Pants-Free Parenting: No need to apologize for children

By Lyz Lenz, correspondent

Babies cry. This happens. So do adults. But babies cry with reckless abandon and no sense of social graces or norms. I admire that and fear that in a baby. Two years ago, I took a trip to visit my parents in Denver with both of my children who were 2 and 3 months old at the time.

As I boarded the airplane, I could see people casting doubting looks in my direction. I even heard on woman say to another, 'I hope we don't sit near them.” I would have been angry, but I sympathized. I didn't want to sit near me either.

My children did fine on the trip with only a minimal amount of crying. Of course, the way I silenced the baby was to breastfeed him, and the way I silenced my 2-year-old was to hand her the iPad, which also brought more stares and some pointed sighs. It's hard to win.

In advance of the trip, several well-meaning people suggested I bring goody bags for the people around me. These good bags would have ear plugs, a treat, and an apology note for my children's future behavior. I did no such thing. While I don't look forward to the inevitable public meltdown, especially on an airplane, I'm not apologizing for it either.

I thought of that trip recently, as I sat on an airplane from Chicago to Portland, near a mother who was wrangling her 2-year-old son. He looked so much like my son, I instantly wanted to pick him up and give him kisses. I didn't, mostly to avoid the jail time. But he also acted like my son - trying to run down the aisle, refusing his mother's calming gestures, screaming madly whenever she told him not to kick the seat in front of him.

At one point, she looked across the aisle at me and said, 'I'm sorry.”

'Don't be,” I said. 'He is a person. Everyone here was 2 once. Plus, I think he is doing a great job.”

And he was considering his age. The middle-aged man next to me had already taken my arm rest and knocked into me with his elbows as he typed furiously on his computer. In front of me, a woman was eating perhaps the smelliest yogurt I have ever encountered and was watching a movie on her iPad, without headphones and the sound cranked. The baby? He was nothing compared to the grown adults who should have known better.

While children may unknowingly (and despite my best efforts) create situations that bring discomfort to others, they are still humans. They are not an inconvenience, they are not second-class citizens and they are not in the way, They are people - the future tax base of this country.

Additionally, I regularly encounter other, older humans who do far worse and none of them have ever given me a goody bag. I'd love it if the man in line in front of me at the store, who hadn't showered in what smelled to be weeks, apologized to me for his odor - but he didn't. I'd love it if the woman who walked up to me at the Science Museum and loudly told me that she hated all my writings, while my kids stood by, to apologize - but she never will. If I had a goody bag for everyone who ever wrote me to tell me that I should give my children up for adoption, I'd be the World Bank of goody bags.

My point is not that people are terrible and that I deserve outstanding apologies. While people are terrible, I know I am too. And I find it easy to forgive others when I know more about them. Perhaps the odoriferous man had a disease. Maybe the woman with the yogurt couldn't afford headphones and had special dietary needs. There is, however, no excuse for Science Museum lady. My point is that we are all human. We are all terrible sometimes - children and adults. I hate that I am raising my little humans in a world that expects an apology for their age-appropriate behavior.

Every day I see a news story about a toddler who cried in a restaurant and got kicked out or a mother who was asked to not nurse her child in public. Perhaps their actions were offensive, I wasn't there. But I can tell you what I did on that airplane with the little boy. I gave him a pen and a paper and his mom five minutes of peace before he was at it again. Who knows, even if he may not grow up to be the president, he could still be my nurse in the retirement facility that my kids will one day shove me in. And I'd like him to grow up knowing that the world isn't all bad.

' Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.