"Where are all the kids?!?", my son asked with desperation in his voice.
It was roughly 8:45 when I had let him and his brother loose on the playground. The unspoken start time for park outings in this town is apparently 10:00--but for an area of the country where the air achieves pressure-cooker status by 11:00 four months out of the year, the “early bird” not only “gets the worm”—but also avoids stroking out from the oppressive heat and sweating through her yoga capris while dead-lifting kids to the monkey bars they can't reach on their own.
After working full-time for most of their young lives, I'd pulled my kids from their respective daycare and preschool at the very beginning of the summer--for a variety of reasons, but mainly because funneling every bit of my income into childcare--just for the privilege working all day in the service of other people's children--before and after caring for my own--had become a no-win for the family. When I took this "new job" of staying home with my kids, I told myself with shaky confidence that I could surely do no worse than the average mom at nurturing, stimulating, and regulating their little brains and bodies. I mean, what is Honey-boo-boo if not an excuse to feel good about being even the most mediocre of mothers?
My biggest concern for my new position--other than fighting the urge to pour a BIG glass of wine directly after breakfast on those super-whiney days--was the one thing I knew I'd have to look outside of myself for: the socialization. Mommy can read you social stories about playing with friends and withhold Star Wars gummy treats until you “use your words” all she wants--but nothing teaches you how to be around other kids like BEING around other kids. Would this hiatus from the childcare pool turn my kids into reclusive little moles that burrowed in their rooms til college? Would my oldest get to kindergarten and be climbing the bookshelves or throwing poo like a chimpanzee when asked to sit still in Circle Time or share his crayons with his neighbor? Would the younger and more socially reluctant of the two become physically melded to my thigh and stiff-arm any peer that approached him or his preferred articles? I shuddered at the image of my sons living in our finished attic, late into adulthood--jobless and loveless from lack of social skills, building bombs out of toothpaste and old Legos and still living off the PB&J and buttered noodles they devour today.
Because that was NOT what I envisioned for my sons, I'd made it my mission to get them out in the world as much as possible during their year or so in my exclusive care. It had been tricky at times during the first leg of this grand stay-at-home experiment--due to the sub-tropical nature of summer here and the lack of pigment in myself and my fairest-of-them-all kids, as well as my refusal to invest more than $5 into any one outing or social endeavor. But almost every day, we'd hit one of many local parks before most adults made it to the office and run ragged until the meltdowns ensued.
My oldest immediately saw this for exactly what it was--the opportunity to interact with kids other than his brother--and he took to it like a starved hyena, eagerly propositioning any kid within 2 to 10 years of his age. His brother was stand-offish at first, but soon rode his sibling's coat tails into all kinds of raucous playground adventures. I was so pleased with the outcome, even though it involved a lot of sweating and intermittent panic attacks trying to keep track off them both. And as I observed my kids' interactions with complete strangers' children, I began to see a striking similarity between these impromptu play-dates and a pastime I'd long laid to rest: "going out".
"Going out"--be it to a bar, club, or party--was what my girlfriends and I did from college age somewhere into our early 20s. We were typically just looking to dance and drink cheap beer in a cute top--but the possibility of meeting someone interesting always lingered in the background (unless we were already dating someone else, of course). Let me be clear--nowhere in this analogy do I mean to imply that my friends and I were fast and loose or to assign romantic sentiment to the platonic nature of kids playing at the park. But even the most modest and level-headed lady has experienced the thrill of meeting someone unexpected on Dollar Night (cough...found my husband there...cough). And I'll be damned if my boys don't act like it's closing time at the club when it's time to go home for lunch after a fun time at the park.
Here are a few parallels I couldn’t help but notice…
You come here often? I have honestly uttered these words to fellow parents when acting as my kids’ social organizer and go-between. Obviously, I try my hardest not to say exactly that—but I must admit that exact cliché has slipped out a time or two—just because it sums up exactly what you’re getting at when trying to “keep things casual”—when you’re not ready to set up an actual playdate at someone’s house, but running into this family again might be nice. Not being the most socially adept ice-breaker in my own previous social life, I don’t think I ever did this kind of thing on my own behalf—but when you see your kids having a particularly good time, somehow you’re willing to embarrass yourself on the off-chance that you can keep this ball rolling.
The concept of “The Wing Man”. As the younger of my two boys became more comfortable playing with strangers, he began to realize the older one was a nice accessory and bargaining chip when trying to get himself “in” with the older kids. At 2-and-a-half, his language was really coming along and he really thought he was just as big and bad as the 4-year-olds. However, he still sometimes needed Older Brother to pave the way for him—to act as his translator and to provide a little modeling for how to play whatever school yard game the impromptu friends had concocted. As if to return the favor, the younger one began approaching random kids independently, introducing himself by name and then gesturing with his chubby little hand to his older counterpart, saying (in his broken toddler speech), “Dat my brulla” (his approximation of “brother”). It was like his version of Barney Stinson’s iconic “Haaaaave you met Ted?”
