what are they thinking?

Sometimes I have no idea what kids are thinking. For example, yesterday the other pre-k teacher put her kids in line to get on the bus, just as we have done since mid-August. The entire line walked outside and got on the bus. Except for one pre-k student. Instead of getting on the bus like she has been doing for the last four months, she walked past the bus and started wandering around the parking lot. Twenty minutes later, the mother called, wondering where her child was. The kid was apparently still wandering the parking lot. The mother was furious with the teacher, but what I want to know is....what was that kid thinking?

Sometimes I have no idea what parents are thinking. For example, one of my students has not had her clothes changed or washed for over two weeks. She was really dirty. So we changed her clothes into a pair of extra clothes that she had in the classroom. The little girl was so happy to be in clean clothes. She acted so carefully all day to keep them clean. Twenty minutes (the magic time limit) after we sent her home, her mother called, enraged. She yelled at me, my paraprofessional, and the principal, who finally hung up on her. Apparently all she was mad about was that we hadn't put on her daughter's shirt (because it was too small to fit) and had given her a nice clean shirt in the right size. The mother hasn't sent her daughter to school since then. The mother isn't hurting me - frankly, its a lot easier to teach without her daughter in my class. But she is hurting her own daughter, who needs to be in school every day if she's going to make it through pre-kindergarten. If the kid can't make it through pre-kindergarten, it's going to be a rough life for her. What is that mother thinking?