Today: Suboptimal

Sooo, I'm waiting for a package.

As of last night parcel tracking said it was in Sydney. Suddenly this morning it's in Perth and they attempted delivery before I woke up.

I went to the post office to get it.

No, wrong post office - it's not at the one a short walk from my house, it's at the one a LONG walk from my house, and it's a heavy parcel.

So I tried to fire up my scooter, which has a dead electrical system I haven't got fixed yet.

While struggling to get it going with the kick-start lever, I misjudged the kick, bruised my foot, and... tore a massive hole on the side of my shoe. The level just caught it on the point of the stitching, as far as I can tell.

I really like my shoes. They're awesome shoes. But one is now severely torn.

I have therapy in a little over an hour. Housemate.Dave has already said he'll give me a lift - I'm now planning to beg the poor man also to drive me to the post office so I can get my parcel dammit.

Dreamwidth is awesome

But how is it feeling?

So, in the end today, I managed to get my package - Dave and I detoured to the post office on the way to him dropping me off for therapy.

In the post office I got a number of smiles from the mother of a toddler - he was in a pram, and as they came in, he was grizzling a bit. His mother tried to shush him as they joined the queue directly behind me, without much success.

I turned around and knelt and talked to him a bit until I coaxed a shy smile.

A lot of the time, I think, very small persons who are acting grumpy and miserable and are making the kinds of noises adults wish they wouldn't are in fact just bored. After all, how would you feel if someone put you in a wheelchair, strapped you in, and then wheeled you around utterly uninteresting places you didn't choose to go to for hours while ignoring you, except to tell you to be quiet if you made any kind of noise?

By the way, in this scenario, you can't read, not even signs that you go past, and you get in trouble if you fidget too much. Also, if you're hungry or thirsty, that's your problem, you can wait until the person wheeling you around feels like giving you food or drink, and you're not allowed to touch anything.

I don't know about you, but it sounds like it should be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" to me, not "normal life for toddlers".

I wish more people in charge of small children would think about this, and actually talk to and interact with the kid more. I know conversations with small children can be tedious, but they can also be enchanting and mind-blowingly fascinating, and I think both you and they will be the better for it.

Failing that, at least tie a couple of toys to the pram and let them have something to play with.

Because there's people like me out there. And you know, as much as I try not to, when I see a child who's miserable, and it's patently clear that they're miserable because they're bored and their parent/guardian/other is ignoring them while they do their own thing?

Just a little tiny bit, I will be thinking: You are a bad parent.

It's not that I'm customarily hyper-judgey of parents. If your baby is crying, I don't think that reflects badly on you as a parent. If your toddler is being a brat, I don't think that reflects badly on you as a parent unless I see you on multiple occasions and your toddler is always a little ratbag. Pretty much every child will have days where even the most loving parent, let alone observing stranger, will wonder whether contraception might have been a better idea after all - I like to believe that a kid who's behaving badly is just having a bad day.

I used to live with a three-year-old. I adored the kid, and most of the time we got on terribly well, but just occasionally she would be in a Mood, and at those times, well... I still loved her, but I didn't exactly want to scoop her up and hug her. On one notable occasion she decided that she Wasn't Going To Bed, and threw screaming fits if I even said she should, let alone picked her up and carried her to her room. She fetched a her-sized chair from her room, carried it into the living room, and sat on it with arms folded, glaring at me as she declared her intention to Sit There.

At which point I decided I had definitely had Enough, and since I knew perfectly well that she was utterly exhausted and would not be able to sustain this for long, I said fine and let her sit there while I read a book.

Eventually she got bored, gave in and agreed to go to bed.

My point: Even the nicest kid can be a little shit sometimes. I get that. But when your child's misbehaviour is entirely because they're bored, I disapprove.