Unapologetically
Last week I did something I usually avoid and took both boys with me to the post office. We have a few birthdays coming up, I finally had all of the parcels ready to go and I just wanted to cross it off my list. It went relatively well, no tantrums, no breakages, no unnecessary purchases. There was however, a big tub of balls in the middle of the queue and of course it caught the eyes of my little boys. They grabbed one each and while I stopped them from bouncing and kicking them around the shop I didn’t see the problem with them holding one each to keep them amused and stop them from wreaking havoc. Just before I got to the counter, thinking we were doing pretty well, one of the counter staff stopped what she was doing, asked the boys not to play with the balls and gave me a disapproving little look. I was a bit shocked, froze on the spot and forced a smile. I felt embarrassed and judged and angry all at once but managed to keep my cool being well aware of the size of this town. I calmly asked the boys to put the balls back like the lady had asked and by the time they did it was our turn. She smiled a little sheepishly at me as I approached and apologised in a round about way. Not “I’m sorry, I was wrong” but more like “I’m sorry I had to do that”. She said something about ‘everyone having been there before’ when I awkwardly explained that I just had to get this stuff posted, like I needed a legitimate reason for why I had brought two small children into the shop. I calmly added that I thought the blatant child focused marketing was a little cruel and made life unnecessarily difficult for mothers in my situation. She agreed, gave me my change and I left with my two little trouble makers in tow.
Once I was out of the shop my blood started to boil. I got madder and madder as we walked to the car and by the time we got into the house I had my phone in my hand, texting my mum (who manages a post office back home) and updating my Facebook status. I suggested in both that the problem was not my children or my parenting but the placement of the balls. Of course kids were going to play with them, that was the whole idea of putting them in the queue, so that parents would be pestered to buy them. I guess I was looking for reassurance that I had not been in the wrong and I got it instantly in responses from other mothers who agreed that the post office was a tough place to take kids these days. Still it played on my mind all afternoon and by the time the boys were in bed and I sat down to write, my mind and thoughts were in knots. I was worked up and weighed down at the same time. Why was it bothering me so much? Once I got my pen moving the words continued for ten pages and two hours and they got less and less angry as I turned the pages. I had heard someone in a TED talk a few days earlier define the word blame as a way of ‘discharging pain or discomfort’ and it had stuck with me. My first reaction in this situation was to lash out at somebody and make it their fault, not mine. When I thought about doing that though I realised that the lady at the post office was just doing her job and she had actually been quite polite about it. I couldn’t be angry at the boys either, they were just behaving like the children they are and while I do feel that the marketing in the post office is unfairly aimed at children it wouldn’t do me any good to be angry at ‘the establishment’?
In the past I might have written a lengthy complaint letter or email about how I should be able to simply post a parcel with my children in tow without being confronted with the same amount of toys as if I had walked into Toyworld. I would have stated that if they insisted on lining the queue with toys to tempt children then they would have to accept children playing in their shops. Blaming them and venting my frustrations could have made me feel better but, with a new definition of blame in the forefront of my mind and a sudden understanding of what I was actually doing I chose something different. I chose to sit with my discomfort and pain and instead explore why it was there and what it really meant. It took ten pages of scribble to see that I felt targeted and humiliated and judged. Not ‘I was’ but ‘I felt’. Did the woman at the counter make me feel that way with her actions? Not really. I made myself feel that way with the story I told myself as I stood frozen in that queue. I told myself that she thought I was a bad and incompetent mother, that my children didn’t know how to behave because I hadn’t taught them, that everybody was watching and agreeing with her, that they all thought my children shouldn’t be there at all. My anger was a defence to this story, it was a ‘how dare you think that’ when I really didn’t know they were thinking those things at all. Once I had discharged all of my anger onto the page rather than onto somebody else I began to hear a different story in my head.
It was a story about small children learning to behave like adults, a story about their right to take their entire childhood to do so, a story about them needing plenty of opportunities and constant guidance to do so. There’s a chance that the woman in the post office was actually reaching out a helping hand. Perhaps as a mother herself she recognised that children sometimes listen to other adults when they are not listening to their mothers. There’s a chance that the other people in the queue were empathetic or even impressed that under the difficult circumstances we were managing relatively well. The thing is, I don’t know what they were thinking and it really doesn’t matter.
Next time I am standing in that queue with my children, and yes there will be a next time, I will do so confidently and unapologetically. My children have every right to be in a post office or anywhere else I see fit to take them. They are in the process of learning about the world and how they fit into it, to do that they need to actually be in it. Not just in ‘child friendly’ parts of it, in all parts of it. They will be loud and messy and obnoxious at times because children are and they will be children for a long while yet. It’s not about them being disciplined into behaving like adults so that adults around them will not be inconvenienced or bothered. It’s not about making the whole world ‘child friendly’ or avoiding places that aren’t. It’s about understanding. Understanding that the world is full of learning opportunities for children, some that will take them hundreds of attempts to learn. Understanding that we as their parents need to put our own discomfort aside to be their advocates, to stand up for them and their right to be in the world, as they are, unapologetically.
