December 19, 2005

Tales From The Crib

Kids can do things on their time

Jennifer Margulis

“Whaddya doing, Max?” a father shouted at his 5-year-old when his son stood looking longingly at the snack bar. “We came here to go on the water slides! We’re going on the water slides! C’mon!”

The little boy reluctantly but obediently turned to follow his father.

I watched them get in line. It was a hot summer day but the waterslides at Emigrant Lake were not too crowded. This was the first time we had been to them and I couldn’t help thinking we had found the perfect activity for a Friday afternoon.

But the man’s impatient words to his son were disconcertingly familiar. They reminded me of my father-in-law; they reminded me of myself.

When we still lived in Massachusetts, every year a touring fair would come to the Amherst Commons. It was sleezy and thrilling, the way small touring fairs tend to be. My father-in-law was visiting us from Buffalo the same weekend of the fair.

He strode onto the Commons and bought a packet of tickets. My girls, ages two and three, clambered onto the carousel and held onto their horses with white knuckled grips, their mouths open in wide-eyed delight. The new baby, in a front pack, snuggled deeper into my chest and sighed contently. He was probably dreaming of cotton candy.

After the ride they lingered to watch contestants try to reach the top of a rock wall on the side of a truck. “C’mon,” my father-in-law motioned, putting his hands on their backs and herding them in another direction. Then he walked in front of them. “Hurry up,” he called over his shoulder. There was impatience in his voice. “We’ve got to go on the next ride!”

Hurry up? To the next ride? Better go as quickly as you can so you can go on the electric choo choo train. Come on!

It was easy to feel annoyed at my father-in-law, and when James and I talked about it later he had the unpleasant memory of being a very small child and always being rushed. But it was harder to admit that if you asked everyone in the room who’s hurried their kids when there was no reason to raise their hands mine would probably be the first one up. Hurry becomes a habit. So does scolding. Even when there is nothing to be late for really, even when no one has done anything wrong.

Why is it that when we take our children out to do something “fun,” we try to prescribe what they do? It’s the weekend. We have the whole day before us. What harm is there in eating a snack before the water slides or lingering over the rock climbers?

It’s so hard for us — for me — to turn off the automatic pilot. To stop hurrying. To stop stressing. To slow down. To let our children jump off the stoop 35 times when we really came to go to the museum or let them stop and run their fingers in the sidewalk cracks when we are supposed to be on our way to the park.

When my oldest daughter Hesperus was two she received a box of hand-crafted, hand painted wooden alphabet blocks. “Rainbows!” she cried fascinated by the colorful ribbons, completely ignoring the present inside. Instead of letting her enjoy the thing she was interested in the most, I opened the block box and tried to draw her attention away from the ribbons. She liked the ribbons so much she brought them to bed with her.

Now I would know better. An interest in the blocks (which, four years later, we still play with) came later, on her own time.

Jennifer Margulis is a writer, consultant and photojournalist who moved to Ashland from Greenfield, Mass. Her latest book is “Why Babies Do That.”