Small talk and the offering of polite gestures. Instead of "What's your sign?" or some attempt at a pick-up line, kids break the ice with "What's your favorite color?" and "How old are you?", often forgetting--as does the typical singles-bar-goer--to ask the other person's name, leaving them to refer forever after to this chance friend as "the four-year-old in the yellow shirt". Since my younger son isn’t so much into colors yet, he steers the conversation to his interests and cuts right to the chase. “You wanna play football?” he’s asked everyone from babies playing in the mulch to a kid who was damn-near 14—usually without any particular segue-way and often without an actual ball (because “football” to him is more about the running and the tackling than anything else). And much like one of two adults might offer to buy the other's drink, I once observed my older son's friend, whom we had unexpectedly encountered at the library, pick out books for my son. "You like dragons? Here's a really great book about dragons." --like when you take a person you're interested in out to dinner at your favorite place and try to set them up with "what's good".
Going too far, too fast. When you have an extraordinarily fun night out with someone you just met, that penny draft has a way of lowering your inhibitions and convincing you to at least consider that this stranger--whose name you couldn't hear over the dance floor bass and whose face may or may not be doubling periodically in the cheap beer haze--may just be your soulmate. Apparently, the euphoria of making new friends on the playground has a similar effect. I've often heard my sons planning an “after-party” of play dates and sleepovers to commence directly following the park-adventure-in-progress with kids they've known for all of 20 minutes--as if the mutual love of hide-and-seek and Paw Patrol was enough to throw caution to the wind and justify joining surgically at the hipbone.
The one that got away. After that last slow jam ends and the lights come on, you often lose track of your new love interest in the dissipating crowd as your designated driver reclaims and rounds up the wayward members of the herd. And you may or may not encounter that person ever again, depending on the circumstances. I cannot count the number of times my kids have asked me when they’re going to play with so-and-so again, only to find out that their handler—me—didn’t make the effort to get mom’s digits—or more accurately--mom’s FB friend request. This only had to happen once or twice before the kids began to realize that first farewell might be their last, adding a certain gravitas to their parting hugs or high-fives and that lonesome wave from the car window, like some epic train departure scene from a black-and-white film.
Silly and ridiculous as it seems in my current stay-at-home state, it’s in these instances of reflection that the universe takes a fluorescent pink highlighter to the circular nature of life experience that lets us revisit our earlier selves by absorbing a present circumstance. Like I said, most of my friends and I retired our party pants long ago. And for every bass-thumpingly fabulous night of girl-time comradery, there are a million mortifying mental pictures where “making an ass of oneself” became an art form. The single life is rife with opportunities for ridicule, rejection—and ending up in the back of a windowless white work van, if you’re not careful. I take pride that someone so reckless and irresponsible could ultimately right her ship on the tumultuous tide of togetherness and find that most comfortable and lasting place with someone—and THEN be competently in charge of 2 little people we cultivated from nothingness.
It’s ironic and poetic that these little people would bring me back to that seemingly unrelated mental space. And it’s both exciting and tragic that the playground is where it begins for them. Just as we toiled and triumphed in our quest for friendship and then romance, so do our kids inherit that longing to be loved--and all of the struggle it entails. In these first attempts at friendship is where they discover how good it can feel to be around people they admire and to resonate on the same frequency as someone else. As a parent, knowing what I know about relationships, I find myself covering my eyes and peeking through the cracks between my fingers--like someone in the horror film I’m watching is about to “go check out what’s making that sound in the basement”. There’s no such thing as an “undefeated season” when making friends or finding significant others. Everyone takes a loss at some point. The childhood disappointment of “why doesn’t he/she like me?” will one day evolve into the heartbreak of “why doesn’t he/she love me?”--different segments in the cycle of ups and down we all submit to in the hope of finding that place we belong. The hurt is all part of the process, but I don’t think any one of us would volunteer to relive any aspect of “I don’t wanna play with you” or “I don’t want to see you anymore”. Unfortunately, parenthood gives us a front-row seat.
And yet, (in those of us lucky enough to be developmentally typical, of course) the drive to put ourselves in harm’s way is so strong. From the first smile we give that someone gives back, before we even have words for the world around us, we are looking to connect. And in that search, we are certainly gluttons for punishment.
"Where are all the kids, Mommy?!?”
I pulled out my phone as a caravan of Honda Odysseys pulled into the parking lot behind us.
“Whaddya know. 10:00 it is”, I replied to no one—because both of my kids were already off to the races, eager to share favorite colors and cartoons with whatever potential friends might emerge from those vehicles.
