This essay was adapted from the parenting newsletter the Pomegranate. Subscribe here.
When my son was about 2, we brought him to a beer garden in D.C. that turned out to have a working historic fountain right in the middle. In my bag, I’d brought several Hot Wheels cars, as I did for most outings at that age, and almost immediately he began driving the cars up and over the low sides of the fountain, then driving them out again, and running their wheels over the hot concrete to make tire tracks. He was wildly entertained by this, and my husband and I were happy: We were able to chat with our friends and drink a beer while he played car wash. It was a win-win.
But then another family with young kids showed up, two daughters, the younger one a little older than my 2-year-old. Her eyes grew wide as she watched my son running his cars in and out of the fountain. She tugged on her dad’s arm.
“Can I play too?” she asked.
The dad looked at my son, splashing away in the historic fountain, and scowled.
“No, we don’t play in fountains,” he said, and quickly pulled her away.
Up until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me I’d done anything wrong. My son was having fun in the fountain, and yes, he was splashing water out of the fountain a bit, and yes, the fountain was maybe a little dirty, and now that I really paid attention, he was kind of getting in people’s space a bit as he wheeled the wet car around the concrete patio. But none of that had really felt like a problem to me until the other parent told his kid it was the wrong thing to do.
Suddenly, I felt bad. The truth was, I hadn’t been out much with my 2-year-old in public spaces like this. He was born in May 2020, and visiting a beer garden was a relatively new experience for parents who had become parents in a pandemic. Was I doing something wrong? I felt as if we’d broken a rule I didn’t know existed. Of course “we” don’t play in fountains. It’s in the handbook. Except I never got a handbook. I just got a baby and, later, a lot of Hot Wheels cars.
Over the next few years, it became clear that I am, indeed, the problem. Everywhere I go, my kids—I now have two, and they’re 2 and 4 years old—seem to be the wildest kids there. At the neighborhood barbecue, my kids dash around a neighbor’s yard, in and out of people’s legs, grabbing food off the table, giggling and trying to get inside to see the owners’ cat. At the grocery store, my son likes to pretend the grocery cart is a train; he stands on low shelves and jumps aboard as I go past. And yes, even at restaurants, I let them get up and roam around a bit. They’ve tried to get into the kitchen only, like, once.
I notice, much of the time, that we are the only family doing these things. I see other toddlers strapped into a grocery cart, happily watching Disney+ on a tablet or phone, staying in a high chair calmly, or holding their mother’s hand. I don’t see a lot of other toddlers pretending to be a frog and hopping their way down the aisle of pews at the National Cathedral, like my 2-year-old did recently.
For a while after the fountain incident, I felt self-conscious about this. And sometimes I still do. Why are my kids so wild? I don’t think they are badly behaved. They’re not rude, they’re not pushing people or breaking stuff, and they’re certainly not knocking other kids down. But they are absolutely full of energy in a way that often feels way out of proportion to a lot of other kids I see in public. They’re always talking, always moving, always jumping.
I’ve been witness to rounds of online arguments about what kids should be allowed to do in public and where they should be allowed to do it. Should kids be allowed in restaurants? Airplanes? Libraries? So many times I’ve found myself, and other like-minded parents, saying things like “How are they supposed to learn to behave in public if we don’t teach them to behave in public?”
But part of me wants to say: Why do they always have to “behave” in public?
Here’s where it’s going to get a bit controversial. I realized not long after the fountain incident that I don’t really care that my kids are kind of wild in public. I even kind of like it. I like that they are full of energy and ideas and curiosity. I like that they can make anything, even a trip to Costco, into a game. They’re smart and funny and silly and full of life in a way that makes me proud to be the mom of the wild kids. (I do realize that since my children and I are white, we have the privilege of mostly only worrying about what someone might think of us, not what actions may be taken against us. I understand not everyone has that luxury, although they should.)
