Adjusting My Parental Controls

Back when I did not have children I used to get very annoyed by kids who seemed out of control in public.  I’m talking about those kids you would see running around in stores, not listening to their parents, bumping into people, screaming and crying, or even just rolling around on the ground in angst at the injustice of their imploding world; woe the denial of a desired toy or treat.  I admit that during my adult child-free existence, I blamed the parents.  Get your children under control, people!  Oh, the naivety that was me.

It takes full time exposure to young children to realize that sometimes kids from time to time will simply act totally bonkers.  That energy needs to go somewhere.  I believe it is in general a parent’s job to guide that energy so that it is acted out in the best possible manner; through exercise and appropriate play.  In the winter months of New England, however, that is not always an easy feat to accomplish. 

I worry sometimes when we go out in public that I have “Those Kids”.  You know who they are:  The ones who are unruly, all over the place, and impossible to control.  I’ve had a little experience with this at social functions.  They get so excited, or sometimes are just so plain bored, that they start running all over the place, chasing after each other, and causing general mayhem.  Here is where I, the parent, need to make certain judgment calls.  They are having a blast running around a room in circles as they squeal through laughter.  Should I choose to do so, which I usually do, I become more and more harried looking as I chase after them in efforts to stop them from collision with nearby objects, inanimate and otherwise.  I call after them, repeating their names over and over, telling them to watch out, be careful, no running, stop pushing, and my personal favorite, “YOU MUST CHILL!!!”  Sometimes it works; sometimes I fall on deaf ears.  Sometimes I wonder if I should even be bothering.  Look at them having fun! If they aren’t hurting anyone why not let them have at it?  That won’t help, however, when an eventual disaster does in fact befall them.  As a parent trying to find my way in this, I often find I walk a very thin line between reining them in and allowing them to fully enjoy their free play. 

Last week my husband and I took the kids to a little get together with our friends and their children.  Both of my kids know the home and the people in attendance very well.  There is a huge playroom for the seven younglings in attendance (all between ages two and five) to romp around to their hearts’ content.  The parents enjoy a little reprieve in the nearby kitchen where they can actually hear each other speak.  It was a wonderful afternoon, yet every now and then a select number of the kids would burst forth from the room and chase each other around the house.  This prompted a chorus of mothers to holler at the passerby’s to GET THEE BACK TO THE PLAYROOM!  Sometimes they listened, sometimes they just kept running.  But the one who kept running the most was mine.  The one who kept pushing, shoving, knocking kids out of the way, screaming in an unmistakable (and sometimes painful) outdoor voice, and running in the opposite direction of any visible parental authority the most, was MINE. 

I felt like I was constantly on her, constantly telling her to calm down, constantly ridiculing her actions.  It bothered me so much to have to do it.  They were all a little out of control, but she was overly out of control.  I tried talking to her, I tried yelling to her, I tried taking her out of the environment for a little cool down in a quiet room, but that only brought on the tantrums.  I was at a loss so I called in the big guns.  I called in Daddy.  Daddy didn’t have much luck either. 

But here’s the thing.  While I felt she was for lack of a better word being a general turd, my friends didn’t see her as being all that bad.  Yes, she wasn’t being nice at times.  Proof of that were the three smaller children she checked into walls and door frames and made cry all within a 10 minute period.  No denying she was a little crazy, “but they are all being crazy”, I was told.  One friend was ecstatic her son was finally on the receiving end of a bully-ship and was glad he was getting a taste of his own medicine.  It was later kindly suggested that I was overreacting. 

I can take that to heart.  It does make me think, was I being too hard on her?  Am I too controlling?  I also do not want to be that parent I have seen at playgroups who lets their kid run amuck, looking away while their angel is mean to other children, and ticking off the other parents whose kids have become the ill recipients of their wild one’s antics.  Yet at the same time, I do not want to be overbearing.  Where do I truly fall in this picture?  Do I inadvertently stifle in my attempts to guide proper action instead of allowing the kids to exert themselves and work out their own play relationships?  Or am I fulfilling my duty as their parent to show them the way?  Wow, it’s a very fine line; one that perhaps I will always have trouble teetering.