yes. Very courteous – AND CURIOUS – for a two-year old boy.

Of course, Finley is a bit shy – or maybe coy – as we walk in. As I get her a bowl of cereal, the blonde boy – Grady – informs me that Finley can sit next to him and have breakfast. I’m sure she can, dude.

Luckily the teacher does her best to move the growing crowd of short stalkers onto something else while Finley has her cereal, but I do look back a couple of times as I leave.

Now, I’d like to think that the reality of the past ten minutes was that Finley is just one of the “guys” in the room and they act this way whenever anybody new comes in the room. Who knows, they may just be after her food. But I’ll never actually believe that.

The real concern we have is whether or not Finley is becoming a little more aggressive, living in the land of boys. She does seem to hit a little more than before… especially since we seemed to tone that down a bit. I’m not saying that boys are all about pushing and biting and hitting, but she has been pushed and bitten and hit during daycare in the past few weeks… by boys.

Hopefully, she can learn to hold her own in the testosterone zone and build some self confidence. But, we still want her to be our little girl. There’s a fine line, for sure. I just hope a girl or two can move up or in and even things out a bit.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to put her hair in a ponytail and make sure I’m the only boy she kisses as I leave her at daycare in the morning. And, I’ll make sure to let each of the rest of the boy band know I’m watching them. Yes, I am.