Of course, it’s not as if I’m letting my kids run circles around restaurants where hot food is being brought out on a platter, but somewhere like a sandwich place? When it’s pretty empty? Guilty. As long as nobody is in immediate danger and we clean up after ourselves, I just don’t really care if my kids are acting like … well, kids. I don’t feel as if I need to constantly be “preparing my kids for the world,” because it’s their world as well. They’re here! They’re living in it. Our world is not an adult world we are training kids to participate in—it belongs to them too.
And I want my kids to see beauty in it, to see possibility. I don’t think every outing needs to be a learning opportunity for how to sit nicely at a restaurant booth or how to stay quiet on the Metro. Sometimes I want the lesson that I’m teaching them to be that the world outside their house can be fun. Often they are matching my energy, and that of my husband, who’s been known to belt out a tune in public on many occasions. We are extroverts who like public spaces, and we’re bringing up our kids to be that way too.
People are going to be mad about this. They will say I’m being selfish or disrespectful. Some will say I’m one of those parents who think my “little darlings” can do no wrong. (They actually do so much stuff wrong, though. Have you ever seen a 4-year-old try to simply drink from a public water fountain?) How many times have I had someone on Twitter yell at me and say that children shouldn’t be allowed to even set foot in a restaurant unless they are strapped to the table with a bungee cord because every server there is 10 seconds away from dumping hot queso and a pile of knives on their heads if they so much as move a muscle?
But I find, in the real world, that usually the worst thing that could actually happen is that a person has to eat lunch next to a kid who is performing a series of relay races on the restaurant patio or has to take a bus ride next to a kid who is singing “The Wheels on the Bus” while on the actual bus. And in the real world, perhaps some people are complaining about us privately, but I find that many people actually enjoy watching kids have fun. We typically get a lot of smiles when we are playing or singing or jumping around out in public, and more often than not, an older lady will stop me on the street to tell me how much she misses having little kids. I don’t know that this would happen if I weren’t willing to let my kids drive the tiny Trader Joe’s shopping cart around the store at high speed.
The other day I saw a woman in the grocery store with a baby and two older boys who looked about 3 and 5, respectively. Her two older boys were so well behaved that they walked quietly next to her while holding the sides of the cart. For a second I felt envy. Not only were they being so mild-mannered, but she seemed so confident. Nothing like me at the grocery store with my two kids. By the time we make it to the register, I’m usually sucked into a game of some sort—hide-and-seek or pretending to be a family of cats—or throwing them over my shoulders. It’s absolute chaos every single time. It makes my heart race and spikes my cortisol so high I usually need to take a few deep breaths when I finally do wrangle them back into their car seats.
I wonder about the calmer kids I see in public, the moms like the one in the grocery store who seem to be able to keep their kids at bay so much better than I do. Are they doing it because they don’t enjoy the cortisol rush (understandable), or is there something else at play? I wonder sometimes if other parents, the first time they took their 2-year-old out in public and let them play in a fountain, got the same reaction I did but pivoted the other way and never let them play in a fountain again. I wonder if the fountain shamer thinks his kids shouldn’t play in fountains only because someone once did it to him too. I wonder if we are all scared of being perceived as the problem more than we believe there really is a problem.
It’s no secret that our country doesn’t really like children. Just look at any public restroom, where the sinks are too high for them to reach, or our country’s lack of guaranteed maternity leave. But as long as my kids aren’t hurting anyone or setting anything on fire, I don’t feel as if I should have to make them behave in a specific way just because it’s someone else’s standard.
Ultimately, I think allowing my kids to be a bit wild in public is giving them confidence they can’t get at home. I’m proud that they feel as if they can run around in a stranger’s yard and grab Chex Mix off the table instead of hiding behind my legs. I’m proud they think it’s fun to hop like a frog in a national place of worship. I’m proud of my wild kids, whose minds and bodies are always running at top speed. But yeah, I will remove them from the roof if things start to really go down. I’m not insane.
Get the best of news and politics
Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.
发表回复