WTF with WWF?

O and I visit the playground today. This is nice. There's metal bars wrapped in soft padded rubbery stuff, a big slide and a little slide, some obstacle-course-y rubber foam blocks, and a small plastic car embedded in the ground. Logically. We should all be teaching our small children to climb into the driver's seat of random cars, dislodging extant occupant (or leaning on them until they fall out) and spin the whel joyfully and with abandon. Hm.

So we do the whole playground thing for a while. This is mostly children attempting to socialise by pushing each other off various piece of equipment before being intercepted by a helicopter parent who referees the debacle and then guiltily removes themselves and their shoes from the rubber-matted shoe-free area.

I am tempted to wonder how many of these kids see the World Wrestling Federation on their tv screens; they certainly seem to have the smothering lean, stiff arm-lock and full-body tackle well within their repertoire. Still, that's better than being the chubby, pasty-faced child sitting sandwiched between her (yep, insert the three-letter f-word here) mother and (remember that lovely five-letter word starting with o and ending in e?) grandmother staring myopically at the spawn of Satan Nintendo DS. 

I giggle inappropriately, because while I respect that it's not great for small people to (inadvertently) harm or alarm others, I wonder if this is actually where kids 'catch' their behaviour. You know, rushing over to two other littlies and getting in between their faces before pushing one of them away, or attempting to shove some other kid down the slide because five seconds ago their predecessor was dilly-dallying and that's what their mom did to clear the backlog.

Same with the demanding of behaviour; you've heard it all before: "Give him a turn! Don't push! Come here!" Of course, it's not always practical to preface every request with a "Would you please..." or even "Please..." but we can't fault children who expect to achieve results with demands: we do it every day.

I'm not sure what level of 'helicoptering' takes place in a creche and suspect it's much less... so maybe more kids engage in solo play and learn to use their imaginations instead of relying on the nearest grownup to solve their problems. Anywho, it's a fascinating microcosm to observe.

Days like this I wonder if I really want the parenting gig; if I'll try too hard (damn all that theoretical knowledge!) and maybe if it'd all go pear-shaped just to prove me wrong.