Kissing Needs to Stay in Your OWN Mouth, Please

Every few years you have a kisser in Kindergarten.  A Kisser, you ask?  Yes, a Kisser.  A Kisser is someone who likes to slip their five and six year old peer a kiss on the cheek every now and then when they think “teacher” isn’t looking.  You know that old saying, “I have eyes in the back of my head.”?  Well, I don’t.  Kids know this.  So, if you are using this line, I am telling you with great authority that it is time to send that one to the graveyard. The millisecond that you turn your back to attend to any issue, their Let’s Get Crazy Radar signals them to make the move.

“Kissing needs to stay in your own mouth, please.”   Yes, I’ve said it.  Maybe even 300 times since becoming a teacher fifteen years ago.  Every time it rolls of my tongue it seems easier to say than the time before.  The first few times you have kissers in Kindergarten your level of concern soars sky-high with fear that the inevitable phone call will come from the mother, or father, of the young girls who are on the receiving end of these well-intentioned, gratis-smooches. Once you see a Kisser in action you have to move swiftly as a teacher. 

You say a lot of things in Kindergarten as the teacher that seem to have merit.  “Kissing needs to stay in your own mouth.”

“I need you to stop ___(insert the undesired behavior here)___.”

“Please use a Kleenex.” (You can only imagine what jewels I have found under the table tops, on the walls and on books.)

“Oh, shoot!  We need someone to take the initiative to clean up the Band-Aid wrappers that are lying all over the place.”  (Of course all the while I am spouting this I am thinking, “It really isn’t taking initiative if I am reminded them to do it.”

The list goes on. 

So, the least desirable time to have to utter “Kissing needs to stay in your own mouth”  is when your school principal is sailing through the door while your back is to him/her.  Of course it is by no coincidence that as s/he is coming in to do an observation you see a student plant a big one on an unsuspecting peer for the fourth time that day and you are gritting your teeth while announcing the directive, “KISSING NEEDS TO STAY IN YOUR OWN MOUTH!” (This time you proclaim it without the tender, caring, re-directive tone that you have used so many times before.)