Mar 17
Kids Don’t Follow
kids wont listen
to what youre sayin
kids aint wondering
kids aint praying
WOBURN, Mass. – What tripped Lisa D’Annolfo Levey’s maternal tolerance meter on a recent Tuesday afternoon was not just the toy football her 7-year-old son, Skylar, zinged across the living room, nearly toppling her teacup. Or the karate kick sprung by her 4-year-old, Forrest, which Ms. Levey ducked, barely.The clincher was the full-throttle duel with foam swords, her boys whooping and squealing, flailing their weapons at the blue leather couch, the yellow kidney-shaped rug, and, ultimately, their mother.
“Forrest, how about you come up and hug Skylar instead of whacking him in the head?” Ms. Levey implored. “This is stressing me out, guys. You can sword, but I’m feeling compromised here.”
A story on puzzled people who seem to have been the first ever to rear the exotic mammals known as “children.” To that end, they’re employing “parent coaches” at up to $75 per hour to walk them through the mysteries of why little Jasmine refuses to eat her peas. Or for that matter, why little Forrest insists on “swording” his big brother.
It all reminds me of something back in the 80’s. Toronto was at the time booming, and the Globe and Mail regularly ran puff pieces about upwardly-mobile yuppies and their glamorous careers.
One that I distinctly remember was a couple with the requisite Jag and Mercedes in the driveway and a Range Rover in the garage and boasted the fact that they had to employ not one, but two full-time nannies to manage their brood.
I guess we rubes were supposed to genuflect before these displays of wealth and privilege, but all I could think was: “Why do these people even bother having children? They obviously don’t have any time for them.”
(Note: Link above requires free registration, which isn’t too arduous—just a couple of questions, if I correctly remember. Or you could use something like Bugmenot to get a password combo.)
2 Comments so far
Children should be seen and not heard.
Tomorrow is my birthday!
I’m trying to imagine my mother saying, “Im feeling compromised here.” Thank God she never did.