Doesn’t matter that you want a break

If you have been reading Tweaked for Your Pleasure for many years you will likely think I hate children but you could not be further away from the truth. It is not children I hate but rather their parents and sadly I got another story of yet again another parent who likely claims having a child is a miracle just to be the first one to disappear the second someone else looks after the child for a while.

My story begins at a public library that has a computer section, a children’s section, a reference / quiet area, and a general reading area and to kill some time I decided to read a copy of the Torah. I imagine it is the same as in most libraries but religious books tend to be in the reference area which is normally nice and quiet.

So I grab my tablet and boot up Discord, pull out a small bottle of Irn Bru while I put the Torah on my lap ready to read and to no surprise I hear crying. Sadly children do cry and sometimes parents can find it hard to pacify a child but their parent took the child to the reference area away from the children’s area rather than trying anything which seems meaningful.

While it is annoying it is something that does happen so I went back to the Torah only to then see in the corner of my eye the child trying to grab my tablet from the desk. I quickly grabbed the tablet and politely informed the child that I was sorry, but that tablet wasn’t theirs. The next thing I hear is the parent laughing saying how “great I must be with children” and it is here when I gave a slight “grunt/laugh” as I never really had a reply for them and thought nothing else about it.

You would think this is where the story ends but it does not as after I went back to reading the Torah the child kept trying to speak to me. Not being one to be mean for no actual reason we ended up discussing the original Sonic games after they spoke about Sonic Mania which they enjoyed on their console when it hit me that the parent was nowhere in sight.

Sensing that the parent may have simply wandered elsewhere in the library, I decided to inform a member of the library staff about the child and they came over and took over. A short while later after some peace, I saw the parent come back with shopping bags from Morrisons while being spoken to by a member of the PCSO at which point I was singled out and blamed as I was “babysitting to give them a break”.

A short story later the PCSO left and the parent came over and laughing said in a poof to people around that it “takes a village to look after a child” and then stormed out of the library.

I do understand that although some people believe raising children is the best thing ever and that they want a break from them it is not anyone’s job other than the parents to look after their children. This is even truer in the modern scare era when an adult can’t speak to a child without people thinking you have an ulterior motive for doing so. Don’t get me wrong if I see a child walking right into traffic I will get involved but you can not leave a child with someone who is not aware they are even there without permission or bad things are going to happen.

It used to take a village to raise a child when tribes depended on them but now it is all down to the parents. You may believe your child is the most important person in the world but you will find outside of your tiny circle no one cares in the slightest. At best your child is something someone will click like on Facebook and then go back to whatever they were doing.

Seriously it doesn’t matter if you want to take a break. If you want you get the other parent to get involved, hire a babysitter or ask the family. Childcare may cost a lot but at the end of the day, it is the parent’s choice to have the child and them alone with raising them.