As I walked into the YMCA nursery a few days ago, they were impossible to ignore.
“AYYYAAAAAAHHHH!” a five-year-old boy screamed, flinging himself at his two-year-old brother.
“AIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” his brother responded in a key that could shatter glass, flapping ineffectually back at the older boy before falling to the floor in a kicking, screaming fury. On the screeching and squawking and screaming and punching and tantrumming went. My eyes traveled slowly from the boys up to their mother, a perfectly toned, dyed blonde who was pointedly ignoring them and everyone else. Hmm. The last time I saw her was right after learning that her older son had pushed my three-year-old daughter in the nursery. After hearing what had happened, she had said and done nothing.
This time around she paused for a moment, then gently shoved her older son into the big kids’ room and shut the door. Next, she turned to her sobbing younger son. Picking up the boy gingerly under his armpits, she walked across the nursery lobby, stepped over the dividing gate into the toddler room, and dropped him on his butt on a stack of play mats. The kid promptly fell backward and flipped heels over head onto his stomach. He began screaming at the top of his lungs. The nursery workers stared, aghast. On the other side of the dividing wall in the baby room, Bruiser’s eyes widened and he began crying, too. I tried to comfort him and watched to see what the gym mom would do next. She smiled blandly at the nursery worker.
“He’ll be fine,” she said over her son’s plaintive screams. And … she left. Her son ran to the dividing wall and watched her go, tears streaming down his face.
“Well, they say the best thing to do is leave them alone, I guess …” the nursery worker said dubiously, looking at the boy. Two other moms came over and tried to talk to him. He cried louder. I calmed Bruiser down and gave him to a nursery worker before heading out into the gym. As fate would have it, the only open elliptical was next to Gym Mom. I got on it. We didn’t speak.
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