The Sad Tale of Swing Boy

My husband and I took the kids to a nearby playground tonight. It's not the closest one, but I like going there for a number of reasons--one being the diversity of the kids who play there.

Our town is not diverse. In fact, it's my second least favorite thing about our Westchester hamlet (my #1 being that you can't walk anywhere good). I grew up in a very white town, and once I was old enough to realize it, it sort of bummed me out. I didn't have the chance to meet people from various backgrounds, and when I went off to college I was unprepared for the diversity I found there. I was naive.

Economically, the New England town I grew up in ranged from well-to-do electricians and contractors to ivy league professors and renowned neurosurgeons. Ethnic diversity meant Greeks and Armenians. A handful of Asians lived in town--mostly affiliated with Boston's many universities and hospitals--but basically no black or hispanic families. There were some black kids in the school system--bussed in through the much-maligned METCO (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity) program--but they didn't live in town and tended to stick together.

I was hoping to raise my kids in a more diverse environment, but because our town isn't great in that regard, I have to leave town so my kids can learn that not everyone looks the same.

The playground was packed tonight. After pushing my daughter in one of the baby swings, my husband informed me there was a little boy, around three-years-old, in the other swing who seemed to be parent-less. He pushed the kid a few times because he felt sorry for the boy, who was just hanging there. He wasn't complaining, not crying, not acting out...just hanging, legs dangling.

My husband asked him if his parents were around. He pointed behind him, to a picnic table with three adults. Because the grown-ups at that table never even glanced over at the boy, my husband was not convinced they were actually the parents.

The boy was stuck in the swing for over an hour! He didn't look unhappy, but neither could he get out on his own. Whenever the other baby swing opened up, a new parent would put his or her kid in, start pushing, and then notice the sad little boy hanging adjacent. The other parent would awkwardly push both swings for a little while, glancing around for the boy's caretaker all the while. In between, the boy would just hang there.

What the heck was going on? Were his parents really not there? If they were, in fact, around, did they not care that dozens of random adults were pushing their kid on the swing? How lazy could they be? Apparently, this particular playground is diverse even in terms of parenting skills.

Finally my husband went over and asked the boy if he wanted to get out. He did, so my husband lifted him out. The boy ran off to the play structure. We still weren't sure his parents existed, but after a few minutes he ran over to the picnic table with the three adults sitting around it.

I couldn't believe it! For an hour, the boy's parents (or guardians, at least) completely ignored it while random other adults uncomfortably pushed their boy on the swing. I was looking around the whole time, and the adults at that table didn't look at Swing Boy even once. And they appeared normal enough. Sure, the dad/male had a tattoo sleeve on one arm but that's hardly unusual these days. The two women were...eh...texting on their phones most of the time. Not great, but they weren't strung-out junkies, either.

They didn't care that he was just hanging there! For an hour! While other adults pushed him! While my husband talked to him and helped him out of the swing!

What the hell? In this era of helicopter parenting, this kind of disregard is downright shocking.

My husband: "Well, he'll probably end up being really independent, at least."

Me: "Or a drug addict."

But isn't that the great parenting dilemma?

Nothing a Little Trip to Provincetown Won't Fix

I took my kids to the dentist the other day, and when their checkups were done, the dentist let them pick out a toy ring as a treat. My son chose a grasshopper ring, while my daughter picked the pink gemstone one (surprise, suprise).

When we got home, I took my daughter's ring and playfully slipped it onto her finger. "There. Now we're married."

"Two girls would never get married," my son said knowingly.

"Umm...well...yeah, we'll talk about that another time," I lamely replied.

Should I read my kids
this book, perhaps?

It got me thinking: When is the right time to explain to one's kids that there are other ways a family can look besides the traditional One Mommy-One Daddy-Plus Kids model? My son is only five and barely understands the concept of marriage, so to explain all the possible variations would only confuse him at this point (I think).

Ideally, the conversation will occur naturally when he's a bit older--maybe he'll overhear something on the news about New York passing a Marriage Equality Act (soon, I hope!) and ask questions. Or maybe he'll make a new friend at school who just happens to have two mommies or two daddies (though it's unlikely in our traditional Westchester hamlet). Most likely however, it'll be one of our day trips into the city that will get my son scratching his head and wondering Hmmmm.

If we'd signed my son up for afternoon preschool instead of the morning session this past year, he would've learned pretty quickly that families come in many configurations:

One day last fall, I was looking through the preschool directory for a phone number to arrange a playdate for my son with a kid in the afternoon session. As I skimmed the list of names, I saw that three of the kids had the same hyphenated last name. Wow, triplets! I thought. But then I noticed that only two of these siblings had the same December 2006 birthday; the third was born in January '06, 11 months earlier. OMG, Irish triplets? The mom had one baby in January then got pregnant again immediately with twins? I shuddered at the thought, and couldn't wait to find out the deets at my son's playdate.

A few days later, I grilled the friend's mother about this unusual family. Turns out there's two moms! Which, though it makes way more sense than one poor mama birthing three babies in a single year, never even occurred to me (I'm ashamed to say). Everyone just seems so traditional and straight-laced around here (including me these days) that I never thought we'd actually have a same-sex couple living in our vicinity.

So that's good to know, because I'm all for diversity.

But my son doesn't know these kids and won't be going to school with them in the fall. Sure, I realize that he doesn't need to learn about "two mommies" or "two daddies" anytime soon, yet I'm also aware that it's best to teach kids about diversity early on.

And besides, all of my daughter's princess books aren't exactly helping the issue. The Disney Princesses are all poor/overworked/misunderstood at first, then WHAM!, they get fabulous new gowns & jewels, marry The Prince, and only then can they live happily ever after. There's just so much Boy + Girl = Happiness messaging (plus close-minded bullying) in the world that I worry my kids could end up ignorant and unintentionally hurtful if I don't say something sooner rather than later.

So then the question is this: How soon is too soon, and how late is too late?