I started the day with vigor, attitude and a smile on my face.
It was quickly apparent this would not be enough.
Max's cousins are over for a couple days as there's a break between summer school (for Max) and his cousins' Mom's work schedule. Everyone is back in school next week, but for a week Max is at home and for a couple days I've got 'em all!
I took the kids (all 3 and 4 years old) to the Nature & Science museum. Overall I give the experience a B+. Really worked out as well as could be hoped for. Given, of course, that I had bolstered my regimen with a quick shot of espresso before heading out.
I wrote a log of blog entries in my head during the 4 1/2 hours of playtime at the museum, thinking through the world of Child Wrangling in Public Places.
But one thought really strikes me: I can't figure out how people with one child expect the kid to grow up normally. Only kids we call 'em, although it seems weird to write it.
The entire trip today was an exercise in crowd control, sharing, hierarchies, splitting, who got to decide what exhibit we'd see next... essentially, constant negotiation and nitpicking amongst three kids trying to go in three directions at once, except when they had to *go*, in which case I made them all go at the same time.
Just mulling this over, but during the next 15 years, these kids will have literally thousands of hours together with their sibling, duking it out for supremacy and co-existence.
Only kids? Only time will tell how they'll do.
Posted by BilFish at August 17, 2006 01:34 PM