I don’t know exactly when it happened, but suddenly I have become a mom of older kids. No one is in diapers anymore, all my kids go to school for a full day, and everyone can fasten their own seatbelts in the car. It’s so strange. And also so great.
There are things I miss about having little kids. Obviously. I miss the chubby cheeks and chubby wrists and having a tiny person fit perfectly on my hip. I miss the mispronunciation of words and phrases. I miss the imaginative play and the spontaneous bouncing up and down to even a hint of music.
But I don’t miss the outings to the kid-centric places little kids tend to love. I do not mean places kids enjoy like the zoo or the aquarium. I mean places only kids enjoy. Usually, these places have the word “kid” or “children” in the title, and often with words like “zone” or “center” as well.
There is a difference, for example, between a museum children might enjoy — like a natural history museum or a planetarium — and a children’s museum. The difference is that usually, the first is an outing the whole family can enjoy and learn something from. The second is an outing only children will enjoy. And parents will loathe. For adults, it’s nearly impossible to see these places as anything other than giant, crowded petri dishes full of pathogens.
At best these places will have a place for parents to sit and watch a safe distance from any sneezes while their children play, and at worst they will have potentially dangerous activities that require parental assistance, often requiring the parent to step into and climb on spaces designed for humans half their size. Which is humiliating.
When I speak about these places with moms still in the little kid raising phase, I turn into the wise experienced British gamekeeper from “Jurassic Park” who speaks only in direct warnings to the unexpecting crew of theme park visitors, until his ultimate demise when he is attacked by a raptor two-thirds into the film. Apologies if I just spoiled a movie that premiered 30 years ago. I get that same distant look in my eyes that he has any time he’s on screen. It’s the look of someone who has seen things they can’t forget. And I, too, speak in warnings like “Make sure you bring an extra pair of socks.” Because I’ve survived many outings to jump-around parks that smell like feet and kid museums filled with toys that have been touched by ten thousand grubby fingers. And, unlike the wise experienced British gamekeeper in “Jurassic Park,” I’ve made it out alive (Sorry again, but you really should have seen the movie by now).
So I figured I’d put my hard-won wisdom to good use and create a survival guide for those facing the prospect of a “fun-filled” outing with children.
How to physically prepare
- Get a good night’s rest and eat a good breakfast. You’re going to need your wits about you as you attempt to keep track of your children at these places.
- Hydrate and stretch.
- If you have long hair, pull it back and up. It will get touched and pulled otherwise.
How to emotionally prepare
- Remind yourself of all the hard things you’ve done before. And remind yourself that a couple hours at an indoor play place won’t actually be as difficult as those things. It just feels like it will be.
- Disassociate
Know what supplies to bring
- Socks. You must bring at least one pair of extra socks per child. With every kid outing, socks are either removed to jump on various surfaces, never to be found again, or they somehow get wet. There may be only a drop or two of water on the premises. It doesn’t matter. The socks will get wet.
- Fluids. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, these places make children unnaturally thirsty. And the only thing grosser than all the surfaces that have been touched by a million fingers, is the drinking fountain that has had a million mouths placed directly on the spigot.
- Hand sanitizer. So much of it.
- A hazmat suit. If you own one. If you don’t, consider buying one.
- More socks. Just in case.
Do not even attempt to visit one of these places on a statewide school holiday
This is the point in the survival guide where I have to warn you that you should do as I say (write), not as I do, because I made this mistake as recently as Presidents Day. I convinced myself not everyone in the state would have the same idea to take their children to the same place on the same day. But everyone in the state did have the same idea to take their children to the same place on the same day.
On a warm day, the kids would be dispersed evenly among zoos, playgrounds and the kid zones/centers/museums. But the weather on Presidents Day was cold and dreary so what felt like every child in the state congregated in our nearest children’s museum.
The children’s museum was crawling with humans. If you squinted it looked like a TV on the fritz with the white and block static dots bouncing around the screen. A child who I have never met coughed in my face. Everything smelled vaguely of stale french fries. Shoes lay abandoned in the middle of play places. It was mayhem.
But it was also bittersweet. I hadn’t been to one of these places with my kids in a long while. They’re all busy with school and social lives and their own interests. And as I watched other moms guide their toddlers up and down slides, through the absolute mess of people, I felt both lucky I didn’t have to employ the survival tips nearly as often anymore, but also a little sad that I no longer have to pack twelve socks for every outing anymore. Parenting older kids is less logistically challenging, but more intellectually difficult, and some days I long for the chubby-wrist days of dreading another afternoon at an indoor jungle gym. Even if it meant wishing I owned a hazmat suit.
But then another kid coughs in my face and I am grateful once again to have moved on from that era, and to have gained wisdom that can hopefully help others make it out alive.