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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

No Parents Allowed


I have been fascinated reading some of the articles floating around about no kids allowed policies (another one here and here). The comments are even more interesting.

I think one of the comments I read yesterday mentioned how certain kids should never be allowed anywhere.

Today I would add... some parents should never be allowed anywhere with kids- even playgrounds.

This morning we went up to Blackhawk for the Radio Disney free "camp." They had an animal show. It was hot... so we spent most of the time eating ice cream and playing on the playground in the shade.

Pardon my vent... but one mom let her two kids (both probably ages 5 and 7) bring hula hoops to the small playground. At one point, Andrew was trying to go down the slide and her daughter was going down the slide with the hula hoop in her hand at the rate of a very slow snail.

There was a line of 8 kids trying to also go down the slide.

After the kid was still going down the slide 5 minutes later (with 9-10 kids now still waiting), I said to the mom, "Do you think you could move her along... there are other kids waiting."

The mom said to me, "She wants to go slow" and then when she tried to rush the kid along a bit, the girl yelled at her mom and then glared and started going even slower.

Instead of doing anything (like saying, "your choice is to move faster or I'm taking you off" or, "you can either follow directions or we're leaving," the mom casually walked back to her knitting and ignored the child.

10 minutes later (you think I am kidding... but I am not), Andrew finally made it down the slide. At this point, the little girl and her brother were throwing their hula hoops in the air and letting them crash down.

They threw them above strollers and people... and one almost crashed on top of Caitlin. They threw them higher than the little cafe nearby. Another mom nearby was shielding her kids and getting whacked again and again.

Their mom kept knitting.

After all, "they want to play with their hula hoops."

Seriously? At the expense of other people's safety?

They shouldn't even have a choice. This was one of the situations where I thought, some parents shouldn't even be allowed in public with their kids.

I totally felt like a volcano about to explode because I was so annoyed. I wanted to lay into the mom and give her a piece of my mind. Instead I looked at Andrew, who was eating ice cream for lunch, and thought that maybe I shouldn't judge... but should I have done something?

What would you have done? Is it totally lame that I was annoyed by that? I'm sure people are equally as annoyed by my parenting of Andrew sometimes. There are definitely times when I shouldn't be allowed in public with him either I guess!

2 comments:

Jenny said...

That's hard...usually parents I run into at the park are over-concerned that their kids are bothering others. I'm a wuss so I probably wouldn't have said anything, but that's definitely rude.

Chrissie said...

!!!!!!!!! This makes me mad just hearing about it! I'm kind of afraid to confront people so I don't know if I would have said anything, but if I had been there, maybe we could have gone up to her together--I think there's strength in numbers. :) Did you try talking to the naughty kids directly, since their mom wasn't doing anything?