For people who are never around children...

This post is fueled by a recent trip to the hair salon...We recently moved out from the city so I am now further from my hair stylist. I got a sitter to watch my children and it took me 40 minutes to get to my hair salon with traffic. I know I have a 15 minute window to arrive late. I called the salon at 18 minutes past my appointment and said I was at the light, about to turn into the parking lot. The woman on the phone said it was too late for me to come in. I really needed a break here so I asked her to ask my hair stylist if I could come in. She briefly put me on hold and quickly came back with a no and said I could reschedule for the next evening. I thought for a moment and then said, "Sure, you can put me on the schedule for the same time tomorrow" knowing full well I would not have access to a sitter. So I showed up the next evening with five kids in tow (including our toddler) and asked the children to wait up front quietly while mom got her hair cut. The look on everyone's face was of surprise like did she really bring all her kids in here? Then it was a look of disgust that prompted me to write this post (I know many of these single people in the salon do not have children and I hear about many of their adult outings so I know there are fewer opportunities to spend time with little ones.) And by the way by kids had really great behavior for waiting for their mom to get her hair cut as it was during their normal dinner time and everyone was hungry...

If you are never around children please work on finding opportunities to hang around other people's children so you don't freak out when you are forced to have them in your presence!

If your nieces and nephews are not close by make sure you visit other families in your area!

Once you find some children to hang out with, let them...

Climb on you,

Slobber on you,

Talk or yell loudly in your ear,

Sneeze on you,

Chase you,

Wrestle with you,

Laugh at you,

Etc...

And if you want to go the extra mile to ensure you are growing in tolerance of children help them...

Blow their noses,

Wipe their bums,

Etc...

(I originally said clean up their vomit or change their poopy diaper but even I know this is too extreme :)

Just please for the love of God every once in awhile do things that make you squirm and make you uncomfortable with children,
so you don't have that terrible look of disgust on your face when children come through your door...

Regardless of your state of life, it is not normal to never be around children so please find a way to somehow make this happen for you
(and for me as well...)