Your Children Belong in Public

Our job is not to protect society from our loud kids. Our job is to create space for them in a world that gives them so little.

🥦🥬🥒We are cheaper than a bottle of green juice from Whole Foods, consider your choices.🥦🥒🥬

My playgroup is at war with our local community center.

Twice a week the community centers offers open gym play for toddlers. For six bucks, the toddlers are allowed to go buck wild in a giant empty basketball court, clambering over foam mats and brazenly car jacking each other for those little Fisher-Price foot pedal cars.

Afterwards, about six families, mine included, sit down at some open tables and chairs in the atrium of the community center and we feed our kids. Eventually the kids start goofing around, playing hide and seek under the tables, yawping, and squealing with laughter.

Last week, we were approached by a staff member who said, we would need to quiet down or leave. “This is our place of work,” she explained.

The mothers of the playgroup were split between shushing our kids and shushing the staffer.

This warning marks an escalation in on-going tensions.

Most of the people at the community center are seniors. Some are delighted by our exuberant toddlers. Some are indifferent. But many are hostile. One afternoon, a shrewy woman in her sixties screamed at my daughter and her friend in the restroom. While we were washing our hands, the girls noticed their voices echoing and started making noises. Right as I was going to ask them to settle down, a dismal white haired woman spun around and shouted, “KNOCK IT OFF!! THERE’S NO SHOUTING INSIDE BUILDINGS!! I COULD HAVE A SEIZURE IF I HEAR LOUD NOISES.”

No adult has ever yelled at my daughter. Until this woman.

We all froze for a moment but then I cut that nutter off.

“We’re parents. We’ll tell them to be quiet, not you.”

She kept on.

“We’re the parents. We’re the parents,” I said firmly without raising my voice (if you’re RIGHTFULLY impressed by my chill attitude its cause I’m still breastfeeding, baby! Read about it here).

It was clear the woman was somewhat *off*, mostly because she was willing to shout while most other people at the community center simply roll their eyes, move away, or shake their heads at us.

To be clear, our children are not excessively boisterous or unruly. They are appropriately all those things. They are not hypnotized by screens. They are not being tugged and prodded by an adult to be quiet. They are simply being children.

Some of the playgroup moms want to find a place we can rent so we can let the kid play in peace (I live outside of Portland, OR where 5 months of the year are drenched in rain which extended outdoor play a challenge). But I am resolute in us showing up every week and not budging. Let them drive us out. Call the cops. I will do a goddamn sit in with a half-eaten clementine in my hand, singing “Wheels on the Bus” in protest.

People like to think their tax dollars pay for everything and that entitles them to a lot. But in this case my tax dollars literally pay for this community center and I am entitled to just a little: a place for my kid to be a kid.

As I’ve noted before, I’m fairly certain if the moms of the playgroup were actively trying to silence and corral our kids, we wouldn’t get so much guff from the community center. But instead of telling them to quiet down, we sit smiling, enjoying how much raw joy they get from just running around a chair together. We instruct them to not do anything dangerous, like launch themselves off a chair but other than that, we kick back and enjoy their abandoned snacks.

I never silence my kid in a restaurant. Sometimes she shouts in the library. She runs down the aisle of the supermarket. Of course, anything too loud or disruptive I will ask her to “do it softer.” But beyond that, I allow her to be a child in public. Letting our children do developmentally normal things in public (being loud, playing, taking their shoes off, making a bit of a mess) isn’t permissive or lazy parenting it’s citizenhood. You’re a member of this society just as much as your young children are. Our job is not to protect society from our loud kids. Our job is to create space for them in a world that gives them so little.

Your children belong in public. Let em’ shriek with joy. Let ‘em take their shoes off. Let ‘em freak out the polycules. Let them be children.

I’m glad you made it to the bottom the this MANIFESTO. Here is our second merch drop. Have at it!