1. Other people can still hear your child screaming.
The twins would have been cute in their matching outfits if
not for their identical gaping mouths, wailing like a pair of banshees at an
Irish hospice. Their mother wandered the library with her double stroller,
ignoring the noise, or possibly deafened by it, for half an hour.
Here’s a concept I’ve been toying with - just a thought,
really:
How about - I know this is crazy, but when your kid is
having a bad day and just wants to stand in the middle of the room and scream,
how about we have that day NOT be library day?
2. Kids are sneaky.
Fetching a book from the bottom shelf in the children’s
section, I found myself at eye level with a smiling boy.
“Hi!” he said, surprised, as if I had magically appeared
before him.
“Hello,” I said.
“How did you get here at the library?” he asked.
“I drove here in my car,” I said. “How did you get here?”
“I drove here in my car too!”
“Really?” I said. “You look a bit young to be driving.”
“No, I’m not!” he said, holding out his mother’s keys.
“How did you get hold of those?” his mother said, taking
them back.
3. When all else fails, resort to bribery.
“Rawr!” a pigtailed girl played in the floor with our
plastic dinosaurs.
“Whatcha doin’?” her brother asked.
“I’m a dinosaur!” she said, flexing pretend claws. “Rawr!”
The boy shrugged and ignored her in favor of the blocks.
“Kids, it’s time to go,” said their mother.
“We can’t!” said the dinosaur. “I’m not done destroying
yet!” She demonstrated by leveling the block city recently abandoned by her
brother.
“Time’s up. We’re leaving.”
“Rawr!”
“That’s too bad. I was going to take us for ice cream, but
dinosaurs don’t eat ice cream.”
“Ra…” The roar ended on a cough. “Let’s go, mommy.”
4. You have to watch your children.
The adorable little boy in overalls looked like he was on
his way to the fishing hole: barefoot, blond duck-fluff hair sticking up,
smiling as he walked the stumbling walk of children barely past crawling…
Gaily plucking book after book off the shelves and dropping
them on the floor.
It looked like the shelves had exploded.
“Where is your mother?!” I cried aloud.
“Here!” she said from across the room, making no move to
interfere.
I glared at her for as long as it took her to gather her
child and leave, then spent an hour cleaning up the mess.
5. Teenage nannies are more interested in other teenage
nannies than in their charges.
While shelving, I eavesdropped on three teenagers whose
toddler siblings played nearby. Toddler Brother wouldn’t leave Teenage Boy
alone to get his game on.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” Toddler Brother asked the
girls.
“Go play. You can’t have a girlfriend,” said Teenage Boy.
“You have a girlfriend!” said Toddler Brother. “Why can’t
I?”
“Because you’re five.”
“Oh,” said Toddler Brother, turning away sadly.
“So,” snapped Teenage
Girl 1, “you have a girlfriend?”
“What?” Teenage Boy backpedaled. “No! He doesn’t know what
he’s talking about!”
The girls traded knowing glances. “Uh-huh,” said Teenage
Girl 2, collecting their sisters. “Let’s go.”
6. It’s never too early to think about their future careers.
As a haggard mom flipped through the books on the cart, her
daughter pointed. “What’s that?”
Mom sighed as though she were tired of answering questions.
“It’s a book about squirrels.”
The girl’s face scrunched in confusion. “Why?”
Mom, still flipping through books, shrugged. “Because that’s
what the author wanted to write about.”
The girl waited for more.
Mom ignored her. Flip, flip…
Finally, the girl said, “That’s silly.”
Mom didn’t even look up. “What would you write about?”
The girl stared in thought, then said, “Dogs.”
“Well,” said mom, “someday you can be an author and write
about dogs.”
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