RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33874, 20 June 1975, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

PRE-SCHOOL PRANKS

One of the advantages of the kindergarten system is that it accustoms tiny tots to communal experience. If the tiny tot is an individualist, however, the result may be confusing. One little girl was in her last year before going to school and she joined a kindergarten which happened to be about two miles from her home in the suburbs. She attended in the afternoons. Her mother took her along in the car and picked her up afterwards. One afternoon the mother turned up as usual to collect her infant, to be met at the gate by staff both worried and awed. The little girl had gone; she had actually climbed a 6ft paling fence. The mother set off at some speed to cover the route normally taken on the journey from kinder-

garten to home. She dashed into the house: no sign of the missing child. Continuing a sharp lookout she went back to kindergarten on the same route, returning there in case her daughter had gone back to the starting point. But again she drew a blank. The next move was to drive quite slowly on a somewhat different route home which was also known to the chiid. On the way she sighted a police patrol car; she flagged it down and explained her problem. The patrol car began a search between that point and the kindergarten while the mother drove home again for a check — once more negative. For the third time that afternoon she drove to the kindergarten, where the police were now interviewing the staff. After a council of war

the mother drove the home route again.

When she arrived the child was standing out at the gate. Quite simple when you know how.

The child believed in attack as the best form of defence.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Where have you been, more like it,” said her mother grimly.

She advised the kindergarten and police by phone, and that was more or less the end of the incident.

The parents concluded that the child must have felt too old for kindergarten, and they did not bother to send her back. They were sure that she was more ready for school and would really enjoy it there. They were wrong. She did not like it at school, either. In spite of. a strong sense of direction.