Dawn Patrol: July 20, 2009

Abby and her friend went to the Brookfield zoo yesterday. It has been great to get to know Abby's friend's Mommy and Daddy. The zoo was, however, a bit of a disappointment. It was extremely crowded, and we were blocked from anything interesting by a seething and cacaphonous wall of unsupervised children. It was simply impossible to see an animal exhibit without literally wading into the hordes, and any advantage that I might have had from superior size and strength was offset by the fact that I was pushing a stroller. Children would continuously bounce off the stroller, and when Mommy was holding Abby, adults would run into her. It was actually a bit frightening at certain points, and we had to retreat to less contended territory.

Here's a question to all you experienced parents out there. Is it impossible to control your children in an environment like a zoo or is it just difficult? Mommy and I had a lengthy discussion about tactics that we might use to keep Abby close and calm in situations like this, but we were well aware the whole time that there was a good chance that we were being naive. The sheer number of out-of-control children suggests that it is simply impossible to make them act in a sensible way. But then, it is also worth mentioning how out-of-control most of the parents were.

Using her pig-tails as handholds, Little Johnny is climbing up Little Sally's back in order to see the Chinchilla, and the wild-eyed, sugar-dosed, sunburnt woman who is obviously Johnny's mother half-heartedly throws a complaint in Johnny's direction. It is a bleating sound that Johnny completely ignores. Clearly whatever has gone wrong between Little Johnny and his mother went wrong long before their arrival at Brookfield zoo. So, the question is what should parents do to maximize the chances that their children will actually listen to them? Would a parent with more self-control and self-discipline in general fare better? Or is this naivete? If anyone has any advice, please leave a comment (the button for that is below this post).

On a more positive and hopeful note, Abby's friend's parents clued us in to the fact that the library has free passes to most of the museums in Chicago that you can check out like a library book. You can keep the passes for a week, and they are good for four adults. They had secured the pass for the zoo, so we were able to get in for free.

Abby was a little fussy at the zoo, and it seemed like the reason was that she wanted to get out of the stroller. When we were carrying her, she was fine. Stupidly, we forgot to bring the chest harness carrier with us, which would have made life easier and more fun for everyone. We will not make this mistake again.

I wanted to mention also that in our experience, the Lincoln Park zoo is much better than the Brookfield. It is smaller geographically, less crowded and free.