My current newspaper column
A patch of sparse grass on level ground about the width and length of a driveway is the perfect runway playground for preschool children. Especially at a city park. Especially when their parents are listening to a concert and don’t wish to concern themselves with supervising restless children up past their bedtime, their tiny adrenal glands buzzing with Dr. Pepper.
However, when that noisy game of chase and tag is taking place with a dozen children right in front of the ground-level stage during and throughout an entire concert by a serious group of musicians, I must ask a question: Parents, what are you thinking?!
It is Saturday evening at Thompson Station Park, site of the October 9th festival. Kelsey Muse, a local and extremely talented young singer-songwriter (think Avril Lavigne meets Taylor Swift) is playing a set of her poignant tunes with her band in the park’s small amphitheatre. Note that I said small amphitheatre, not mosh pit. Granted, nobody reasonably expects small children energized by vibrant music to act drugged as if watching an episode of Teletubbies. But seriously! Kelsey Muse and her band did not sign up to play background music at Chuck E Cheese.
I found myself applauding not only Kelsey’s mature songwriting and solid performance skills which are far beyond her tender teen years, but her patience and graciousness, her focus and professionalism while Romper Room was literally taking place at her feet. As a minor Kelsey is too young to play in bars and honky tonks, but Saturday night was good practice and preview of playing among rude and noisy patrons.
But it is not with the children that I find fault. I expect fun-seeking and fun-loving children to be themselves. But I also expect parents to be adults and adults to be parents when children need to understand what is appropriate and acceptable behavior. A dozen parents were fumbling their responsibilities on the field as if they were an entire team of UT Vols fielding kickoffs.
No, we weren’t dressed in formal attire to pensively listen to the Nashville Symphony playing Beethoven at the Schermerhorn. The setting was casual and the mood relaxed, befitting a festival. But that provides no blank check to write in continuous discourtesy to musicians. Parents, would you mind if I came to your daughter’s ballet recital and sang along loudly with my iPod from my seat in the front row? Would you object if I attended your son’s school play and started the wave during his 3-sentence monologue? While you’re playing a round of 18 at Legends is it okay if I follow your foursome with a jet engine leaf blower? Can you imagine the explosive reactions of these same parents if other parents’ children had been ricocheting back & forth in front of a stage during their daughter’s tiny troop performing something resembling Irish dance combined with hip-hop and clogging?
The parents of the dizzy dozen were not only insensitive to Kelsey and her band but inconsiderate of the audience members who actually came to enjoy the show versus a kid-led rodeo without ropes and animals. Parents, let me highly recommend a book entitled “Boundaries with Children” by Drs. Cloud and Townsend. Just as adults need help with the same boundaries so do children need guidance in recognizing and adjusting to reasonable boundaries regarding attitude, language, behaviors, choices, property, physical contact, handling emotions, to name a few. I am anything but a kill-joy law-giver who wants to bury your child (or mine) under an avalanche of rigid rules and unrealistic expectations. But as a community that needs no reminders what happens when rising waters ignore their banks and boundaries, so too must adults understand their own need for healthy boundaries which allow them to grow and their relationships to thrive. And adults (as parents, teachers, and coaches, etc.) must assist children at all stages of development to recognize good boundaries and adjust to them, whether they be teens facing a moral dilemma or preschoolers facing a concert stage.
--rLp --
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