CHILDFREE MUSEUM DAY - PLEASE!

CHILDFREE MUSEUM DAY - PLEASE!

This past weekend I went with a friend to a Natural History Museum. We paid twelve dollars each to get into the museum - less than a movie but not nothing. I hadn't been to a Natural History Museum in years and this one boasted a newly configured dinosaur exhibit. In order to control the numbers of people going through the exhibit, the Museum was controlling how many people could enter every hour with a special ticket. I wish instead they had staged a CHILDFREE MUSEUM DAY! The entire afternoon in the museum was a disaster! There were many small screens - computers and projections - with speakers on. But we couldn't HEAR any of them because of all the shrieking children. I got hit into three times by kids who were running around and not paying any attention, once hard enough to leave a bruise. And their rotten parents were not controlling them or disciplining them. Where were the security guards to put an end to this insanity? Yes, I think a CHILDFREE MUSEUM DAY is a great idea! Once a week, adults should be able to go to a museum and proceed quietly and with dignity. 

Sister

(First published September 6, 2011)

 

WHITE HOUSE NANNIES by BARBARA KLINE reminds us why we don't want to raise kids - OR HIRE A NANNY !

Reading WHITE HOUSE NANNIES (the name of her firm) by Barbara Kline, which came out in 2005, and which has me howling with laughter - quietly - here at the public library. Imagine a nanny so dumb she had to ask, while at Ocean City, Maryland, which ocean they were in ?!

Page 33 "Finding nanny for parents anywhere is a tricky proposition. You're playing God by creating brand-new families. Most professional mothers in town (Washington, D,C area) are in such hot pursuit of their particular kind of success that they need lots and lots of childcare, usually from Day One. There's such a shortage of domestic help in our country that for the last several decades, foreigners have filled the gap...

Page 40

" Because I bring together nannies and families from such different backgrounds, cross-cultural surprises are bound to occur. One mother, whose baby was teething, noticed her Haitian nanny's unusual home remedies. She held her child up to the sun whenever possible and rubbed his head with alcohol. The mother found the nanny praying over the child in a dark, candlelit basement room. Even though the nanny's bizarre techniques seemed to calm the teething baby down, she was fired. So much for cultural tolerance...'