Last week I wrote about how relaxing RIE classes are.
You know what’s not relaxing? Disneyland…
I went to Disneyland the other day with a few friends, and without my son. I hadn’t been in about 6 or 7 years, so I was excited to go.
But it was horrible.
I’m not even talking about how extremely hot it was (94°) or how extremely crowded it was (park reached maximum capacity). Those things did not help my already wavering appreciation of this theme park.
But what made it horrible for me was seeing all the babies.
I saw babies dripping in sweat and every other stroller having fans attached to them. I saw children having melt downs throughout the day out of what was clearly pure exhaustion. I heard toddlers screaming at the baby center while being changed. I watched kids begging their parents to buy all sorts of toys and parents becoming angry over every request. I even saw kids passed out on the floor, all over the park. And there was crying… so much crying.
And I am sure if you have ever been to Disneyland, you have seen these things too.
Folks, please stop taking babies to Disneyland. I may not be a child specialist or have a PhD, but I have eyes and I am a mother. These babies and toddlers are NOT happy, and here is my interpretation of why this is so.
1. over-stimulation:
The theme park has giant characters, lights all around, music and bands, noise from all directions, people everywhere, smells, rides.
Just listing it all out is making me feel overwhelmed. I can’t imagine my son, who gets overwhelmed from too many people coming over, dealing with all of these things.
When I was there, I was going to the baby center constantly to pump. One of the times there I watched a mom holding a baby that looked to be about 8 months old. His eyes were bulging, and looking everywhere. I could see him simply attempting to take everything in. He was being moved quickly, and he was struggling to keep up.
And I felt for him.
2. loss of predictability
Babies crave predictability. This is a fact. Magda Gerber (founder of RIE) believed that predictability helps babies and toddlers feel secure.
The more predictable the daily routine is, the more stability we give our kids. This helps them eat and sleep when the time comes. This also helps them make sense of the ever changing world around them.
I really believe my job is to keep my son feeling safe. Over-stimulation is something that is not routine for him, which is unpredictable. In that type of environment he doesn’t learn or feel comfortable. And I feel like I’m failing my job. Not to mention I hate ‘bucketing’ him for more than a few hours.
After a full day at any theme park, I am whiped out. I am emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. I can’t imagine what a full day at Disneyland might do to my son’s equilabrium.
I believe my son is capable of handling a lot. But I know he has no way of handling everything that would be thrown at him at Disneyland, which brings me to my next point.
3. unreasonable expectations
It’s called the happiest place on earth for a reason, and I’m not writing this to deny any of those reasons. However expecting a baby or young toddler to take everything in and be as happy and excited as I am when I travel to to Disneyland is unreasonable.
Babies and toddlers aren’t coming here for their own pleasure, that is ridiculous. We take them for our pleasure. We take them for pictures with cartoon characters we adore. Worse yet, we take them as an afterthought because we are really taking our older children.
In her post Please Don’t Take The Children, Janet Lansbury explains her own understanding of child development and the dangers of projecting our adult point of view onto our infants and toddlers. “It sounds fun and stimulating to us, so it must be a good idea. It’s easy to make this misjudgment with pre-verbal children.”
She continues to point out that the stress, discomfort, and exhaustion may not harm babies. “But what these developmentally inappropriate activities are almost certain to do is waste a child’s time, time the child could be spending engaging in self-initiated learning adventures, creating and imagining, feeling content, secure and confident in familiar surroundings, socializing, free to move and explore, empowered by knowing the routine.”
And I think this is what bothered me the most. Seeing these young kids trapped.
Because children are explorers and need places where they are able to move around, experiment, run, and climb. Asking a toddler not to do these things is asking them not to breathe. But in a crowded theme park, our kids lose this safe place to play and explore. We fear for their safety. We yell if they run. We get frustrated when they don’t comply.
Why are we setting ourself up for failure?
But Des, this is the happiest place on earth! I know it is, and I too cannot wait to take my son here. I dream about the day I can bring him to enjoy the parade and the rides, to meet different characters. I just think there is an age limit to this ‘happiness’ and we need to be careful about what is being commercially marketed to us. And I can’t tell you what the age limit is because I think every kid is different and every kid might be able to handle this experience differently.
What I can do is pass along the test that Janet Lansbury recommends before deciding to take your child anywhere: 1) “Who is this for?” 2) “Are they really ready to actively participate in this experience, or would it be better to wait until they are a bit older?” 3) “Will this be more enriching than an afternoon dawdling in the backyard or a walk down the street?”
When you can answer these three questions authentically, then you will be making a decision in the best interest of your child.