It was roughly 8:45 when I had let him and his brother loose on the playground. The unspoken start time for park outings in this town is apparently 10:00--but for an area of the country where the air achieves pressure-cooker status by 11:00 four months out of the year, the “early bird” not only “gets the worm”—but also avoids stroking out from the oppressive heat and sweating through her yoga capris while dead-lifting kids to the monkey bars they can't reach on their own.
After working full-time for most of their young lives, I'd pulled my kids from their respective daycare and preschool at the very beginning of the summer--for a variety of reasons, but mainly because funneling every bit of my income into childcare--just for the privilege working all day in the service of other people's children--before and after caring for my own--had become a no-win for the family. When I took this "new job" of staying home with my kids, I told myself with shaky confidence that I could surely do no worse than the average mom at nurturing, stimulating, and regulating their little brains and bodies. I mean, what is Honey-boo-boo if not an excuse to feel good about being even the most mediocre of mothers?
My biggest concern for my new position--other than fighting the urge to pour a BIG glass of wine directly after breakfast on those super-whiney days--was the one thing I knew I'd have to look outside of myself for: the socialization. Mommy can read you social stories about playing with friends and withhold Star Wars gummy treats until you “use your words” all she wants--but nothing teaches you how to be around other kids like BEING around other kids. Would this hiatus from the childcare pool turn my kids into reclusive little moles that burrowed in their rooms til college? Would my oldest get to kindergarten and be climbing the bookshelves or throwing poo like a chimpanzee when asked to sit still in Circle Time or share his crayons with his neighbor? Would the younger and more socially reluctant of the two become physically melded to my thigh and stiff-arm any peer that approached him or his preferred articles? I shuddered at the image of my sons living in our finished attic, late into adulthood--jobless and loveless from lack of social skills, building bombs out of toothpaste and old Legos and still living off the PB&J and buttered noodles they devour today.
Because that was NOT what I envisioned for my sons, I'd made it my mission to get them out in the world as much as possible during their year or so in my exclusive care. It had been tricky at times during the first leg of this grand stay-at-home experiment--due to the sub-tropical nature of summer here and the lack of pigment in myself and my fairest-of-them-all kids, as well as my refusal to invest more than $5 into any one outing or social endeavor. But almost every day, we'd hit one of many local parks before most adults made it to the office and run ragged until the meltdowns ensued.
My oldest immediately saw this for exactly what it was--the opportunity to interact with kids other than his brother--and he took to it like a starved hyena, eagerly propositioning any kid within 2 to 10 years of his age. His brother was stand-offish at first, but soon rode his sibling's coat tails into all kinds of raucous playground adventures. I was so pleased with the outcome, even though it involved a lot of sweating and intermittent panic attacks trying to keep track off them both. And as I observed my kids' interactions with complete strangers' children, I began to see a striking similarity between these impromptu play-dates and a pastime I'd long laid to rest: "going out".
"Going out"--be it to a bar, club, or party--was what my girlfriends and I did from college age somewhere into our early 20s. We were typically just looking to dance and drink cheap beer in a cute top--but the possibility of meeting someone interesting always lingered in the background (unless we were already dating someone else, of course). Let me be clear--nowhere in this analogy do I mean to imply that my friends and I were fast and loose or to assign romantic sentiment to the platonic nature of kids playing at the park. But even the most modest and level-headed lady has experienced the thrill of meeting someone unexpected on Dollar Night (cough...found my husband there...cough). And I'll be damned if my boys don't act like it's closing time at the club when it's time to go home for lunch after a fun time at the park.
Here are a few parallels I couldn’t help but notice…
You come here often? I have honestly uttered these words to fellow parents when acting as my kids’ social organizer and go-between. Obviously, I try my hardest not to say exactly that—but I must admit that exact cliché has slipped out a time or two—just because it sums up exactly what you’re getting at when trying to “keep things casual”—when you’re not ready to set up an actual playdate at someone’s house, but running into this family again might be nice. Not being the most socially adept ice-breaker in my own previous social life, I don’t think I ever did this kind of thing on my own behalf—but when you see your kids having a particularly good time, somehow you’re willing to embarrass yourself on the off-chance that you can keep this ball rolling.
The concept of “The Wing Man”. As the younger of my two boys became more comfortable playing with strangers, he began to realize the older one was a nice accessory and bargaining chip when trying to get himself “in” with the older kids. At 2-and-a-half, his language was really coming along and he really thought he was just as big and bad as the 4-year-olds. However, he still sometimes needed Older Brother to pave the way for him—to act as his translator and to provide a little modeling for how to play whatever school yard game the impromptu friends had concocted. As if to return the favor, the younger one began approaching random kids independently, introducing himself by name and then gesturing with his chubby little hand to his older counterpart, saying (in his broken toddler speech), “Dat my brulla” (his approximation of “brother”). It was like his version of Barney Stinson’s iconic “Haaaaave you met Ted?”
