Mine spent a huge amount of time talking to my brother and I reading to us, singing to us, whatever. Yeah, it must have been exhausting. Kids are exhausting. But they were never embarrassed by our behavior, never had any major power struggles, never worried about us destroying something in someone else's house or office.


We had a woman in our vet's office a few years ago who sat like a bag of sand while her kids harassed the cats, climbed the cat tree, etc. We asked her repeatedly to mind her children--we had books for them to read, etc.--and she'd mumble something at them and then do nothing. I finally had to go physically haul two big boys off of the cat tree (which was not built to hold that much weight and was definitely not safe for children) and then spent twenty minutes showing them our display case of antique medicine bottles and surgical instruments. Then I handed them each a vet supply catalog and sent to see how many of those instruments they could find for sale, which kept them busy for a surprisingly long time. The woman looked like she thought I was her fairy godmother. But for goodness' sake, do you have to have four of them before you figure out you can't manage that many? These weren't toddlers--they were old enough to know how to mind themselves if they had ever been taught or if she had bothered to show them something interesting to do that wasn't a hazard.