Children at play

This summer, I worked at the Children's Museum of Phoenix. For the guests, it is a great museum! I back their mission and ideology 100%, but, I am very glad I was only there to help out for the busy summer activities. Since my main responsibility as a Playologist (yes, that was my official title) was to watch and play with the kids, that is exactly what I did and I made it my own sociological project. I watched the families and noted the various parenting styles (or lack thereof), family dynamics, styles of playing, and language used with young children. I am not a sociologist, psychologist or a parent and have absolutely no grounds for assuming facts or theories, but these are the observations I found the most interesting and/or entertaining:

1. Kids are braver when not accompanied with their parent. When a child climbed to the top of "The Climber" (a 3 story tall jungle gym with holes in the floor that look straight down!) without the help of their parent, they were more inclined to chat with the staff: telling us all about their accomplishment, introduce me to their sibling, tell us how many times they've visited the museum, how old they are, their entire life story... We encourage parents to join their children in all of the activities, but to see the smiles on their faces after they conquered their fears by themselves is a real treat.

2. Parents are psychotic about their diaper bags. We do not allow any type of bag into "The Climber" for safety reasons ("The Climber" is supposed to simulate climbing a tree- try climbing a tree with a gigantic, floppy, heavy diaper bag). Parents would flip their shit when we told them it must be stored on the floor in a secure locker and absolutely (and often, offensively) refused to do so, forcing their kids to miss out on the coolest attraction at the museum. Lame.

3. Cell phones suck. I cannot count the number of parents who completely ignored their kids, who desperately wanted to get their attention, because they were on Facebook or some other app on their phone. Disgusting.

4. Watching babies run is the cutest thing on the planet. They are so top heavy. I love it.

5. More often than not, parents do not call their children by their names, but by there relationship to the family, such as "Sissy" or "Brother". I think this is insanely dumb. I'm pretty sure my sister and brother do not depict their identity or sense of self based on their family relationship to me and I am definitely not anybody's "sissy". I think you should call a child by their name to help them cultivate their own identity as an independent, and give them ownership to something that is explicitly their own that they never have to share with their siblings- cause you know they have to share everything else. Nicknames are different. A nickname is unique and a special token. I think "Caca" is a totally appropriate name for my brother, Kyle. I was not intentionally calling him poop, I was trying to call him by his own name- his name that represents all of this creative talent, clever sense of humor, moody pissiness that makes you want to throat punch him, and all of his attributes that make people love him. He is not "Brother" to me. He is Kyle, my wonderful brother whom I love very much. And Kelsey too. I love my wonderful sister just as much. She was lucky enough to escape an embarrassing, bathroom themed nickname.

I am sure there is a bunch of Freudian-Erickson-Jungian-Pavlovian explanation for all of these weird quirks that I saw. If you know what they are, I would love to talk to you about them. I find this "stuff" fascinating. However, I am going to stick with my new "BIG girl job" managing the Visitor's Desk at the Art Museum from now on.