The other day, in a rare moment of alone time, Ben and I decided to go to the playground. Ben, who doesn't know the meaning of the word shy, ran straight into the action while I settled myself on a bench to keep an eye on him. For awhile, all was peaceful. And then I noticed her, a seemingly innocuous little girl in a tie die shirt and denim skirt, with big eyes and bouncing pigtails. She looked like a completely harmless, run-of-the-mill six or seven-year-old. Except she wasn't.
Within a ten minute span this completely innocent-looking little girl reeked absolute havoc on the formerly fun, harmless playground. She pushed a kid off a swing, pushed another kid off of the slide, stuck her foot out and tripped three kids (including Ben), screamed at the small kids to do what she told them to do, and I'm 98% sure that she told an older kid to 'Eat shit'. All the while, the guy who was 'watching' her never glanced up from his phone. Not once.
In the meantime, Ben was becoming increasingly terrified of this little tornado of terror. He didn't know what to do with himself. He kept turning around and looking at me with big eyes and quivering lips, like he couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. It was hard to watch. And he wasn't the only one. I noticed a few of the other parents looking uncomfortably in the direction of the (oblivious) man, hoping that he would suddenly spring into action and tell this kid to knock it off, but he remained transfixed to his phone. In the meantime, the whole situation was starting to look like a problem that was too big for Ben to handle. He needed reinforcement. Mommy reinforcement. I couldn't just sit there anymore. I had to say something.
I thought briefly about saying something to the little girl herself before common sense kicked in and I realized that that probably wasn't a very smart idea. Instead, I turned my attention to Ben and reminded him to share the playground and to be nice to his friends (and Ben, who wasn't doing anything wrong and clearly didn't follow my smooth, CIA-quality trickery, looked at me like I had lost my mind). I smiled at his little pig-tailed aggressor, hoping to convey that I was a nice lady, but I knew what was up and I was watching her. She returned the gesture by sticking her tongue out at me. Charming.
I swallowed my urge to stick out my tongue out at her, and went back to my bench instead where I considered my options. I figured I had two choices. I could say something to this guy, who clearly didn't give two craps about what this kid was doing or who she was doing it to, or I could let it go. After a mental pros and cons list and copious amounts of nail-biting, I decided to let it go.
And it's been bugging me ever since. But it's not the bullying, or the bossiness, or the obscenities, or even a seven-year-old sticking her tongue out at me that bothers me, it's the fact that the person who should have cared obviously didn't.
I'm laughably far from being a perfect parent, and it's obviously none of my business how someone else raises their kids. But it's just beyond me to not care about what your kid is doing at all, especially when your kid is currently beating up half of the playground. Pay attention. Look up from your phone every once in awhile. Engage. Because eventually your poor attention deprived kid is going to grow up to be a poor attention deprived adult, and nobody likes that guy. The world doesn't need another mean, broken adult, it needs nice, decent people (preferably ones that excel at science and can figure out a way to reverse global warming) that can keep the whole world from going down the toilet. Or at least slow down the process.
I don't mean to sound preachy (even though I realize that I probably do), but I just don't understand being indifferent to your kid in any way, even in a small way like not paying attention when you could easily be paying attention. I'm more of a 'hovering' parent but in my defense, I learned from the best (to this day, if you're in the bathroom at my mom's house for more than 30 seconds, she will knock on the door and offer you Pepto). If I was a superhero, my catchphrase would be "Be careful!". I'm sure that someday when my kids are 30 and calling me to ask if it's safe to walk across the street, I'll regret being like this. But I'll worry about that later. Even if this guy on the playground wasn't the person responsible for this little girl, he was still entrusted with taking care of her and he was doing a really crappy job. I'm sorry, but he was.
Even as I sit here writing this, I still wonder if letting it go was actually the right thing to do. Should I have said something? Would it have made a difference? Or am I the one that's wrong, sitting here and obsessing instead of letting my kids handle their own problems? Should we focus on teaching our kids how to be tough to survive in a tough world, and is everyone who's trying to raise compassionate kids actually doing them a huge injustice in the long run? I just don't know.
Well. So much for a fun day at the playground. It's a jungle out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment