ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

A few weeks ago, my landlords came up with the brilliant idea of putting a playhouse/swingset structure into the grassy area behind our apartment building. At first I thought this was wonderful. My head filled with wistful images of taking my two year-old daughter out there on hot summer days and letting her have a ball. I could see her giggling and smiling with glee as she explored this exciting new addition to our home, and I was looking forward to it.

I’d forgotten all about my neighbors’s kids. There are a lot of kids in my apartment complex and I’m not really sure whose kids belong to whom, but the people here sure do like to breed. The woman in the apartment above me is on her ninth pregnancy with her eldest children being my age having children of their own, and the shocking part is, she’s not Mormon. There’s one group of kids in particular ranging from ages 4 to 12ish who are ALWAYS outside playing on the playhouse now, and as far as I can tell, these kids must live alone, because their mother is never out there with them.

I took my little girl into the backyard to play the other day and was immediately accosted by several overeager neighbor kids. The youngest boy was following me around everywhere talking in a screechy, high-pitched voice. How bad was his voice? Picture Jar-Jar Binks singing the rap parts from “Ice Ice Baby” and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark. Jar-Jar Ice constantly bombarded me with stupid questions about how old my daughter is, why isn’t she talking yet, what’s her name, why is she doing this, meesa-screech screech screech. The worst part is, I always had to hear each question twice because I couldn’t understand the damn kid and had to politely ask him to repeat himself. When he wasn’t asking questions he was trying to get me to praise him for every feat of mediocrity he could muster, such as climbing on the picnic table or sliding down the pole off of the playground. I kept trying to interest my daughter in different areas of the playground to move away from him, but he just kept following us.

Meanwhile, the older children never once considered relinquishing control of the tire swing to pay attention to their irksome younger sibling, and their parent(s) never made an appearance. I tried to feign interest in the little attention whore’s prattle, but let’s be honest here: we all know the only reason his own mother wasn’t out there with him is because he annoys her just as much as he annoys complete strangers. If she doesn’t give a damn about his prowess in the fine art of jumping off picnic tables, why the hell should I? I finally decided I’d had enough of trying to entertain other people’s kids along with my own and slipped my daughter back inside, with Jar-Jar Ice tagging along all the way until I literally closed my apartment door in his face.

This isn’t a complaint about annoying kids so much as a complaint about inconsiderate parents. If you’re going to let your kids go to a community play area alone, you need to teach them to share and not bother other people. If they can’t do that, you need to go with them and be ready to correct them. At the very least, if a kind-hearted stranger is being polite and paying some attention to your kids, give back and pay attention to their kids. I’ve had good experiences with other parents in parks this way.

But if you constantly find yourself needing to “take a break” from your kids and foist them on some poor hapless member of the community who tries to recreate with their kids in the same area, could you maybe stop neglecting your kids and consider putting them up for adoption so that they can be taken in by someone who actually gives a damn about their well-being? Thnx.