We had just moved into a new neighborhood when I met an elderly woman a couple blocks down the street. She looked at me in shock when I told her I have four kids, and she kept saying, “Four? Four?!” Then she looked me square in the eyes. “I guess that will be okay,” she said, “as long as they are quiet.” She was dead serious.I took the kids, and we continued down the street, me feeling wholly kid-shamed.I think I understand her perspective.
However, I often feel like we bother people just by being us. Not necessarily by anything we do, but just the idea of what we “might do.” When we’d wait our turn for our passports and tickets to be checked at the airport, we’d hear heavy sighs behind us like, “, are you kidding me?” I felt like turning around and saying, “FYI sir, we paid for six tickets. You paid for one. So we have every right to be here.
Kids are a normal part of society; it’s always been that way. You are not actually entitled to a child-free life. Sorry, not sorry. You don’t have to have them yourself, and you can go to as many adults-only things as possible, but you don’t get to expect that we are going to keep kids out of your way in the world we all share: parks, sidewalks, grocery stores, restaurants , the beach, airplanes, etc.
We teach our kids to respect people and to not behave like wild animals . We teach them to give up their seats on a train for an elderly person and to look someone in the eyes when they shake their hand. We teach them not to wrestle or yell in inappropriate places and to say please and thank you. They aren’t perfect at it by any means, but they’re pretty damn good. Outside of that, I will not apologize for having kids, and I won’t apologize for my kids being…kids.
When we asked for a rental application for a certain house, the property manager replied with a simple one line email: “Sorry, this house is too small for your family.” It was a three bedroom, which is the size of home we’ve always lived in. No questions, no asking if we were sure it would work for us. It was a clear blow-off from someone who didn’t want to be inconvenienced by children.
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