Navigating the Train Table

We were at a bookstore yesterday and while McMoose was picking out some books, Luke and I wandered over to the kid's section to play with the train table. Whoever invented the train table, by the way? Pure genius. Compared to that person, Einstein was a no-talent hack.

But as awesome as train tables are, the fact is this: Multiple toddlers/preschoolers + a finite number of trains + a limited amount of space around a table = chaos + stress + screeching + a pint-sized re-enactment of Lord of the Flies. It started out fine, but Luke was the youngest there by about three years and the other two kids were way savvier about train table etiquette, making trades and insider deals with each other while Luke clutched his one little train car and watched in awe.

Eventually, of course, he snapped out of his reverie and helped himself to one of the other kids' trains, which resulted in the aforementioned chaos, as the other kid made a bee-line for me to inform me with great disdain that my uncouth child had broken his train. So I got up, took the train back from Luke (insert aforementioned screeching) and handed it back to the other kid. See, I thought I was doing a good thing. I thought I was teaching my kid not to take things from other people. I thought I was being a good parent.

I was wrong. What I actually did was teach the other two kids that it was okay for them to take things out of my child's hands, even if it elicited loud protests. And thus commenced a 10-minute long saga of two older, bigger children taking away EVERY SINGLE TOY that Luke reached for.

The thing I had neglected to take into consideration, of course, is that being a parent is somewhat like being a politician in that SOMEONE IS ALWAYS WATCHING YOU. Your kid, other kids, other parents, whatever. There's always someone looking and if that someone happens to be a person who's still learning the social graces of our world, that person then proceeds to imitate whatever undesirable behavior, whatever un-thought-out-action you just performed. And it's always the mistakes that are repeated. It takes them YEARS to pick up on the pleases and the thank-yous, the sharing, the being nice, the keeping their hands to themselves, the not screeching. But they see you take one toy from someone or yell at the cat or drop a piece of food for the dog and suddenly, they're perfect mirrors of that behavior.