It's infrequent, anymore, that I see what the world would refer to as "good" children anymore. While I admit to being not only crotchety, but also a misanthrope, that doesn't change the fact that many parents today don't appear to be there for their children in any sense other than to pay their cell phone bill, buy them a venti frappucino at Starbuck's, and take them shopping. Simple values like picking up after oneself, saying "please" and "thank you", and being respectful of others seem to have fallen by the wayside as today's parents are busier and busier with their own lives.
So tonite I was shocked when at around 10:30pm a boy around seven years old offered to hold his mother's bag in his lap while he sat and she stood for the duration of their ride on the Q train. Not only that, but on crowded train car, the mother took the time to give a mini-lesson in geography and subtraction to the child when he asked where they were and how many more stops they had. Not once did the mother ignore the boy, and not once did she raise her voice or degrade the child. Ina world (or city) more accepting, I would've like to have talked to the boy and his mother to tell the child how nice he was to her, see what kind of things he's interested in, and to tell his mother that I liked how curly her hair was.
I found myself continuing to look over and watch the mother and child throughout the train ride in awe of all that was going on inside their immediate nucleus. What I was even more in awe of, by juxtaposition, was that when a seat net to the child freed up on the car, a man took it instead of pointing it out to the mother. It seems some people just haven't been raised right.
