Nursery forced to put up blunt sign for parents picking up their children
One nursery has been forced to put up a blunt sign for parents picking up their children.
The sign in question, not so subtlety, instructs parents to pay more attention to their tot when it comes to home time.
Complete with capital letters, rhetorical questions and a whole bunch of exclamation marks - it's clear this day care centre in Texas was not messing around.
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The sign, which has since made its rounds on Facebook, reads: "You are picking up your child!"
Getting straight into the thick of it, it continues to point out: "GET OFF YOUR PHONE!!!!
"Your child is happy to see you! Are you happy to see your child??"
Ouch.
It continues: "We have seen children trying to hand their parents their work they completed and the parent is on the phone.
"We have heard a child say 'Mommy, mommy, mommy...' and the parent is paying more attention to their phone than their own child."
The nursery went on to dub the whole thing completely 'appalling'.
To really hammer the point one last final time, the sign signed off: "Get off your phone!!"
One mother, a perpetrator of the crime, noticed the nursery's sign and couldn't help but feel called out after realising she was guilty of the very behaviour the sign is so strongly against - which has since been dubbed 'parental phubbing'.
In case you've been living under a rock, 'phubbing' is a newly-coined term which is defined as when a person turns their attention to their smartphone during a face-to-face interaction.
A portmanteau of the words 'phone' and 'snubbing' - it's clear the behaviour extends beyond romantic relationships and friendships as even parents themselves 'phub' their own children.
The mum, Juliana, took a photo of the sign before finally putting her device away to properly greet her child without the added inclusion of her smartphone.
"I was a bit shocked, but I didn't feel any negativity towards the day care," she told CNN. "I know that the staff has the best interests of the children in mind, even to the point where they are willing to offend the parent."
It's fair to say, the sign garnered some very mixed reactions are clocking up over one million views.
Some seemed to agree with the message with one person writing: "You can't take a minute to greet your child and ask how their day went? Sad."
"I love this," posted a second. "This should be in every daycare or school where kids are being picked up."
Others, however, were far from on board.
"This is ridiculous," commented a third. "Who is anyone to tell a child's parent not to use their phone? They might be working? Or have an emergency or anything else that's none of their business."
A final Facebook user added: "I’m a qualified educator, and although I agree that parents shouldn’t be on their phones while picking up kids, I would never write such a disrespectful poster."
What do you make of it?
Rhiannon Ingle