Today at the park an entire group of high schoolers descended upon us. It was strange because we are at the park at all kinds of times on all kinds of days and this has never happened before.
Anyways, we’re at the park and in come all these teenagers with their snacks from 7-eleven. A bunch of girls sit on the see-saw. Another set take over the wooden deck built around the tree. A group of 10 boys head up to the top of the slides and stand on the platform eating out of a communal gallon of ice cream. Mmm.
And there we all stand—me with Ellie and Abram, another little girl with her mother and baby sister and a boy with his grandfather—all at the bottom of the slides looking up at this gaggle of boys crowded at the top. I see the little girl nudge her mother. The mother replies, “Just go up there and say ‘excuse me’ then slide down.” The girl doesn’t budge. The boy, at his grandfather’s urging, goes halfway up the stairs but then retreats.
Finally, I am the one who marches myself up the slide and says (in Chinese of course), “Look, because you are standing here these children are all afraid to play. Can you please move to the benches over there? Thank you.”
Of course they moved right away. What else could they do, right? I don’t think they were that punkish, and thankfully Taiwanese teenagers are not as rude as American ones. But my question is: Why was it me? Am I just extra confrontational? Or is it some cultural thing that stopped the other mother and grandfather from acting first?
Either way, I hope my kids know better when they get bigger. Not only did those punks plop themselves down in the middle of the kids’ playground, the also left their trash all over the place.
hmmm…sounds to me like you were raised by vickie southall…
what can I say……..mother bear syndrome??
I think we ‘foreign’ moms just have a bit more courage regarding the teenagers here because they are more polite than in our countries (and smaller and less volatile generally – or we’re just naive) so we go for it and tell them off and they listen to us… i’ve done the same thing at our small park… and the kids were smoking so i told them to clean up their butts too… so funny… not sure I’d do it in CA that way… or Auckland for that matter
but hey, way to clean up your ‘hood’
I would’ve done the same, and I’m not surprised the other people didn’t. Taiwanese people, I found, like to keep a non-confrontational stance and don’t want to stir the pot and possibly make trouble.
Us Canadians/Americans are a different story.
true: “don’t stick your head up and it won’t get cut off.”