Public Parenting
I'm pretty sure I do my best parenting on the bus. There are two weird things about public transitting with a small kid. The first is that people violate the Invisible Transit Bubble much more frequently when a kid is involved. They smile at her and talk to her and sometimes touch her without asking permission. Last week Dutch was sitting down on a crowded bus (I was standing next to her), and the woman sitting next to her removed her headphones and put them on Dutch's head, without looking at me or saying anything. The Bubble-Violating Woman appeared to be a few spoons short of a set, but didn't seem at all threatening, so I just asked Dutch if she was okay, and put my head really close to check it wasn't really loud. I will never know what she was listening to. After a minute I asked Dutch if she was done, and she nodded politely, and we handed the earphones back to their owner and thanked her.
The second weird thing is that you have to parent in public. People are listening and watching. (Not that this bothers some people; I've seen some appallingly bad parenting on the bus, including smacking, verbal abuse, yelling, threatening physical abuse, and plugging-baby's-mouth-with-junkfood.) Today, during my first day at my new internship, a woman who looked vaguely familiar approached me and smiled. "I see you on the bus all the time," she said, and went on to tell me that she had gone home and TOLD HER HUSBAND about one Me-and-Dutch episode she witnessed (it wasn't even an interesting episode, which makes it even stranger). Because of this, I tend to be much more patient, and because Dutch has my full attention (a rare event) on the bus, she tends to be much more charming (with some glaring and memorable exceptions). People who ride the bus with us have a pretty skewed perspective on our relationship, and I am never ever telling the woman who now works down the hall from me that I am actually not always the patient wise parent she sees in action. Actually, I am only that parent on the bus. It's probably a good thing that Dutch and I spend at least 9 hours a week on the bus together...
The second weird thing is that you have to parent in public. People are listening and watching. (Not that this bothers some people; I've seen some appallingly bad parenting on the bus, including smacking, verbal abuse, yelling, threatening physical abuse, and plugging-baby's-mouth-with-junkfood.) Today, during my first day at my new internship, a woman who looked vaguely familiar approached me and smiled. "I see you on the bus all the time," she said, and went on to tell me that she had gone home and TOLD HER HUSBAND about one Me-and-Dutch episode she witnessed (it wasn't even an interesting episode, which makes it even stranger). Because of this, I tend to be much more patient, and because Dutch has my full attention (a rare event) on the bus, she tends to be much more charming (with some glaring and memorable exceptions). People who ride the bus with us have a pretty skewed perspective on our relationship, and I am never ever telling the woman who now works down the hall from me that I am actually not always the patient wise parent she sees in action. Actually, I am only that parent on the bus. It's probably a good thing that Dutch and I spend at least 9 hours a week on the bus together...
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