Okay, riddle me this: If your family were going to an art glass studio to make a glass marble or a glass flower, what would be the operative word in that sentence? Maybe, ah, glass? And if you were bringing your 4-year-old, 2-year-old AND 1-year-old to the activity, what would be your major concern? Maybe, ah, glass? No, apparently not.
Because soon after I posted to the homeschool group thanking the organizer and warning tomorrow’s class to watch their little kiddos because the artist has finished pieces spread out in his adjoining office and that it would be unfortunate if someone wound up having to pay for making glass shards, another mother posted that, moments after my family left, her daughter (the 2-year-old) had indeed broken a glass orb in his office. Punctuated with: LOL.
Come on, is it me? (Well, yeah, it is…) But first of all, would you even TAKE three children that wobbly into a warehouse with an open furnace, a huge hot oven and hundreds of glass objects? Well, if you’re a preschool-homeschool hipster with your baby in sling you sure would. And that this post-teen could characterize her irresponsibility, her daughter’s accident and the destruction of somebody else’s shit a laughing-out-loud moment, it frightens me. Seriously.
The real LOL irony is, when I posted my original caveat, it was based on watching that very cutie wander more than once in and out of the office on her own accord. Parents oblivious to her travels. Only once did I witness that “Shit, where is my kid?” realization/panic flash across the face of her father, who then prompted his wife, who went off looking—outside. (I’ll give her that: a squashed kid is worse than a broken vase.) Mom eventually scooped her up. But I guess nothing was learned by that second kick of the mule.
It’s a thin line between unschooled and unsupervised.