One thing I finally noticed in the past two weeks or so… or perhaps ‘noticed’ is not correct… perhaps it was simply recently that it really started too annoy me… is that I do not think I have had an intelligent conversation with an adult while there was a small child they like in the room in about a year. Perhaps two. The only true exception I can think of being if I was at a restaurant, in which case the child (be they 1 or 41) is on good behavior and not running around grabbing the attention of every ADD adult in the room.
Maybe this is me being petty, but I can think of 3 conversations recently that were immediately halted due to some child walking/being brought into the room. I don’t mean that we were talking about something we should not speak of in front of children. It was as if you waved a laser pointer at a cat and they had to go get it. If not actively go mess with the kid, then conversation immediately turned the kid’s way (or to whomever had them, talking about the child). Dead stop in the middle of a sentence. I’ve had people I was talking to stop talking due to some child and I’ve been flat out ignored in the middle of speaking because a child entered the area.
I’m trying to decide if I am being an idiot or if the whole world around me simply loses all respect for other people when a child enters. The only decent reasoning I can come up with to explain it is that people feel that once the child grows up, they will no longer have the same opportunity with them. A “you’re only young once”… er, “they’re only young once” type thing. The flaw is that the statement is true for everyone. March 13th, 2008 only comes once. It doesn’t matter if you are two years old or seventy-two.
All ditching someone in mid conversation does is tell them that their time isn’t important. Maybe that is true. But damn it, have some tact.
Okay, as a parent, I make my children wait until I’ve finished a sentence before I address them, but really I don’t think you’ll get it until you have kids of your own. Don’t get me wrong, I totally empathize with your observations–I hate when I’m in the middle of a deep conversation, a kid interrupts, and you never get the momentum back.
BUT, as parents, your conversation will always play second fiddle to the child. Sorry, that’s just how it goes.
I’m not talking about parents with their own children. I find that the children’s parents are the best about it, in general. My frustration is not with them (that they are distracted is often understandable), it is everyone else’s blindness.
I can even understand it to some extent if the child is looking for attention, but these children often are not. They are happy with whomever is fawning over them at the time.
Btw, just as an FYI, I hate the ‘wait until you’ type reasonings. ‘Wait until you’re married’, ‘wait until you have kids’, ‘wait until someone you love dies of some evil disease’, ‘wait until whatever random event that will cause some emotion that you cannot possibly currently understand occurs’.
Hmm… there’s some bitterness there that I should explore sometime. I think it is merely the idea that there is a truth it is not possible for me to know… the concept of which I think is nonsense.