Last week, I was on a bus. Traffic was slow, and I was struggling to keep myself awake by listening to music. At some point, I heard voices over my music, a thing that I felt was rare in the US. I took out my headphone to hear a woman arguing with another with a child. The child had apparently touched the other woman on the knee, which had aggravated her.
As I put my headphone back into my ear with a sigh, I found myself wondering once more about children. Or rather, about our reactions to children, be they our own, our friends’, or those of complete strangers. We see infants and we think, “oh, how cute.” Sometimes, we don’t even think that. Every act of the child is assessed on adult standards – their crying, their movements, the things they say – and then hold the child’s elders responsible for when the child does not fit what we expect. Children cry when they’re hungry or upset. They LEARN to control it, but that doesn’t mean that they can do so all the time. We adults can’t, so how do we expect them to?
Yet a baby crying in the subway or on a bus is unacceptable, earning many dirty stares – and, sometimes, harsh comments – to the adult accompanying them. Children like to explore. They enjoy their expeditions in all those activities that we find mundane and boring. And yet we get annoyed at the boisterous little boy who touches things we think he shouldn’t (even if doing so would not lead him to direct or indirect bodily harm). We give stern glances to the little girl who asks us innocent questions and then for clarity about those questions. Few of us have taken a flight where there hasn’t been a child on board. And yet, when we do, we grumble about the sound of the baby crying or the ‘hyperactivity’ of the little girl excited about taking the flight. Flights are difficult sometimes, and if they can make us uncomfortable, how do we believe that a baby won’t cry, or that a child won’t run up and down the aisle to relieve his or her boredom?
On the one hand, we encourage children to be curious. And on the other, when a child asks us questions, sometimes embarrassing ones, we give them the cold shoulder or even a sharp look. Why? Because they asked such a question. Because they actually wanted to know something. They dared to want to learn from a complete stranger. How could they.
In all honesty, they absolutely can – that is what we encourage nowadays, independent thought built on asking questions, learning something new and incorporating it into an existing knowledge base. I can still recall a time when a young preschool student of mine asked a heavy-set woman, “are you going to have a baby?” I was terrified about her reaction, but she laughed and said, “No, that’s just my belly”. I went to her to apologize, but she smiled at me and said, ” well, at least he learned that not all big bellies are a sign of being pregnant!”
WHAT ABOUT THE PARENTS? In a myriad of cases, parents are unnecessarily held responsible for their children behaving in a very natural way. We somehow expect them to have become superhuman, and capable of watching their children 24/7. We cannot believe that there may be circumstances unique to them that force them into a situation of having to control their children more than normal. People would not have been so mad at, say, a mother and father of twins boys who were on the autism spectrum, who could not control their them on a 17-hour flight, but had no choice but to take the flight to get specialized treatment for the two preschoolers.
It is impossible to say all parents are good, that all of them are not to be held responsible. In certain cases, they are. When they neglect their children, or punish them so harshly that the children no longer know what is right or wrong, what is good about them and what they can rectify, then we all can say that they aren’t doing right by their children. But until we know the circumstances, can we really point fingers? We were all children once. Why begrudge them the freedom that we once had or desired ourselves?
Think Again 