Park Slope Stroller Nazi Story Getting a Little Stale

9.44am, blog posting is indulgent. You can write a letter and mail it.

10:26’s anecdote is exactly what I am talking about –

I eat out at restaurants in PS, greater Brooklyn and Manhattan all the time (probably 4 nites a week)- I go to ‘adult restaurants’ all the time (Blue Ribbon, Al Di La, Stone Park, etc, etc, etc) and the notion that “Everytime” you go to these restaurants you have to deal with a “screaming infant” or unruly toddler is just a total lie.

I would venture that I have to “deal with” annoying/loud/obnoxious adults far more often then children (both in PS and everywhere else).

I hereby challenge anyone to video (use your crappy camera phone) even one single obvious example of this ‘horrible parenting’ and post it on You Tube.

I’m not saying kids never yell or cry – but sometimes adults get drunk, laugh really loud or shout over each other to make a point also – so what – if you dont want to hear anyone else – eat at home.

Prior to having a child I thought that as soon as a kid could walk they should no longer be in a stroller. I was wrong. All the previous posts here explain it well. My 2 year old walks very slowly & wants to explore everything. There’s a time for that but not on a busy sidewalk. Also I work full time in the city, take my son to & from his school/daycare in Manhattan in his stroller as well as to run short errands with him. No way I could keep my son safe without his stroller & carry anything. I personally can’t stand Park Slope but only because it’s so densely populated; strollers add to that but really what do you stroller haters want us to do stop breeding? To each their own; I’ll enjoy my Ditmas Park gas guzzling ancient home on a wide idyllic street even if it means driving to Boerum Hill for great bagels. Anyhoo… carry on

I have lived in Park Slope for years and my children are now in High School. I have had a love/ hate with the neighborhood and understand all the comments. Yes there are many parents and childrena and I can see how the acceptance or understanding of kids that are louder than they should be or restless in a restaurant is a blessing to a parent who has been workingtheir butt off all day taking their child to classes and the park and playdates and just wants one moment of “I have an adult life” that is provided by diners/parents that are in the same boat. I can see how this would really suck for people without kids who are trying to have a nice time. In the same way that parents learn the child friendly places I would think that childless people would learn as well. Then there is the occasssional parent who oversteps by bringing their child to a “grown-up” place and letting their child run like it’s Two Boots. It’s not all that often, though.

I have this theory that young parents model people older than them because the whole parentingthing is new and this is what people do when they are trying to learn, right. It seems that in trying to find their place in this new role they become really tight and judgemental for a couple of years. Maybe it’s that before children you have these interests that guide you into new friendships but suddenly you have friends because your kids were born a week apart. It’s an awkward time. So all these people are now part of “your group” and you have to figure out how to sort through it. As lame as it may seem later, opinions about nursing and diapers and pacifiers become a way of findind common ground. And yes they become a way of excluding.

I will say that although I joked about this judgemental new parent, it didn’t bother me much until I had “grown” out of it.

By the first grade I saw the field level and all the kids that couldn’t read at three were reading right along with the baby geniuses. This is when the parents started to really get over themselves and the lessons of humility that they learned in their journey through toddlerdom started to become lessons that they not only recognized but wanted to impart to their children.

As I said, my kids are getting older and while they do not go to school in Park Slope, they are friends with many Berkeley Carroll kids. I would have predicted at the onset of my “getting over myself” that these kids were headed for Paris Hiltonism, but I was wrong. The same parents that talked and talked and gave time outs and sometimes got too tired to do this style of parenting in the end did not let the kids walk all over them and while their teenagers are teenagers they are not rude or badly behaved. They are from my experience shockingly kind to one another and incredibly open-minded.

This all brings me to the point that I always hear about young parents and babies in Park Slope but I have never heard about the loud and awful teenagers. Something good must be happening.

I am proud of all the amazing kids that I have watched grow in Park Slope. I have seen the very worst toddlers grow into young people that would warm anyone’s heart. And I have seen young parents make incredible journeys through lives with all the obstacles and pain that come with the job of raising children and must say firstly that I am sorry for my own judgemental nature when I was starting out and lastly that I am amazed and proud of the young adults that Park Slope has produced for the world.

Please let me say that my admiration for other parents is not confined to Park Slope.

p.s. I don’t even live in PS, but the stroller complaints are ridiculous.