“Alex. Alex. Stop splashing, Alex.” The words emerged from the child’s mother’s mouth in a dull, flat tone, as if from a robot. In a crowded pool, a little boy was frisking about. He was splashing, true, but so were all the other children on this hot afternoon.
“Alex, she doesn’t like that,” the woman intoned from her chair, as the boy romped beside a little girl and thwacked the surface of the water. The girl regarded Alex briefly, then picked up her pink bucket and resumed playing.
“Alex. Alex,” the mother began again, a moment later. Her son had found a neon green plastic seahorse on the edge of the pool, and was bobbing it through the waves.
“That’s not your toy, Alex,” the voice continued, “Put it down.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine if he plays with it,” another parent put in. “If the owner comes along, he can always give it back.”
The mother seemed only moderately disgruntled at this information, and settled back for more disapproving scrutiny of her child.
It was a sad but riveting spectacle. Here was a child, obliviously enjoying himself, while his mother told him off as relentlessly as a metronome.
Why do some women do this? I’m telling you about Alex, but it’s hardly an unusual dynamic. For some reason, a subset of mothers feels that boys in particular must be corralled and lectured and told not to climb or play with sticks or splash at the pool.
Was Alex being naughty? He didn’t seem so. He was simply absorbed in play.
Yet not once did his mother take the trouble to make sure he was listening. She did not rise from her chair and approach him. She did not even raise her voice over the shrieks and laughs of the other children. She merely droned on, correcting him, and slowly became angered by his refusal to follow her instructions.
“Don’t throw things, Alex,” she said in his direction as the boy pitched his seahorse toward a bucket. Alex jumped out of the pool, grabbed the toy, and jumped back in again.
“Be careful. Someone could get hurt.”
Alex threw the toy again, and, jumping out of the pool, yelped in pain as he bashed his knee on the edge.
“That’s what happens, Alex,” said his mother, getting up at last. His hurting himself seemed to settle something for her. “OK, it’s time to go.”
For the first time, Alex appeared to register his mother. He didn’t want to leave the pool. He began to cry. This seemed to gratify her, in a grim way.
“If you cry, it means you don’t like being at the pool,” she said, wrapping him in a towel. He continued to weep.
“Oh, so you don’t want to come back to the pool? OK. We won’t come back then. Is that what you want?”
It wasn’t what Alex wanted, and he was still bawling when they left the pool. Poor kid.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column
appears on Sunday and Thursday.
She can be contacted at
[email protected].
