principal agent model
I’m having a little trouble thinking of a more recent example that I’ve encountered, but I can think of a time during high school. My first job was an after-school care counselor which was essentially a daycare for children attending kindergarten through 5th grade. Once their school day was over, they would get on a specific bus that would drop them off at our facility. When they would get off the bus, they would hang their belongings up and sit down for attendance. Once we finished, we would then pass out a snack and then they would either do homework or play with their friends. Parents would sometimes call us to make sure their child does their homework before they play, or to talk about a previous incident that we were not aware of. We staffed about 1 counselor to 9 children to ensure that we had enough supervision to spread throughout the building and playground. As a counselor, we had rules we had to follow, like no phones, you can play with the children but make sure you are still watching everyone around you, stay where you are assigned, etc.
One of the harder parts of the job was writing conduct reports on the children. If a child hit another kid, swore profusely, or any major behavioral issue, it was documented, and each conduct report served a different punishment. The first one acted as a warning, the second one would suspend the child for the next day, the third would be the week, and the fourth would terminate the child from the program. A counselor would witness the behavior and situation, write down what they say, what they heard, and the actions that were given at the time. Then we would explain the situation to the site director, ask what we should do with the child, and then the site director would call the parent to let them know that we needed to talk when they would come to pick up the child. When the parent arrived, they, the child, the site director, and the counselor involved would have a conversation. At that point, the parent was mainly talking to the counselor to understand what happened and to ask questions. I was a representative for the park district, the parent was the customer, and the site director was the higher up representative. What I would have done at the moment might not have been the best decision, but a lot of the time it was the parent that would get mad and say that “their child wouldn’t do such a thing and I didn’t see it properly”. That was when the site director would step in and defend me. Once the parent left, the counselor would talk to the site director and think of other ways the situation could have been handled.
Usually, in these situations, there wasn’t anything else that could have been done. The parent would usually leave unhappy and we would go on with our day. We would have to reason to lie about these kinds of things because a lot of paperwork goes into writing these and nobody would want to do extra work unless necessary. The parent might complain to the head of the program, in which she would speak to us and get our side of the story. When the parent would come to pick up the child in the future, they might look at the counselor a little differently or not speak to us, but it was our job to report things that we witnessed. In these situations, it’s hard to make all parties happy. We respect the customer, but we also have rules we need to follow to make this a safe environment for all children.
On another note, I found a funny joke a few days ago.
A mathematician, an accountant, and an economist apply for the same job at an oil company. The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks “what does two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “four”. The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer hard and says “Yes, four, exactly.”
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question. The accountant answers “On average four- give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”
Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question. The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says, “what do you want it to equal?”
Responding from the bottom to the top, it looks like I am contributing to your path down the bad jokes lane. If you enjoy it, keep doing it. But beware. Non-economists don't usually like economics jokes.
ReplyDeleteOn the example you gave, it's not that long ago that my kids were in daycare. (At least it seems that way to me.) . I seem to recall having the impression that many parents actually didn't do parenting, as I understood what that requires, and instead were incredibly permissive and then would never blame their own child for behaving poorly in a social situation. I don't know if this makes sense to you, but if the observation is accurate it might be the downside to when both parents have full-time jobs. Baby sitters shouldn't have to be parents in abstentia. But that seems to be the case more often than not.
That said, it would be interesting to know what the situation was with the parents you had to interact with. Yet it would also be interesting to know how frequent it was to write up a conduct report. If they were comparatively frequent, then blaming the parents seems reasonable. In contrast, if they were very infrequent, then that the kid went over the rails even with good parenting seems a better explanation. I also want to note that some kids do have learning disabilities. I don't know that would explain any of the conduct reports you had to write. But maybe it does.
I believed a lot of the parents didn't spend a significant amount of time with their children in settings where there were a lot of children and they have the opportunity to spend their time as they wish. In school, they have more structure and are told what to do the whole time. In daycare, they just have a few rules they have to follow but for the most part they are free to do what they want. Also, the parents might not take into consideration that if they have an only child, they might not behave like this at home. For example, parents with multiple children know how their children act when they are told they have to share toys where as a parent with an only child has never had this issue.
ReplyDeleteWe also take into consideration any disabilities when writing a conduct report. Most children that had physical and mental disabilities ( autism, severe ADHD, etc) had a one-on-one counselor assigned to them through the special recreation association who was trained to help children with outbursts and making it throughout the day. No matter what the case may be, conduct reports are meant to set a standard of safety for all children through the program. If a child has severe anger issues and can't seem to stop hitting others, then it puts the children in harms way and no parent would willingly pay for their child to be enrolled.