Hello party people. Holy moly has it been hot recently! It’s been so hot I saw an open flame ask for some water the other day. If you’ve spoken to someone of a certain vintage, they may have mentioned the summer of 1976. The temperatures we’ve had recently are similar to the mercury levels in ’76. The key difference, if you want my opinion (and hey, you’re reading my blog, so perhaps you do), is that 1976 was just a freak weather event. They happen. 2022 seems like another point of an ongoing trend. Summers have been getting hotter for years now. Global warming is on our doorstep and we continue to do nothing. And speaking of doing nothing, this week’s blog is all about parents who try to avoid being parents for small periods of time. It is the latest entry to my PARENTHOOD series. Enjoy.
As regular readers will know, I’ve written a fair bit about the difficulties that arise once you have kids, and how exhausting it can be. I’m the first person to say that parents need (and deserve) a break every now and again. However, there’s a time and a place.
For me, if your child(ren) are in the care of another adult that you know, i.e., being looked after by grandparents, or they’re at school, that’s your time to relax. Sure, you might decide to spend the time getting jobs done around the house while you have some time to yourself. But if you choose to put your feet up, that’s completely valid and you have my full support.
Where I have more of an issue is when parents decide the perfect time to take a break is when they’ve taken their child out in public. As your child grows from a baby to a toddler, you’ll inevitably take them to more and more places where other families go: soft play centres, parks, playgrounds etc. When you do, try to stick to these three simple rules.
1. Watch your child
This one seems pretty obvious, but you’d be amazed how many parents don’t do this. They rock up at a soft play centre, aim their child in the general direction of the fun areas, and then sit far away, usually on their phone or chatting to another parent.
Perhaps it speaks to my paranoia when it comes to my kids, but I can’t do that. When I’m out in public with my kids, I watch them like a hawk. Maybe I do worry more than I should. But you know what? I can live with that. What I can’t live with is the (perceived or otherwise) risks of unattended toddlers.
On the extreme side, there’s someone trying to walk off with my child. I know it’s very unlikely, but why take the chance. Slightly more plausible is the possibility of them getting hurt. Granted, toddlers will find ways to hurt themselves even if you are watching closely; it’s part of growing up. But I’ll give you a recent example.
The other day, I was pushing my daughter on the swings. My daughter enjoys going high, so I push her fairly hard (much to my wife’s chagrin when she’s with us). She’s going back and forth, having a really good time. Then suddenly – out of nowhere – a child ran behind the swing. Thankfully, my daughter was swinging forwards towards me and I managed to catch the swing to slow it down enough to not crack this boy’s head open. His parent(s) was nowhere to be seen. Eventually his mum ambled over and told him not to run where people are swinging, but it was a bit late. It turns out she had been chatting. It was pure luck that he didn’t suffer a bad injury, and all because he wasn’t being watched.
And the thing is, when you don’t watch your own child, saps like me end up trying to keep half an eye on them, just in case. And it’s not just safety that’s an issue. Behaviour is also a big thing to watch out for. I don’t care how well behaved a toddler is, they’ll still act out occasionally. If your child does something like hit another child, or steals their toy or something, you want to be able to sweep in quickly to deal with it. I’d be mortified if my daughter was violent towards another child, but I’d be even more mortified if it happened without my awareness.
It’s very awkward telling off somebody else’s child. I basically never would, unless they did something nasty to one of my children. But again, this is the difficult situation you find yourself in when other parents are turning a blind eye to their child’s bad behaviour. I get the idea behind letting your child fend for themselves a little bit. You want them to gain some independence. But there’s a line. You shouldn’t force other adults to make decisions about your child. Speaking of which…
2. Don’t let your child join in with another family
Perhaps worse than parents not watching their kids at all is when they glance over to see their child hanging around with another family and go, “this is fine”. They’re perfectly happy for their child to join in with complete strangers, as long as they get a bit of peace and quiet.
It may make me sound like a bit of a prick, but I don’t really like kids. I love my kids, but other peoples’, not so much. My daughter recently had her last day of nursery, and one thing my wife and I often discuss is how wonderful the staff there are. To me though, they’re doubly wonderful, because you couldn’t pay me to look after a bunch of toddlers. It’s just not in me.
