Okay, now that the trauma is behind me somewhat, I'm ready to talk about it. Last weekend, I had the "pleasure" of helping out with Bible School at my church in New Hope. First of all, it was held on the weekend right after the kids just started school back. Not only that, but they decided to squeeze 5 days of Bible school into 3! We went from 5:30 to 8:30 on Friday night, from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm on Sat., and from 9:00 to 11:30 on Sunday. Then church started at 11:30. Now, I don't know about everyone, but I can speak for the CUMC group that Vacation Bible School, first off, takes place during the summer, hence the Vacation part. Two, that you spread it out over the week so the kids don't go crazy and now I firmly believe so the teachers don't feel hostile toward the children in church. I know we live in a different time than when I attended Bible school (shout out to Aunt Gayle, Mrs. Wanda, and Mrs. Nancy!), BUT some things need not be changed.
Now, granted everyone knows I'm not the kiddie teacher type, hence why I teach college, but I figured, hey, it's church kids, I like kids. I need to get to know them and the other adults, you know, participate with the church, so I thought why not? I've done Bible school before at my home church, always liked it. That's where the mix up happened. Letting my memories of Bible school at a place that I knew like the back of my hand (home) and a different time (I swear kids are truly different now) cloud my judgement. I had a group of 4 kids in the first and second grade. No biggie right? OMG! They all had attention problems and attitude problems, not to mention one kid had already been to this Bible School at another church, so not only where we doing 3 days on 1 day, but he already knew what was going on, and at 9:45 on Sat., he was already asking when they got to go home. I told him he'd have to wait another 7 hours. Finally, on Sat. morning, one mom admitted to me that I had the worst group, and if I needed backup, that her husband was there. Well folks, I'm not proud when I've been wrangling and screaming at kids constantly for 2 hours to behave and listen, so I called for back up. Did it help? Well at least, there were 2 of us watching them now. They were better, and bible school wasn't as bad as it seemed. Some of the children were even endearing once I got passed how I wanted to wring them or their parents' necks.
Moral of the story: When people say kids today are different, they are absolutely right!! Why? Because they didn't have your parents raising them. And remember your childhood with fondness, but also know that you can never really recreate it.
P.S. When I told this story to my mom, the first comment she had was that Alan shouldn't have let me do it because now I would never want kids :) And you know what, that was my first comment to Alan after my horror day on Sat. Moms always know what you're thinking.
