In the last week we've had to say the phrase "what mustn't you do with (insert object)?" quite a few times and it all started when last Friday I found out that Isla had cut another little girls hair at nursery. I'm friendly with the girl's parents and I received a text from her mum saying that her daughter had a lot less hair this afternoon than this morning. If anyone else was telling me this story I would have probably burst out laughing but I just felt really fed up about it. What were the nursery doing letting them play in such a way with scissors? I was aware that they used little craft scissors but I had thought that they were supervised. Scissors had already caused a bit of a furore last year when Isla was accused by another parent of cutting the hair of his daughter when she was only 2. That time was slightly more awkward as I was told this by the father while at soft play (I'd never met him before but his daughter started trumpeting out loud that "Isla cut my hair!"). The nursery hadn't even told me anything about it. At the time I found it hard to believe because at home Isla couldn't even hold scissors properly let alone be able to cut a small plait off a girls head (she had Afro hair - there were lots of small plaits). So on approaching the nursery on that occasion they said that they weren't sure who'd done it therefore they couldn't tell any single one parent. It then came about that it wasn't Isla it was her little friend who'd done it, but the other parent was determined to believe the word of his 2 year old daughter.
So since then I thought that scissors might be monitored better although I think I have become complacent of late believing Isla to be a lot more responsible than she actually is. What actually happens when it is described does sound absolutely hilarious. The CCTV shows 4 girls playing hairdressers with each other, they all take it in turns to sit and have their hair brushed and 'styled' and in one little girls experience have an actual cut!!! The long and short of this is that I have spoken to the nursery and so have Isla's friend's parents and they have convinced us that scissors will be more closely monitored and will not be out to use over lunchtime where there is a period of children being picked up from a morning session and dropped off for the afternoon and nursery staff are not so focused on an activity such as craft. Staff who should have been watching the children more closely have also been disciplined. I feel that the situation has been dealt with and hope that it doesn't happen again. This incident triggered a whole weekend of me and the OH saying 'What mustn't we do with scissors' over and over again. "Cut hair" comes the solemn answer!
I mentioned that I've been complacent lately too and so following the scissor incident came the drawing on the walls incident! I really didn't think that this would happen to us. I felt like we'd got past the stage where she might do this, that she would understand that the walls aren't for BLACK FELT TIP PEN! No, not quite and so our next phrase was "What mustn't you do with pens?" .......ah, it's so easy this parenting lark.