"If you're hell-bent on keeping this particular playground as your kid's home base, you have to deal with the parents AND their raucous children. Sorry, this is part of the social contract that comes with having a child, especially young ones: If you see another one in peril, you act and intervene as best you can. I know it's uncomfortable."
"When there's all these unsupervised kids, I feel responsible for breaking up squabbles and telling kids to be safe, and I feel like it really takes away from my time with my own child. My husband says that I need to ignore these kids and only focus on our kid, but I feel like when they're all running around unsupervised they are putting my kid at risk, too, and that just doesn't make sense to me."
A parent enjoys taking a five-year-old to a nearby playground but is frustrated by other parents who park and leave children unsupervised. Unsupervised children lead to squabbles, safety risks, and detract from time with the parent's own child. A spouse advises focusing only on their child, but concern about shared safety persists. Choosing to keep a playground as a regular spot requires engaging with both other parents and their children. Intervention when a child appears in peril is presented as part of parental responsibility. Alternatives include changing playgrounds or adopting a less-involved approach from a car.
Read at Slate Magazine
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]