Playground Review: Of Sandboxes and Cray Cray Mamas

A few weeks ago I loaded my boy into the car and drove to a local playground I'd been wanting to check out.  For safety's sake, I'm not going to name the playground here, but oh lawdy, it was quite the event.  Upon arriving at the entrance, this sight greeted me:

Look closely.  Do you see that scary man stooping low to the ground, ready to pounce on innocent women and their small children?  I almost turned around to go home, then I realized...it's a pipe.  I'm not a suspicious person at all.  Nope, no extra cautious, don't even glance in my direction, I know you are out to get me and I will cut you mama here.

Despite the initial warning sirens going off in my head, once I realized the bad man with a gun was actually a pipe, I proceeded to the playground.  There were lots of other moms there dressed all fancy in jeans.  For a moment, I felt a little insecure about my pants:

I may or may not have worn these beauties every day for 13 weeks straight during my first trimester without washing them.  I also cannot confirm or deny small bleach stains from cleaning or their frequent use as pajamas.
However, once inside, I had no reason to worry.  I may not have been wearing my fancy mom jeans, but I was the only mama there who was not a complete cray.  As a former second grade teacher, I always wondered what SAHMs thought of all day.  Because sometimes it seemed as though some of the them (not all of the them), but some spent their days worrying about their elementary school aged children and what their teachers were doing and how they, as parents could do an infinitely better job than teachers.  Well, guess what kind of mama's were at the park that day?!?  Those kind!
Ok, cray cray mamas.  Let's stop and be logical for a second and pause to consider that:
1.  Your child's teacher has an education degree.
2.  Your child's teacher has experience working with a classroom full of children in an educational setting and you, most likely, do not.
3.  Your child could possibly behave differently in a formal environment with 23 other students present than they do at home.
4.  You child's teacher is a teacher because they want to see children learn, grow, and succeed.   The idea these women at the park had that their children's teachers wanted there to be "issues" is completely absurd.  Teachers enjoy telling parents about learning and behavior challenges just as much as parents like hearing them.  I promise.  It's not a fun conversation to have.
5.  Yes, a teacher can have an idea of the personality and academic abilities of your children after 3 months of school.  We give assessments, we review their classwork every day, we watch them play at recess--we spend 7 hours a day, 5 days a week with them.  Think about it.  If you spent that amount of time with someone for several months, wouldn't you know them pretty well? 

These parents were upset because some teacher did not understand "proper child development."  Something about their kids hiding under the table--I'm not sure if they approved of their kids playing underneath the the tables at school or not.  But, one of them repeated over and over "The year will not be a success until the teacher, the assistant, and myself are all on the same page.  And that's not going to happen until the teacher agrees with me."  The teacher is never going to agree with you.  Because she's a professional and you are a cray cray.  End of rant.

So now you see why I was ok wearing my pajamas/cleaning/first trimester yoga pants instead of jeans.  Moving on...

No!  False!  This play equipment is actually designed for maximum germ exposure.  Behold!

That is a sandbox.  Had I known that this playground had a sandbox, we never ever would have gone.  I was a spaz the whole time.  I do think the diggers are cool...he can stand in the sand with his shoes on, play, and never have to touch the germbox.  However, he's not at that age yet.  I tried my best to let him play and have fun, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore and dragged him over to the slides.

I tried to get him to slide down, but he just wanted to sit at the bottom.  "My newly contracted germs and I just want to be alone, mom.  We're just getting to know each other.  Stop bothering us."

And here is the abrupt ending to the post.  I think I may have PTSD.  All the memories of this playground are coming back.  I have an elevated heart rate and I'm doing deep breathing techniques as I type.