Playground Rules

I've been at the parenting thing a little over a year. This hardly qualifies me to get preachy about anything, however...

I took the wee nipper to Robbins Farm Park today. It's quite possibly the nicest park in Arlington. SoEM(Son of El Meezy)loves the place. He was playing in this wooden train engine and another child was also in there playing with the steering wheel. SoEM amused himself and when the other child left the wheel, SoEM went over and started to play with it, prompting the other child to come over and retake possession of the wheel by shoving my kid down. SoEM is not quite 14 months old.

This isn't an unusual situation. I don't even blame the other kid who I guessed was probably 2 years old. Kids are little savages and their tiny brains are pretty much focused on "me" and "mine". The problem is that I saw no sign of Captain Runny Nose's mom. Generally speaking, the parents at the park are pretty on point with watching their kids. When I've had similar situations occur, there's always been a parent right there to police their progeny. So why the hell did I have to be the one to tell this kid that pushing smaller kids down just doesn't play?

The mystery as to who claimed ownership over the brat was solved when I saw him walk over to a woman sitting on one of the benches 10 minutes later. She was with a friend and yakking on a cell phone. Priorities, right? If someone wanted to snatch her kid, he would've been easy pickings. I even saw the little dude trundling up a very steep set of stairs set into a hillside. If he had fallen, it would not have been pretty and I never even saw her look over.

I don't really know the rules of etiquette in situations like this. I was on the verge of rolling up and laying into her but I try to take the position that if you blow your cool and act in anger, you've already lost the battle. There was no way that I could be diplomatic in this situation, so I let it go.

Like I said, I don't want to get preachy but...damn. Wake up.