Last night, after we put the girls to bed, I went out grocery shopping. This is pretty typical - one of us will have some errands that need to be run and will go out once the girls are down for the night. L goes to bed at 7:30pm, so it was probably about 8pm when I got to the store. I realize that it was Saturday night, but the amount of children that were L's age or younger out with their families at that hour astounded me. E had been in bed since 6:30! There were children younger than her out, crying and rubbing their eyes, with their completely oblivious parents going around doing other things. Other children were just wandering around looking zonked out of their minds as they followed parents, and it just made me angry.
I understand that some children don't normally go to bed until 9-10pm. I understand that. However, I'm pretty sure that most children under the age of 5-6 go to bed before 8:30pm. When I see tons of them out and about on a Saturday night, I wonder what their parents are thinking. Do they not realize that a routine is so important for little ones? That taking them out like that is almost bordering on selfish? Why couldn't they do something like what my husband and I had done - one stay at home with the kids while the other shops? Sometimes I just wonder why parents think that their very-young children are capable of doing everything they can do when they JUST CAN'T. They're KIDS, for pete sake, not adults. They need more sleep, more attention, and more assistance than adults. One child was asleep in the car attached to the front of the cart, slumped over the wheel. While that would have been humorous to me at any other time of day, all I could think last night was "that poor boy needs to be in bed, not in the middle of a grocery store by the beer display with his badly-dressed mother." *sigh*
I've said it once and I'll say it again: BREEDING LICENSES. People need to have BREEDING LICENSES to have children. Maybe then you'd get a handful of responsible parents...
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