I’m going to make a huge confession here but I actually love chaperoning most field trips! I’m a mom of many jobs. I work from home and I volunteer on the side. Essentially, I work with children for a living and I’m not put out in the least by a field trip. I love being outside, surrounded by nature and in our rural town, that’s what most of our field trips consist of.
I’ve read many blog posts about the dreaded pumpkin farms! I love pumpkin farms. I’ve chaperoned a total of four pumpkin farm trips to date and all of them were wonderful experiences. Here’s the secret to pumpkin farms that make these trips so great. You can let the kids play and just be kids! The teachers stress out of course but in reality…you’re on acreage with nothing but teachers and parents. Typically the farms are closed to the public on these days so you have a place where the kids can run, play in the hay, the corn crib, run through the fields looking for pumpkins and when kids are occupied, they are easy to look after and it’s completely safe.
However, there is one field trip that I loathe. There is one field trip that only comes around in the first grade and I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing it not once but twice. The Zoo! I shudder when I think about those two trips. The only reason why I signed up to chaperone for both of my daughter’s zoo trips was because I was honestly scared to send them to a large public place without me!”
With each trip, there was always drama beforehand. There are always a few parents who are adamantly opposed to the zoo and they let you know exactly how they feel. I’ve been drawn into, “the cruel treatment of animal conversations,” to, “the viewing of animals in cages for money conversations.” That’s great! By all means, stick up for what you believe in! I’m all for that! However, I can’t jump on the activist bandwagon with you because I’m already having nightmares about the trip in general. My reply has always been, “If the zoo truly bothers you, then don’t send your kid. However, I’m going because I’m more concerned over the safety of my own child.”
My first zoo trip, started out great. After a sleepless night of envisioning myself with at least five children getting lost at the zoo I’m unfamiliar with, everything went down without a hitch. I was teamed up with another parent who grew up in the area so she knew her way around. We only had our daughters to worry about and despite the rain, we had a wonderful trip. Although, we had to hastily come up with an excuse as to why the rhinoceroses were piggy backing each other!
Our teacher had the greatest response, “They are staging an escape!”
When the trip was over, we brought all the kids to the entrance by the mountain goat exhibit and had them sit down on the now dry cement. In a large group, the kids were already growing hyper and were overly stimulated from their long day. That’s when a mom, a mom trying to be fun, pulled out a bag of pixie sticks!
“Here kids!” She proudly proclaims as the rest of us look at her in a shocked silence!
Why must you be the fun mom? Of all days! Do you have any idea what a tube of pure sugar does to a class of twenty-four first graders? I do and that poor mom suddenly became the most loathed woman in all of the first grade! Quite possible the entire world!
Instead of the children sitting calmly in a circle, they are now running circles! They are jumping up and down! They are running from the chaperones! They are cackling like hyenas! There is a sugary dust floating in the air around them. Their faces are encrusted with sticky sweetness! It was madness! Pure, chaotic evil!
And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, one of the boys climbed the rock pillar and ended up on top of the mountain goat enclosure. All he had to do was lean back a little too far and he would end up in the moat!
Quickly and in one united team, all of us moms rushed over to him and in sweet, motherly voices, we implored the kid to climb back down! He is simply looking at us and laughing. He’s having the time of his life! I realized something in that moment…if he falls in, I’m going to have to be the one to jump in after him. I’m a great swimmer and I’m the one who always reacts, especially if a child is in danger. I change tactics and utilize my meanest mom voice.
“You get down from there right now! I’m not joking around. Right now!” I tell him and point my finger at him for emphasis!
He heaves a sigh of annoyance and climbs down.
We finally are loaded onto the bus and the sugar high has reached its peak level of madness. Kids are jumping up and down in their seats! They are laughing and screaming! Parents are yelling! Teachers are snapping! The bus driver is waving his hands in agitation! I’m sitting between my daughter and the boy who climbed the goat enclosure! At his point, I already felt responsible for him. He’s jumping up and down, purposely smacking his head into the seat and laughing at himself.
We hit traffic! Everyone gets sick and by the time we arrive back at the school, I’m ready for a stiff drink and a lobotomy! I vowed right then and there, to never chaperone for a zoo field trip again…that was of course, until my youngest reached the first grade.
My youngest daughter has anxiety and the lead up to the zoo trip was already difficult enough for her. I went through the motions, I took the day off from work, listened to a mom rant about how putting animals in cages is wrong and took a sleeping pill the night before to ensure I was well rested!
The day of the zoo, I teamed up with a mom friend of mine and we had four sweet little girls between us. The sun was shining, the animals were all out and in essence, it was a perfect day! We were about an hour and a half into our zoo trip when one of the little girls decided she no longer wanted to there. She wanted to play with one of the interactive exhibits and not leave.
We prompted and begged her, finally telling her that we needed to get going because we still have many more exhibits to look at! What transpired next was the most stubborn battle of wills I have ever seen! She refused to move, to budge even and then with a red face, she threw a large toddler-like tantrum! I have never witnessed a seven-year-old put on such a show in all my life!
This brings me to another rant of mine…there are some children that absolutely need a parent with them or at the very least, they need to be with a teacher during field trips!
We finally convince her to start walking but we have to practically pull her along with us. When we reach the monkeys, she runs away from us and hides behind a sign. With a red face and protruding chin, she angrily refuses to move. We spend another ten minutes or so trying to convince her to come with us. She finally agrees and then disappears again! We find her hiding from us, crouched down by a bench. I realized then that this poor child does not care whether or not she gets lost. She actually was trying to ditch us!
I decide to use my mean mom voice…it’s worked before! Right? I very clearly and strictly tell her. “We are not going to do this. This is not being safe. You need to come with us right now so we can see the rest of the zoo.”
She looks right at me with an angry face and starts bawling! I’m mortified! I just made a child cry in the middle of the zoo! I quickly change tactics and start trying to soothe her. Just as I take my phone out to call the teacher, my mom friend decides to resort to drastic measures. She picks the little girl up, cradles her in her arms and carries her throughout the remainder of the trip.
By the time we’re finished, my friend has aching arms and we stop to let the kids play at a small jungle gym. The stubborn little girl is all smiles again and she even runs up to tell me about her favorite piece of equipment to play on. I’m relieved because at least she isn’t holding a grudge against me and I’m not going to be remembered as that mean mom who made her cry at the zoo. At least I hope not.
We’re loaded onto the bus and the trip back is going smoothly. There were no pixie sticks handed out, sugar highs are at an acceptable level and then our bus driver decides to not follow the rest of the buses and takes an alternative route. This route lands us in heavy traffic. Nearly two hours later in the hot sweltering bus, with bus sick children and bladders overflowing, we are reaching panic mode, including our teacher.
I start crazy-texting people to see if anybody is available to pick my oldest daughter up from school because it’s looking like we are going to be arriving at least twenty-minutes late! Other parents are doing the same! Our poor teacher is having to walk down the aisle and have serious talks with a few of the children who are acting out! I almost can’t blame them, my anxiety is almost overloading as well and my little daughter who actually has anxiety, is the only one keeping her cool!
As luck would have it, traffic finally thins and we manage to make it to the school only a few minutes late. Exhausted, nauseous, and with a splitting headache, I have once again put another zoo field trip behind me. That night as I sipped a glass of wine, I spent a few hours looking into the field trip abyss that had somehow become my life.
My daughters are older now and field trips are fewer and far between. There are times I wish I could go back and relive those first-grade memories with them, especially if it involves the pumpkin patch but nothing in the world will ever convince me to go back to the zoo! Not one dang thing!
