Lessons from children: Please be a bother

Redefining inconvenience

Recently, I was in Brazil and Argentina, and I noticed something: children.

It sounds silly, but I realized how in America, children are often separated from the public and relegated to sanitized spaces. If they are in public and running around (as children do), parents will pepper across their interactions apologies on behalf of their child…doing what children do?

In Latin America, kids were allowed in jazz bars as their parents hung out over drinks with friends. The kids ran around and made noise, they drank from glasses like everyone else instead of designated indestructible kiddie cups. My heart raced seeing a child tilt up their glass for a sip of water, only to realize so what? The worst that happens is a glass breaks. Such is life. If the child is not injured, surely, the restaurant has more cups. Adults break glasses too.

One of the first things I noticed in the airport on the way back, was a child running across me and their parent sheepishly running after them apologizing. I wonder what effect that this has on children, that being who they are is unacceptable.

Every so often, I see the recycled post of a parent taking their child on a flight and bringing goodie bags for each and every passenger to apologize for their baby acting like a baby. For the love of god people, it’s a plane! It’s a moment! Do people not prepare for potential disruption and sound on planes? If I was stuck on a plane with nothing to do and have painful ear pressure I didn’t know how to manage, would you not scream and cry too?

I can’t imagine how difficult the shift must be for children nowadays to grow up in a world that will drastically shift them from “child” to “adult” expectations. It must be so overwhelming.

How can we punish children for being children, while rapidly removing spaces and opportunities for them to exist as children? As we isolate shelter children more from the world that they are expected to partake in the moment they turn 18, will they be grateful that they can only make their first mistakes in society as an adult with adult consequences rather than as a child?

There used to be even more kid-friendly spaces on the internet, but even that has been rapidly shrinking for short-term profit and greed, if not hijacked for exploitation.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3Jy_N00k6RI?rel=0

So with all this being said, what are children supposed to do? What do we expect people who are not culturally relevant, model participants in society to do? I’ve only talked about kids, but the elderly are another prime example of people ushered away, and those people, despite their wisdom and experience and personhood, are granted with even less privileges, esteem, and opportunities to participate in greater society than children at times.

Say hi to your neighbors, let kids scream and flutter about, answer an elder’s question for the third or fourth time without frustration. Does it really mean more to you than it does to them and greater society?