a "WTF" moment

A mind-boggling moment at the park, courtesy of Monday being a strange day all-around...

A young woman, probably around my age, showed up with two kids-- a little girl who looked like an older 3, and a little boy who looked like a young 2. She let the little girl run ahead into the park while she talked to the boy as she and he walked in together about how he needed to have a time-out before he could go play.

Barely 2-years-old, I remind you. As in, still in diapers, short sentences only, limited self-control of emotions and VERY limited reasoning skills.

So she's telling him as they're entering the park area and he's thoroughly distracted that he needs to have a time-out for hitting her in the car. He's protesting, of course, in that angry "How DARE you!" toddler voice, and eventually she tells him that his time-out entails him sitting by himself a good 20 feet away from his nanny and sister while they sit together and eat a snack.

So the kid's sitting there, looking thoroughly despondent at being alone but clearly not thinking about having hit the nanny because, well, he's 2 and he's at the park now. And the nanny and older sister are sitting, laughing and chatting and eating a snack.

So this situation with the time-out is WTF moment #1. WTF moment #2? The snack they were eating. This woman brought a can of peanuts to the park.

I'm sorry, what?

I get that both of those children are now considered old enough to eat peanuts. But... isn't bringing peanuts to a public place that's likely to be, I don't know, full of children thought of as a bad idea??? There are peanut-free kindergarten classrooms because kids will eat a peanut-butter sandwich and not wash their hands carefully enough before touching something that an allergic kid might touch, even if at 5 or 6 the allergic kid knows better than to eat a bite of the sandwich.

So the woman calls out in a sing-song voice, "Okay, Callen/Cullen/Kellen/(whatever trendy last-name-first-name the child had), you can come over now!" And the 2-year-old trudges over to eat peanuts with the nanny and his sister.

They all move over to the sandbox across the playground. I walk over to where they were just sitting. I search around on the ground and what do I find? Yup... fallen peanuts. Not for anything, the ground at the playground is all woodchips, so it's not like they were easy to spot, but... well, I guess it would be too much to assume that a person who brings peanuts to the park might still somehow register that young children drop food when they eat it, and that she should check the ground for stray peanuts another child could find before abandoning the area. So I gathered up a good handful and tossed them out.

I know there's a lot to nannying and parenting that people don't understand or even know about until they get there (and as an additional caveat, I know that nannying, even full-time, is not the same as parenting, nor should it even be compared), but I really think awareness about the pervasiveness of peanut and other nut allergies is a no-brainer. It's right up there with "don't give small objects to babies," "don't leave a kid alone in the bathtub" and "keep sharp objects, medicines and household cleaners out of reach of children." One peanut could be just as poisonous or life-threatening as any of the above.

This all goes back to my rant about cute young college girls who decide to become nannies for the summer because it's good money. They all come out after mid-May. But that's a rant for another day.