37. Don't Be a Snitch

Snitches get... bitten.

When you pick up your kid from crèche, there is a hand-off routine known as la transmission. This is when the daycare workers tell you what your kid did that day, and depending on the caretaker, you will either know way too much or way too little.

Since many kids begin daycare at three months old, la transmission is helpful for knowing how many ounces of milk they drank or how many naps they took. But by the time your kid is two, the details become a bit more unneccessary. As a nosy person, I'm happy to hear about each and every game my son played that day, right down to how many times he went up and down the slide. I also know the workers do this because at some point, a parent probably complained that they weren't going into enough details with les transmissions.

But from time to time, they leave out the juiciest details. Every once in a while you will pick up your kid to find a scratch or a bruise on them. The caretaker will explain in a doleful tone that there was a small kerfuffle between playmates, but everyone is okay. They never name names though, and if you even try to find out who was on the other end of this smackfest, they look at you like you are a pushy TMZ reporter.

I get their reasoning. That is, until the Biting Era hit us last year. For a few weeks, my son was the frequent recipient of very shallow but still visible baby-sized bite marks on his arm. It was happening to a few of his other friends, too, but during each transmission, the Biter's identity was never revealed. For a while, I'd try to get a good look at the other toddler's incisors for any clues, but to no avail. The Biter lived to bite another day.

When I relayed this to my French teacher, she told me she understood my maternal concern, but also, that I was being a bit of a délateur. Google told me this meant "an informer," and further context told me this also meant "tattletale" or a “dirty snitch.” Of course if I actually did know the true identity of the Biter, I could do nothing with that information. The French do have "mama bear mode" here, but it's mostly used to write highly inflammatory posts on one of the many mommy neighborhood Facebook groups I am on.

In the end, we never found out who the Biter was, and all the kids continued to pass their days in safety and calm at daycare. So I don't actually mind when they go into micro-details during les transmissions since I've been on the flip side before. I wonder if, when my kid grows up, he will be a nosy would-be délateur like myself, but judging by the way he already dives into a hard-as-rock baguette like it is his life force, I highly doubt it.