So here's the deal. I try to get out with the babies several times a week to do something. They are a bit young yet for organized activities so we don't do any Little Gym classes or story time at the library stuff. I want to get out and meet more people with young kids, and I have some, but it's still a pain to organize getting together for play dates around nap schedules. For right now, we kind of just do our own thing so I can keep our schedule on schedule. Usually these outings we go on involve spending money...which is not a good habit. I'm trying to do some free stuff instead of trips to Target, Carter's, Hobby Lobby etc. where I always seem to spend at least $20. The park! What a novel idea. There is one less than 5 min from our house (that's driving time. Loading the babies alone takes more than 5 min).
We've been several times and it's always been a great experience. Evan loves to run around and attempt to eat wood chips. Who wouldn't?! Ella likes to walk holding on to my hands. We all hit the swings and slides. Good times.
Well, today something happened. I think I should be initiated into some kind of mom club for having a problem at the park. Here's my park experience today. We stroll up to see three kids running around all about age 5 and under. Perfect. My babies love to watch other kids run around.
As I unload Evan and let him walk around all three kids come up to the stroller. Two of them start talking to Evan. One of them, who we'll call red face snotty nose, starts grabbing at Ella's pacifier, the diaper bag and starts pushing the stroller (while ELLA is still IN IT and I'm walking around trying to keep my eye on Evan). Red face snotty nose is 18 months old according to dad who's standing RIGHT there and doing NOTHING to stop her. I had to put Ella's paci away in an locked space bc I don't know what kind of contagious disease that kid was rocking. Mind you, all the while the dad keeps asking the usual twin questions and makes several comments about how hard it must be to have two etc. No shit it's hard! Now get your sick kid away from us and stop letting her push on my stroller and grab stuff from it....what an idiot.
We moved to a different area to get away from red face snotty nose and her idiot father. Next up was a boy who was friendly enough, but had no parents around. I asked him how old he was and he said he was 6 (obviously not 6) then he said he was 3 and then 4. Who knows...I'm going to guess he was about 3.5 years old. Um. Where are his parents? As Evan was walking around this kid, who we'll call bug bites since his legs were loaded with red bumps, kept walking up to him and trying to direct where he should go. He also kept trying to get my attention to play with him. Um...I have two kids here. WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS? Oh yeah, they are the spaced out couple sitting WAYYYY over at a picnic table engaging in their own conversation. Nice. So bug bites keeps herding Evan and asking me to push him in the swing over and over and asks to get Ella out of the swing so he can get in it. Annoying! Finally bug bites parents manage to scrape their ass off the picnic table and come over to push their kid on the swing. The dad had to the balls to ask me to move my stroller so he could push his kid super high on the swing. Nice.
We got the hell out of the swing area and went to another part. Some girl who told me she is 5 starts hanging out with us. She's cute and friendly and not annoying. Well, she runs over to a pavilion where her parents are and brings over a handful of chips and keeps trying to feed them to the babies. I was polite and said they don't eat chips, they just ate lunch and aren't hungry etc. It didn't work. This chick was persistent. Chip girl kept trying to shove chips in my kids faces. What the hell?! Can her parents not see this happening and see I'm trying to manage two ONE year olds and I don't need to keep an eye on their 5 year old as well?!
As if keeping chip girl away from Evan and Ella's mouths wasn't enough, red face snotty nose wandered back over and started grabbing at stuff from the stroller again while her dad kept making 'i don't know how you do it with two' comments. I finally loaded up the babies and we went home.
We have a small play gym and swings out back so we played on those instead.
Some people's kids....
Anyone else have any experiences like this? It's the first time I've had any kind of run in like this, but I know it's not the last.
5 comments:
We haven't spent a ton of time at the park yet, so we don't have any crazy stories from there, but aren't the 'I don't know how you do it' comments fun when there are about 40 things they could do to help? I was recently leaving a store with my double stroller that did not have auto doors and I had a couple talking to me about the boys and how hard it must be all while I manhandled my stroller out while opening and holding the door for myself... Seriously people, get a clue!!!!
Not at the playground, but while out shopping one day neither baby would sit in the cart. I had one baby in the ergo and one in the cart seat as per usual, but this time they kept trying to climb out. Of all people, a mother of twins made a snide comment about how she always used a stroller then just watched as my baby about jumped out of the cart. I managed to get to the front of the store and told the check out person that I couldn't unload my cart because my baby would climb out, could she page a co-worker to help. She just stared at me. I stared back. Finally, the young girl behind me in line, realizing we were at a standstill, unloaded my cart. A mother of twins and store clerk were the least helpful while a young college student came to the rescue. Go figure.
OMG, I would be SOOOOOOOOOO annoyed. I am annoyed FOR YOU. We just have a small park right in our 'hood, so parents are almost always right there and the kids respectable. But we honestly do not spend a whole lot of time there! A small park often doesn't equal free swings, so we just use the ones in the back yard. I'm much more for taking them on looong stroller walks in the Bob jogger!
We had an experience at the indoor play area at our zoo. We were enclosed in a smallish play area for toddlers and H crawled over to an unoccupied toy. A big kid, probably 5 at least immediately went to H's toy and tried to tell him he could only play with a small corner of the toy. Obviously H did not understand and kept playing. I watched for several minutes to see how the big kid would handle this. Finally I corralled H back closer to me when the big kid obviously wasn't going to let up. A few minutes later the exact same thing happened with a set of bongo drums. It seemed that as soon as H went to play with a toy, big kid followed and tried to claim it as his own. I just kept thinking where are this child's parents? Plus he didn't even belong in the toddler section. Finally the teacher in me came out. I walked over to the boy who was saying something like "this is mine" and I said, "No, this is not yours. H was here first. You can play with the other one right here." He didn't bother my son again. The thing is most parents are pretty good about keeping an eye on their kids and helping them learn appropriate boundaries. About 10% are not. And it's too bad because those kids will have a tough time making friends if they are always allowed to do whatever they want. I have no problem redirecting another parents child even in front of the parent. My feeling is that if the behavior is unsafe or making others feel uncomfortable then the child needs to know. If the parent is upset with me for it then it is his or her problem. Usually they weren't paying enough attention to notice though.
What the hell??? We won't often go to parks but when we do we don't have these kinds of problems. Our parks are pretty empty though. I've also become very assertive when I go out in public, using phrases such as, "Hey there, can you get the door for me?" even before I get to the door. Delegating! It works!
Post a Comment