Getting Out of the House

I started a blog about the places where it is appropriate to take a child.  I wanted opinions from my MASSES of readers.  Then I realized – I know what I think!  And I don’t care what ya’ll think!  So I erased it.  J

Seriously, though, Patrick and I are fairly liberal.  You can take a kid just about anywhere that an adult can go and not cause harm to the child.  Some mothers have pretty firm ideas about protecting young kids’ virgin ears and eyes from unclean things, like nudey bits in movies or people drinking alcohol.  My ideas about that are different.  I won’t take my kid to a strip club (what fun would that be??), but if he saw a naked lady in a movie I wouldn’t hide his eyes.  I’d be the annoying kind of mom for whom every exposure to adult themes would lead to a “teaching moment,” and he’s totally going to roll his eyes at me, but I think he’ll grow up with some very important knowledge.  Ladies and men get naked together, and that is called sex.  Sometimes grown ups have a special kind of drink that makes them act silly, and that is called beer.  When somebody holds a stick up to his mouth and smoke comes out the end, that is called a cigarette, and it makes him feel good but it hurts his lungs and makes him cough.  Maybe being in HR has helped me learn how to have awkward conversations, or maybe I’ve just seen the results when kids learn this stuff from other kids and not from their parents.  Anyway, I don’t fear the exposure of my child to the wider, non-Disneyfied world.  I want to be there when he gets that exposure, and help him develop good ways of handling it, so when he gets old enough that I’m not there, he isn’t experiencing it for the first time.  And making dumb choices.

So.  That’s established.  Now, my qualms come with how having a kid around makes other people feel.  If I feel like having a beer with friends at a bar at 3pm on a Saturday, but I’d have to bring my kid . . . I’m fine with the kid being there.  But is the bartender going to kick me out?  Are my friends going to be totally pissed?  Are other people in the bar going to give me the evil eye?  And do I care?

I would never take a kid who couldn’t “be cool” for an hour or two while mommy has a drink.  Presuming that the baby is well behaved and/or sleeping, presuming that I am able to care for him and also at the same time enjoy adult conversation with my friends, presuming that my stroller and/or diaper bag are not in anybody’s way (and yes, these are quite the presumptions, aren’t they!) – well, I think I would go, and to hell what other people think.

So I pretty much answered my own question.  As long as I have an escape route in case the child becomes a nuisance, I’m going to take him with me to most places.  Parenting takes lots of sacrifice, but I also think it can too quickly devolve into martyrdom.  And yes, there are lots of people in this world who think that they didn’t choose to have kids, and therefore they shouldn’t have to put up with kids, and to a degree they are correct.  But – we all share the world with people that perhaps we would prefer not to.  As long as I’m not allowing my child to be rude and obtrusive, I think other folks can do the imaginative work to pretend he isn’t there.

We’ll see.  I really have no idea what’s going to happen in this vein.  We may never have trouble.  We may get lectured on our parenting.  We may get kicked out of places.  We may have a totally rotten colicky hyper difficult kid that I never want to take anywhere anyway.  J  After the way he’s behaved all morning, I’m beginning to think that is more and more a possibility.  Seriously, I didn’t know a little person that weighs 3.5 pounds could kick you hard enough to take your breath away.  He kicked me so hard and awkwardly this morning that I doubled over in a meeting and went PHOOO, involuntarily.  It HURT.   I can’t wait til he gets big enough that there isn’t any more room to move in there, because this aggression will not stand, man.  Especially when mommy is at WORK.  Tone it down there, kiddo.  Mommy’s busy writing blogs, she doesn’t have time to shift to the position that most comfortably accommodates your rapidly growing limbs, especially since you can’t seem to make up your mind about just exactly what position that is.