and they get ice cream cones after all that?!
bedtime. i'm exceptionally tired and i just realized why: work drained me today. why? read on...
let me back up and say that while i'm not a natural-born "kid person"--[you know, the type of person children gravitate towards, or who is a pre-school teacher type]--i do in fact like children. i hope to have my own kids one day, and i've always wanted this, provided the circumstances/timing are right. BUT...having said that, one of my biggest pet peeves is out-of-control kids. i cannot stand parents who can't control their own children: disruptive kids at restaurants, and ones who cry nonstop on airplanes are the worst. ugh.
today at work, one of my clients came in for an 11am appointment. i had recently closed her case for "failure to cooperate" and she came to beg me to reopen her case (which i have no intention of doing). seeing as she was one of my more problematic challenging cases, i expected our meeting to be a bit draining. however, i wasn't prepared to see her show up with her three little tykes in tow. (spell: T-R-O-U-B-L-E). these kids were OUT.OF.CONTROL. they caused a rukus that disturbed my colleagues. they banged on my walls. one drooled all over my office. they kept swinging my cabinets open and shut. one took crayons and started scribbling on my desk. i wasn't able to erase the marks. they were endlessly fascinated with my 3-hole puncher. they screamed and wailed and fought nonstop. they jiggled the keys to my file cabinet. they chewed on my pens and pencils. (alas, my descriptions don't even capture half of how chaotic it was). AND... all the while, their mother (my client) made only weak attempts to tell them to hush or sit down so i could actually get some work done with her. i'm afraid to think what else those kids would have done if they'd stayed any longer. stuck keys into the electrical socket? people, my office isn't childproof.
and you know what? in the end, i think their mother essentially rewarded and reinforced them for their disruptive behavior: after i told her i couldn't re-open her file, she then gathered up her kids and started promising them treats: ice cream cones as soon as they left my office. afterwards, i thought to myself that *I* deserved ice cream for surviving that! sadly, i did not buy ice cream during lunch hour. maybe another day.
