It takes a village to raise a child.
Anyone that has a child knows this. You can't do it alone. However, I was disturbed yesterday at seeing a number of parents - including myself - turn a blind eye to a child.
We were at the library. Story time had just ended so the library was teeming with kids, anywhere from itty bitty infants to 4 year olds racing down the aisles. It reminded me of an ant hill, with giant parents standing around like pillars, monitoring every situation. From that height, we could see everything.
I was watching Jackson and Isabella read books on the rug while holding Catherine. Next to me was a stroller that contained a very adorable little baby, probably no more than 4 months old.
A giddy little boy, obviously carried away with the exuberant atmosphere in the library, grabbed the stroller and started pushing it around. I automatically assumed it was a big brother. I looked for the mother, who was at the other end of the room tending to one of her other children. I looked back at the boy, still pushing the stroller, the baby now awake. Here was my thought process:
"He shouldn't be pushing that. I should stop him. But what if his mother lets him do that all the time at home? What if I yell at him for something he's allowed to do? That's overstepping my boundaries. What would I say to him? What if the mother gets mad at me?"
Whoa. Stop. That last one concerned me.
This scenario has bothered me the rest of the day and night, and rightly so. I've been plagued by if I had done the right thing, and now it's clear that I did not. It occurred to me that I was more concerned with another mother being mad at me than the safety of a helpless infant.
The boy continued to push the stroller around. He bumped into another woman. She turned around, looked, then did nothing. Another mother was watching this as well. I looked at her. She walked away. No one else did anything. The village didn't exist.
Another mother swooped in and grabbed the little boy, simply saying "No no honey, that's not yours," and walked away, leaving the stroller in the middle of the room. The baby was awake and looking around. I grabbed the stroller and put it back near it's spot.
Just then, the mother came walking up, noticing her baby was in a different place than where she'd left it. She looked at me, and for some reason I felt now was the appropriate time to jump in.
"A little boy took her for a stroll," I said casually, even adding in a little uncomfortable laugh.
"Oh, because I wasn't watching her," the mother replied just as awkwardly.
Again, I should have said something along the lines of "It was fine. I leave my baby alone here when she's sleeping too. You were busy. It's okay." Instead I was silent.
Why should I have said that? Because I know what it's like to chase toddlers and care for an infant in a public place. It's exhausting. It makes your blood pressure rise. You become so nervous you can actually feel you're skin start to jump. Instead of calming the mother and let her know that she was fine, that the baby was fine and that she was doing the best she could, I walked away and let her think she wasn't good enough.
What happened to the village? If that had been ten, twenty, thirty years ago, someone would have stopped the little boy. I should have stopped the little boy. We should be looking out for each other's children instead of walking away, or worse, watching and doing nothing.
If it was my baby, I would hope someone would stop it.
This has been a valuable lesson for me. No one did anything, and I was more afraid of the mother and overstepping my bounds than helping out.
From now on, I will be part of a village, even if no one else is. Even if another mother gets mad at me. We can't do it ourselves. We need to stick together.
Let's bring the village back.
No comments:
Post a Comment