>The Little Loudmouth

Hubs and I went to a wedding on Saturday and we were floored by how many people brought their small children.

“Look at that kid,” Hubs whispered, pointing to an impish four-year-old boy a few rows ahead of us, who was busy making faces at everyone around him. “And that one.” He pointed across the aisle, where a toddler sobbed in her mother’s lap. “If I’d known people were bringing children, I would have wanted to bring Punky and Bruiser.”

We looked at each other for a moment and then we laughed. “No you wouldn’t,” I said. Hubs nodded.

Punky, we agreed, would have done fine at a wedding, but Bruiser is another story. He is an airhorn of a child, so loud that we take him only to the noisiest restaurants and almost always hire a babysitter when we have an event to attend. And if a babysitter is coming for Bruiser, why not leave Punky there as well?

I do, on the other hand, make sure that both the kids get out and about as often as possible. This is Punky’s last year at home, and I’m determined to take her to at least one special event a week before she starts kindergarten next year. Bruiser comes along too, and he’s pretty well-behaved, but we have our share of moments in which I end up taking him outside for a little while to “shake his sillies out,” as we like to say.

I figure that at preschool events, other parents are more understanding of Bruiser’s occasional meltdowns. If I’m doing my part to collect our belongings and get him out of there, surely they (many of whom also are there with small children) understand that 1-and-½ year-olds can be unpredictable and, well, loud. Right?

Not always.

I was at a marionette show last week with the kids when Bruiser got a little excited. When the music played, he wanted to dance, which wasn’t a big deal in the carpeted room. However, he also wanted to sing along. Of course, no one wants to hear an airhorn of a child singing over the recorded music, so I began gathering up my diaper bag and his sippy cup in order to take him out in the lobby for a few minutes. In the twenty or so seconds it took me to do this, I received more than one pointed glare from the parents around me.

Oh come on, I thought to myself, give me a second, will you?

I took Bruiser out and a few minutes later, brought him back inside, after he had calmed down. He went to the front of the room to sit on the floor beside his sister. Again, it was no big deal- All seating was on the carpeted floor and the toddlers and preschoolers in attendance frequently got up to dance and roam a bit. The mother seated beside my children, though, was clearly taken aback when my toddler son stepped in front of her for a moment to watch the show. She looked back and gave me The Look. The Do-You-See-What-Your-Child-is-Doing Look.

“I couldn’t believe it,” I told Hubs as we were walking in the neighborhood that night. “It was the most intolerant group I’ve ever been in with Bruiser. You know, even childless people are nice about your child acting up if you’re in a child-appropriate place and they can see that you’re getting your stuff together in order to take your child out of there. Even they realize it takes a second to collect your things. But these parents seemed to expect me to snap my fingers and make him disappear. And what kind of mom gets irritated when a child is standing in front of her at a preschool puppet show?”

We both laughed. We are finding that parents of the very young, whether at a puppet show or on the soccer field, are a keyed-up bunch. It’s not until the kids are about eight that they seem to calm down a bit. And by the time their children hit puberty, a good 50-60% of them seem to have thrown up their hands in surrender, and don’t really care what their kids do anymore. Believe me. I see it every day.

I got an e-mail later that day from one of the puppeteers and I wrote back, apologizing that I hadn’t gotten to see much of the show since my son was being “that kid.”

“That’s okay,” he wrote back. “Not an unusual occurence in libraryland.”

Tell that to the other parents, I thought darkly.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.