On the days when I think my kids are really badly behaved, all I need to do is go to our neighborhood pool for a little dose of reality. Inevitably at least one child (normally barely able to swim, I might add) is left unattended in the pool. That same child is usually ill-behaved.
Today, I took Lily and Arden to the pool around 3.30. It wasn’t very crowded. We all got into the pool and started splashing around. Lily decided to get one of the pool toys out of our beach bag - it’s something that looks like a bat (the winged kind, not the baseball kind). You put it under the water with your foot, release it, and it “swims” away from you. As soon as she started playing, a boy about 5 years old came over and started grabbing at it. I didn’t interfere - I like to let the girls fight their own battles, and imagine my pleasure when I heard Lily say, “You can share it with me!” They began to play with it, but then I saw the boy push her head underwater when it was Lily’s turn. I moved closer. He was demanding to take the toy and not give her a turn. Arden of course wanted into the fray (she probably wanted to scrap with him), and asked for her turn. I sat in the middle of them and handed the toy out to each of them in turn, but the boy kept getting louder and more obnoxious. He started yelling at me: “YOU CAN’T HAVE A TURN!!! GIVE IT TO ME! NOW!” complete with grabby hands in my direction. I had had enough, so I handed the toy to Lily and asked her to put it away because it was causing “problems”. As I swam away from him, he swam after me screaming, “NO FAIR!!! It’s MY TURN! GIMME MY TURN!!! WHY??? GIVE IT BACK!” I answered, “I took it away because you were fighting over it and not sharing. It’s our toy, and it’s time for it to go away.” I think I was pretty mean when I said it, but it didn’t settle him down. He just yelled more loudly.
Where, pray tell, were his parents? No idea. I never saw anyone talking to him, but I did see him attacking random children in the pool, ripping their water toys away, dunking their heads underwater, and generally being obnoxious.
A few weeks back, Mike was in the pool with Arden and Lily, and a small girl, maybe about 2-3 years old, was clinging to the ladder like her life depended on it. Turns out, it did. She couldn’t swim - at all. She had to be helped out of the pool, after her sister got her mom’s attention. She was busily stuffing her face while texting. She took her daughter out of the pool, but immediately resumed the texting and her non-aquatic daughter was back in the pool within seconds. Drowning, anyone? Apparently they assume the lifeguards are there to rescue kids who can’t swim Why bother with swim lessons when you have lifeguards?
Ugh. Just, ugh.
I second your “Ugh”. Things like that make me so sad and angry. Those poor kids—annoying or not they deserve better. That happens all the time over here too with the playareas being overrun with bratty kids without adult supervision. I’m glad to hear that Lily and Arden, at least, handled themselves well.
Wow! Just, wow! I can’t understand that kind of behavior in a parent. I don’t get how you can just let you kids go to the pool unattended! Yeah, someone is going to drown. Ugh.
Just wrong. WTH is wrong with these parents?
This is so sad. You are right - where were the parents. In the case of the 5 year old boy, my guess is that they weren’t even there. Probably brought him in and left him there. Sounds like he has some emotional problems, no doubt due to lack of attention from his parents who, like the other mother, was stuffing her face and texting. It really is such a sad commentary on our society now. I feel for that 5 year old boy but you did the right thing. You and your two sweet little girls gave him an opportunity to share. Sadly, life lessons are hard, but maybe next time, this little boy will be able to last longer before he decides to be a bully.
Urgh from me too. Situations like that are so upsetting. A couple of weekends ago we went to a lake and Fiona, who can’t swim, was out in a deeper part with a swim ring. A girl about twice here age and three times her size came over and tried to pull it over her head to take it. If she had succeeded, Fiona would’ve gone under. I told her Fiona needed it to swim so she couldn’t have it and her response was, “what am I supposed to use?” I replied “I don’t know, ask your parents.” Of course there were no parents anywhere and she went on to grab stuff from other kids. I just watched in awe, I can’t imagine my children ever even thinking of doing something like that. Why are there so many crappy parents out there?
ARGH! Those type of parents irk me. I am angry for you. It is a good way to broach the subject of good behavior versus bad when your kids are at the butt end of that sort of behavior.