So I’m always less than thrilled when some snot-nosed kid comes up to me and my family, looking to join the fun. The worst one is when I’m pushing my daughter on the swings and a strange child comes and stands next to a vacant swing. They look at me and I can tell that they want me to pick them up and put them in the swing. Sorry kid, unless it’s life and death, there ain’t no way I’m putting my hands on a child that I don’t know. You should have brought your own parents along. Oh, you did. They’re over there on the bench. They’re waving. That’s good of them.
3. Don’t let your older child play in the smaller kids area
If you’ve ever been to a soft play centre, you’ll know that there are often different sections for different age groups. The idea being that children of a similar age/size play alongside each other.
So what ends up happening? A large, older child will muscle their way into the baby/toddler area and will run the rule over the toys and apparatus. And because they’re in an area that’s too small for them, they take up loads of room, leaving the smaller kids with less space.
And again, what can I do? It’s not my responsibility to tell this kid they can’t be there, even if they are ruining the experience for the other children. Because if I tell the kid off and then they get upset, all of a sudden, I’m the bad guy. It’s the sort of situation where you really need the parents to step up and do the right thing. They rarely do though.
Even if the area technically does cater for an older child, sometimes common sense needs to be applied. I’ll give you an example. Recently, during our family holiday in Zante we went to a restaurant which had a play area attached to it. In the play area was a trampoline, one of those ones with netting around the side for safety. My daughter played on there for a bit, but then came to sit down when our food arrived. There were three or four toddlers playing on it, when a child probably between the age of 10-12 decided to join in.
Now technically, the trampoline was big enough for the older child. But because of the weight disparity between the older child and the toddlers, what had been a fun experience became one of survival. One by one, the toddlers left the trampoline, leaving the older child to bounce alone.
There are a couple of things wrong with this for me. Firstly, I think a child who is over the age of 10 should be able to sit down at the dinner table to wait for their food. Secondly, this child ruined the good time the toddlers were having. But I don’t blame the child. I mentioned common sense above, but not a lot of children display common sense (and nor should they, they’re still learning and developing). I do blame the parents though. They’re failing one of my two above rules.
Either they’re not watching their child, and were thus oblivious to what was happening. Or they were content with their child joining in with others so long as they didn’t have to get involved. When my kids are older, you can believe that not only will I be watching, I’ll actively remove them from a situation if they’re endangering other kids. It’s not too much to ask.
I’ll reiterate, all parents do deserve a break from time to time. But be careful how many breaks you take when you’re with your children; before you know it, they’ll be all grown up and won’t need you to watch over them anymore. So don’t sit scrolling on your phone. Don’t hide away on a park bench. Play with your kids. If – for no other reason – so I don’t bloody have to.
Cheers for reading. I promise to be less sanctimonious in my next blog. Maybe. I hope you’re all enjoying/surviving the summer. Take it easy.
Rob Recommends
Spider-Man: No Way Home – Film – 9/10
SPOILERS AHEAD! It’s fair to say I’m a Spider-Man fan. Even the “bad” Spider-Man films (looking at you Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2!) have their moments.
Even with my bias, I was surprised by just how much I loved this film. It is visually stunning and I really enjoyed Spider-Man’s fight with Dr. Strange. More than anything though, it was just great to see all the old characters again. It felt like a reunion of friends who you haven’t seen for a long time.
It was fantastic to see Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield back in the spider suits (with Garfield, Tom Holland, Benedicts Cumberbatch and Wong, and Alfred Molina, there was a heavy dose of Britishness on display). It was incredible to see some of the old villains too, in particular Molina’s Doc Ock and Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin.
Defoe stole the show for me, with his rubber-faced expressions and expert timing helping to contribute to a real powerhouse performance.
The story was fast paced and the ending was genuinely heartbreaking. With a whole raft of new projects recently announced by Marvel, it will be interesting to see if Spider-Man is incorporated any further into future storylines. Or perhaps Sony will go it alone with the franchise from now on. Either way, it won’t be long before we see the web-slinger back on the big screen.
A Rob Blog 