There are certain times that you don’t need
the shrill crying of a child in your ear.
When you’re on a long haul flight.
When you’re having a root canal.
When you’re hiding from zombies and not wanting to give your location
away to the undead.
But the rest of the
time, I’d suggest you get over it.
Children cry. It's something
they're supposed to do. All that
unashamed emotional expression tells us that a kid is normal. It's the non crying, all too calm ones you
have to watch out for, like the little scheming, blonde mini-psychopaths in
children of the corn.
Then again, babies also need to travel
across oceans sometimes, visit the dentist and escape zombies, too, so maybe
just get all the way over their crying.
As with my personal enlightenment about
aggressive buggy pushers (aggressive buggy barging), I’ve walked a mile in the shoes of the judgemental,
eye brow raising, 'Can't you control them!' brigade. I've been on flights, with nothing to worry
about other than when the drinks trolley will make an appearance, feeling like
a jet-setting superstar, when you see a hunch-backed giant making its awkward
way down the aisle. As they get nearer,
you see that it’s not a hunchback, but a pretty normal albeit unkempt and
tired-looking person weighed down with bags and juice cups and teddy bears and
a little excited snot bucket of a child.
You look at the empty seats next to you in panic and you say a fervent
silent prayer, ‘Please, Lord, not next to me! Send the obese guy instead!’
Yes, I confess my lack of compassion. I guess I had to learn through being on both sides of the fence. But I also admit that a child crying is a
horrible sound. It’s horrible because
it’s supposed to be horrible. A child’s
cry is meant to evoke action. And even
if that action is motivated by sheer selfish desperation for peace and quiet,
it’s effective. It's mother nature’s own
natural panic alarm.
But once you hear the cry of your own
child, it drives a pain so deep into your body that you feel convinced that
their unique cry is coded into your DNA.
Like somehow your bloods mingled so that their pain and discomfort is
felt in your flesh. It feels so
physically painful that you forgo food and sleep, offer them your painful,
beaten up boobs to feed on and deprive yourself of batteries for the TV remote
to get the magic lullaby sleep buddy working again. You'll do all manner of seemingly insane things,
but not just to stop the noise. You'll
feel genuinely driven to protect them from the pain, discomfort, hunger and
loneliness that makes them cry.
Somewhere along they way, the cries change
from meaning I'm hungry, I'm sick, I'm cold, I'm dirty to things like I'm ticked
off that I can't wear lipstick, chuck myself off this wall, stay in the grocery
store, keep that dog. And that's when
people seem the most annoyed by the crying child. They are louder and more angry. And they are usually unreasonable. So child will be crying and the parents will
be doing those things that annoy onlookers even more than the crying. They will be ignoring, trying placate,
offering sweets, even just not caring.
Why don't they stop their child crying?
Because they can't.
Life with a two year old is all about that little person you love more than anything, but whose
delicate emotional balance is as changeable as their diaper and as predictable
as the lottery. You still have to do
all the daily things you need to do, but you'll have the additional job of
keeping them calm, happy and as inoffensive as possible to the rest of polite
society. So sometimes when you see a parent
and crying child, and they are just calmly ordering their latte or strolling through
the grocery store with a screaming, red-eyed demon child, you’d assume they are
stupid, deaf or insane. Nope, they’re probably in their 'happy place' where patience springs eternal. Or they're just pleased that this isn't as bad as little Junior can get.
We’ve all cried and screamed at some point in
our lives. And we probably would still until we learned how much it can get on the nerves of strangers. These parents aren't immune to the sound of crying. They just know that their time for crying is over and their little people are
having their time now.
