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I (re)discovered recently that I really like hanging out with children. I went for lunch to a friend's house, and some friends of theirs were present with two quite lovely children. They were just.... fun. And smart. They convinced me to take them out the back and play catch, and I found that although I was initially a bit iffy, it was really fun! It's possible that these were really good examples of fun children, and I only had to spend a couple of hours. I spent a lot of time around much younger children growing up, and this experience made me really miss that. It made me regret not having a bigger extended family, or children myself, or having more friends with kids, so that I could be in that space more.
I think that maybe I like socialising with children more than with adults, a little bit. It's entirely possible that this is because I'm finding adult conversation a bit of a drag at the moment -- like sometimes people enjoy hanging out with animals more than people. (This means I'm slightly depressed, probably.) But aren't kids fascinating? They're learning stuff, and they're usually curious and interested in the world, even if they're being little shits. They don't care what you do for a living or any bullshit adult stuff. Perhaps this applies to babies, toddlers and young children more than teenagers, but teenagers are still interesting.
Anyhow, on trains, I tend to try to distract and play games with the crying children of strangers. Think of being a parent. You'd be so exhausted a lot of the time that you wouldn't have the energy to give kids enough attention when they needed it, especially on public transport, when parents also have to deal with the stress of being judged as 'bad parents' if their kids are playing up. Kids seem to cope well with being parented or interacted with collectively, by a whole lot of people -- it teaches them social skills, for one thing. Now that most people live in nuclear families rather than extended families, that network of collective social interaction just doesn't happen as much. So maybe the solution to crying babies in public places is to momentarily take on some of the responsibility of entertaining them? |
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