Children are so inconvenient, at least in America.

I read an opinion piece about how a CNN story about little children in airplanes kicked off a storm of arguments in the comments area on the CNN website. That piece got me to another blog post, written by a woman who usually writes about her cats, but took a break to whine about how her already terrible flying experience was ruined by an ill-behaved child, and how she wanted to punch both the mother and the baby. I wasn't even done being horrified when the post ended and I was in comment-land, and all the comments lauded the post as 'funny' and completely agreed with the fact that parents of crying babies ought to be put in jail or something akin to that.

We can, of course, argue about whether it is possible to comfort a crying child hundred percent of the time. After all, babies do unpredictable things such as crying uncontrollably and pooping in their pants. We can also argue about whether a mother is 'bad', if she is paying more attention to her child, and is more concerned with keeping her child happy rather than some snarky stranger shooting her ugly looks. We can definitely talk about the sense of entitlement one must feel to be thinking that her cats are worth telling the whole world about yet declaring that little children ruin her flying experience in the cheapest section of the plane.

I do a lot of international flying, and even my children notice how much friendlier people in other countries are towards them. At foreign airports, the security personnel smile, even joke, with my children as we pass through security. Flight attendants in foreign airlines carry my bags if I am carrying a child and help the children with their carry-ons. En route, if my children are asleep during a meal service, the flight attendants offer, on their own, to pack away a meal for the sleeping child so that she has something to eat when she wakes up. When my toddler fidgets, I get fewer nasty looks from international passengers on a twelve hour trans-pacific flight, than I do from Americans in a two hour flight.

What I am reminded of, again, is how child-unfriendly America is. We have the fanciest of malls and department stores here, and yet you will not find a child-sized toilet or sink in them. Look through housekeeping magazines, filled with pages after pages of pictures of beautiful homes, but you will not see a child or even a place where a child could feel comfortable. Children and their possessions are completely isolated in the child's rooms and you can get lot of advice on how to keep the children and all their stuff perfectly ensconced in that one room, and how to make rest of the house your 'sanctuary'. More and more houses are designed with a 'split plan' - parents' bedrooms on the opposite side of the house as the children's bedrooms so that you can get as far away as you can from your children, while still being in the same house. Images of adults having a good time are completely devoid of children; the message, that for a family to have fun, parents and children must be separated is repeatedly broadcast in ads and other media images.

I hate to promote a commercial venture, but you just have to step into a foreign-designed IKEA store to have this starkly put in perspective - they have a childcare center, child-friendly bathrooms and meals, and they sell their sofas with pictures of children bouncing on them. I dare you to find even one American furniture seller's catalog with a child anywhere near the living room furniture. A dog, maybe, but no children. As if, children don't live in American living rooms. The side-affect of all this is that, subconsciously our feelings of what a home, a vacation or fun, should be gets altered and then our life becomes unfriendly to children too. At such times I like to remember something my friend passed on to me "remember you are raising a human being, not managing an inconvenience."

Road trip update

We are back from our road trip and it went fine. In the end we were glad that we did not go for the DVD player. The kids read a lot in the car and worked on some activity books. I also heard, "I am bored" a few times but then they would figure something out to keep themselves busy.

We made the onward journey almost non-stop because my younger one napped for two hours. It was easy to keep the older one busy - she read by herself for a bit, then I read to her. She also listened to some story tapes on her Walkman and looked at an "I spy" book. On the return journey there was a time that I was too tired to engage the kids and they were getting crazy back there. We ended up stopping and playing a few games of tag. Things improved after that.

24/7 entertainment

We are about to embark on a road trip - 4 hours drive each way. The invariable first thought is how to keep the children entertained on this long drive. A portable DVD player would be nice. Should I go out and buy a few new toys and books, for a secret stash that I can pull out when somebody starts to get bored?

Or should I completely disown the responsibility of entertaining my children? That is a thought. As a child, we used to take these three day long train rides every year with nothing more than a few books and board games. I used be entertained by watching out the window and seeing how the terrain across the country changed from state to state. We would make new friends in the train and learn new card games. At the end of that journey we would spend a month at my grandma's village with no electricity, toys or games. When I think of happiness, those are the times that come to my mind first. The times where endless summer days stretched in front of me without any planned entertainment or anything to do. I didn't learn horseback riding or ballet, but I did discover the simple pleasure of lying under a mango tree listening to a cuckoo.

These are the simple pleasures that I still long for - to have days where I do nothing more than lie under a tree and read a book. I want my children to find watching scenery out of a window entertainment enough, to be able to daydream, to not need 24/7 multi-media entertainment. This is one reason I have stubbornly refused to buy a DVD player for the car or portable video games. And the sole reason I would like to skip going for vacations to Hawaii and Europe, and save the money to buy a small cottage in the hills that we could visit on weekends and live during summer vacations. Dil dhoondtä hai, phir vahi, fürsat kè räät din as Gulzar would say.

But long drives always test my will. Little kids, when bored, can drive you nuts, especially when they start picking on their siblings for entertainment and I start wishing I had gotten that Gameboy after all.