Today I took my two youngest to a science museum in our area. I had planned to meet a friend from a homeschooling co-op, but she had an ear infection and her daughter had "junk" coming out of her nose. We're rescheduling.
But I had already told mine we were going, so on we trooped. For anyone with more than one kid, you know how taxing it can be to watch two kids who want to go in different directions. One wants to play in the ball area and the other wants to play in the sand. Unfortunately, these two activities aren't even on the same floor. When we got to the second activity, my son was already getting bored. But he roamed around the younger kid area and found something to crawl in and some fake acorns. Actually, he found "someone else's" acorns. He walked up to a little boy (probably around 2) who had a bunch of these rubber acorns stashed in this fake tree stump. Now you have to understand, these kinds of places are like open territory for any object, inanimate or otherwise. Just because you're playing with it, doesn't mean that someone else won't come along and claim it. Which is no big deal to me. I've seen enough interaction among my own three to know that nothing is sacred and everything must be shared. So, when my son took several of them, the little boy's father said (mostly for my benefit, I'm sure), "I agree, he should have asked you to use your acorns". I had to just laugh in my head. Obviously this guy was only parenting ONE kid. Otherwise he would have realized the insanity of his comment. Since when does anything belong to one kid. Even if you gave it to one child, you can bet that all the others (and even some neighbor friends, if you're lucky) will lay claim to it at least once.
I kind of felt sorry for the guy. Even after his kid socked my daughter in the arm for doing the same thing my kid did to his. I didn't even say anything. Just directed her to something else. But how sad that his son may never know the joy of sharing with a sibling. It's not easy raising kids. But I would hope that we're all sane enough to know that kids are a work in progress. That's why they're the kids and we're the parents. (I am reminded of this when my oldest yells at me and calls me 'bossy'. "Hey, just doin' my job").
All in all, it was successful. No one came home bleeding and we didn't leave with anyone screaming. Score one for mom!
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