Journal bethanie's Journal: [Rant/Whine] Kids are people, too, dammit!! 24

So I got a latte AND a pedicure AND a haircut today. Cushy fuckin' life, I know.

But I'll tell you -- it was stressful as all hell. By the time I got home from that (which took 20 minutes longer than it should have, 'cause we were nearly home when I asked where Squirt's dollbaby was and realized that Kiddo had not, as instructed, kept track of it; it was still back at the hair place) I was utterly frazzled. I mean, literally shaking.

My children are not particularly badly behaved. Actually, Kiddo is an absolute ANGEL in situations like these. She always has been. And even Squirt is a good little monkey, albeit a very curious one.

But I find it next to impossible to try to go places with them where I cannot keep them physically restrained (like in a shopping cart or a high chair), and even then I'm doing good if it's 20 minutes before they (particularly Squirt) start vocalizing their protests against such injustice.

And as I've said -- it's not that the children are so badly behaved. They each behave like a normal, healthy, intelligent, well-loved (and fairly well-disciplined) 5.5- and 2-year-old.

The problem is that our culture simply is NOT child-friendly.

In professional situations, including most commercial ones, children are simply not accounted for. It's like we want to deny their existence. Or, more likely, charge their caregivers with full responsibility for keeping them contained and entertained. And god forbid that the kids should make noise or follow their own naturally healthy curious impulses.

'Cause they might get hurt. That baby might stick her finger in the fan and get cut! She could put her hand on the neon light and get burned! She could fall off that chair she's climbing on and... fall off!

Well, my answer to all of those things is that, yes, she might. And if she does, then she will have learned a valuable lesson. And it still won't cost me an ER visit, 'cause none of those things is serious enough to call for a trip to the hospital.

It's late and I'm exhausted and I'm afraid I won't be coherent enough to make my point clearly. So far it sounds like I'm whining because other people won't entertain my kids when I take them places. But really, that's not what I'm whining about.

My issue is that I think that we, as a society, *should* acknowledge that we have children amongst us. That they have needs and will need attending to and can't always be as quiet or patient as we want them to be.

Now, I'm the first one to sternly cut my child short and tell her she's interrupting a conversation inappropriately -- but she also deserves to be acknowledged and respected like a human being. Don't just keep on casually chitchatting as if you can't see that she's there pulling on my shirt trying to catch my attention.

As adults, we have better social graces than that, and by modelling them for our children we're teaching them a valuable lesson.

And really, would it kill places of business to have a small, child-sized table off in some corner, or a plastic box with a few toys or books stashed away? These are things that I would like to see at the manicure place, at the coffee shop, at the hair salon, at the bank, at the clothing store... Some little area that's safe and child-friendly -- fun and engaging, to show them that they are respected and valued, too.

Of course I have a bag of toys stashed in the back of my station wagon. I would no sooner leave the house without them than without extra diapers or a bit of snack stashed away in my backpack. I know it's primarily *my* responsibility to look after my kids, or to hire someone else to do the job in my stead.

But damn if it just wouldn't make my life a hell of a lot easier if there were places *available* to go that had some kind of set up appropriate for small children (and preferably some place that wasn't trying to seduce them into eating nasty, processed, palate-numbing crap). Squirt is one of those kids who will ALWAYS favor different, new stuff over familiar, old stuff. She's been that way from birth. So when we go out, the bag of toys (even if it's a brand new assortment) will immediately take a back seat to that kayak set out in the corner of the room or that chair on rollers or those colorful bottles on the shelf.

My options are to restrain her on my lap, which invariably elicits screams, or to let her explore at will, which often results in a bit of disorder (although *very* seldom any damage or injury). I'm damned either way. I try to be as considerate as possible of the circumstances -- keep my kids quiet, keep them from wrecking the place, clean up any messes that they make -- but there's only so much I can do. I can't make them NOT be kids. I can't immobilize and mute them. They exist, they're here, and they have a place in our society.

If society made just a little bit of an effort to acknowledge and accommodate THEM, we would ALL get along that much better.

And I might not be shaking and on the verge of tears by the time I got home from an afternoon of errands.