The other day when I was waiting in line at the post office, I saw mother and her two boys. The boys were fairly young, perhaps three and five, and both were toting Beanie Babies that looked rather well-loved. The older one was quiet and well behaved, sticking close to his mother the entire time. The younger one, however, quickly got bored, and started wandering around. When he wandered out into the outer room, where the post office boxes are, his mother called to him to come back. She had to call his name several times – sounding slightly snappier each time – before he heard and returned to her side. I smiled at her, trying to relay my affectionate amusement, but she didn’t smile back, only looked away.

Of course, after a couple more minutes, the younger boy started wandering again. This time he went a mere three feet away, to gaze into one of the glass cases. (There are a couple of post office-themed Beanie Babies on display in the case; I’m sure that’s what drew his attention.) I couldn’t see any harm in what he was doing – he wasn’t even touching the case, for heaven’s sake, and he was barely more than an arm’s length away – but the mother yelled at him to come back again, and she was definitely sounding snappy now. The little boy came back, but after a few minutes he started wandering again, naturally. This little routine repeated itself four or five times.

Then something happened that made the whole scenario make sense. The older boy, who had been standing quietly at his mother’s side throughout, tried to get her attention. “Mom,” he said softly. She didn’t respond. “Mom,” he said again. Still no answer. He kept saying her name, more and more frequently until he was almost whining, but still so soft as to almost be a whisper, “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom…” Finally, she snapped at him: “What!” She sounded impatient, like she’d been paying attention to him the entire time, when really it was he who was justified in sounding impatient. And I understood everything: the youngest one’s spacey behavior, and the older one’s unnaturally solemnity, and why the woman never smiled at me in return. Their mother didn’t pay attention to them; rather, she treated them like a burden. Her inattention caused boredom – because, really, what child will be able to stand quietly in a post office line for 45 minutes if you refuse to speak a word to him, except to yell at him when he tries to find his own entertainment – and her habit of yelling constantly caused the older child to be far too reserved, like a sad, miniature adult. I suddenly felt so, so sad for those boys.

As I was leaving, the woman was still being helped at the counter. I heard one of the clerks say, “Ma’am, don’t let him do that…” I looked, and saw that the little boy was pulling on one of the pens that was attached to the narrow table that the line runs along – stretching the curly plastic cord out as far as it could go (which was pretty far). The cranky-sounding clerk said something about how it was going to snap forward and hit someone in the line when the kid let go, so of course the mother turns around and yells at the kid. And of course, the kid lets go…and the pen hits someone in the line. I couldn’t help but laugh. Just as it was predictable where the pen would go when the kid let go of it, so was the boy’s behavior: if you ignore your children, eventually they will find a less-than-desirable method of getting attention and/or entertaining themselves.