Small talk and the offering of polite gestures. Instead of "What's your sign?" or some attempt at a pick-up line, kids break the ice with "What's your favorite color?" and "How old are you?", often forgetting--as does the typical singles-bar-goer--to ask the other person's name, leaving them to refer forever after to this chance friend as "the four-year-old in the yellow shirt". Since my younger son isn’t so much into colors yet, he steers the conversation to his interests and cuts right to the chase. “You wanna play football?” he’s asked everyone from babies playing in the mulch to a kid who was damn-near 14—usually without any particular segue-way and often without an actual ball (because “football” to him is more about the running and the tackling than anything else). And much like one of two adults might offer to buy the other's drink, I once observed my older son's friend, whom we had unexpectedly encountered at the library, pick out books for my son. "You like dragons? Here's a really great book about dragons." --like when you take a person you're interested in out to dinner at your favorite place and try to set them up with "what's good".
Going too far, too fast. When you have an extraordinarily fun night out with someone you just met, that penny draft has a way of lowering your inhibitions and convincing you to at least consider that this stranger--whose name you couldn't hear over the dance floor bass and whose face may or may not be doubling periodically in the cheap beer haze--may just be your soulmate. Apparently, the euphoria of making new friends on the playground has a similar effect. I've often heard my sons planning an “after-party” of play dates and sleepovers to commence directly following the park-adventure-in-progress with kids they've known for all of 20 minutes--as if the mutual love of hide-and-seek and Paw Patrol was enough to throw caution to the wind and justify joining surgically at the hipbone.
The one that got away. After that last slow jam ends and the lights come on, you often lose track of your new love interest in the dissipating crowd as your designated driver reclaims and rounds up the wayward members of the herd. And you may or may not encounter that person ever again, depending on the circumstances. I cannot count the number of times my kids have asked me when they’re going to play with so-and-so again, only to find out that their handler—me—didn’t make the effort to get mom’s digits—or more accurately--mom’s FB friend request. This only had to happen once or twice before the kids began to realize that first farewell might be their last, adding a certain gravitas to their parting hugs or high-fives and that lonesome wave from the car window, like some epic train departure scene from a black-and-white film.
Silly and ridiculous as it seems in my current stay-at-home state, it’s in these instances of reflection that the universe takes a fluorescent pink highlighter to the circular nature of life experience that lets us revisit our earlier selves by absorbing a present circumstance. Like I said, most of my friends and I retired our party pants long ago. And for every bass-thumpingly fabulous night of girl-time comradery, there are a million mortifying mental pictures where “making an ass of oneself” became an art form. The single life is rife with opportunities for ridicule, rejection—and ending up in the back of a windowless white work van, if you’re not careful. I take pride that someone so reckless and irresponsible could ultimately right her ship on the tumultuous tide of togetherness and find that most comfortable and lasting place with someone—and THEN be competently in charge of 2 little people we cultivated from nothingness.
It’s ironic and poetic that these little people would bring me back to that seemingly unrelated mental space. And it’s both exciting and tragic that the playground is where it begins for them. Just as we toiled and triumphed in our quest for friendship and then romance, so do our kids inherit that longing to be loved--and all of the struggle it entails. In these first attempts at friendship is where they discover how good it can feel to be around people they admire and to resonate on the same frequency as someone else. As a parent, knowing what I know about relationships, I find myself covering my eyes and peeking through the cracks between my fingers--like someone in the horror film I’m watching is about to “go check out what’s making that sound in the basement”. There’s no such thing as an “undefeated season” when making friends or finding significant others. Everyone takes a loss at some point. The childhood disappointment of “why doesn’t he/she like me?” will one day evolve into the heartbreak of “why doesn’t he/she love me?”--different segments in the cycle of ups and down we all submit to in the hope of finding that place we belong. The hurt is all part of the process, but I don’t think any one of us would volunteer to relive any aspect of “I don’t wanna play with you” or “I don’t want to see you anymore”. Unfortunately, parenthood gives us a front-row seat.
And yet, (in those of us lucky enough to be developmentally typical, of course) the drive to put ourselves in harm’s way is so strong. From the first smile we give that someone gives back, before we even have words for the world around us, we are looking to connect. And in that search, we are certainly gluttons for punishment.
"Where are all the kids, Mommy?!?”
I pulled out my phone as a caravan of Honda Odysseys pulled into the parking lot behind us.
“Whaddya know. 10:00 it is”, I replied to no one—because both of my kids were already off to the races, eager to share favorite colors and cartoons with whatever potential friends might emerge from those vehicles.
Comments
Post a Comment