The Dutch Love Their Children

In parts of three years I’ve noticed a few things about Dutch people. They’re tall—that one takes a New York minute to discover. They have a weirdly different sense of proximity, which I often perceive as rude. They all seem to speak at least two languages, but hey, one of them is English; and last but not least, they love their children.

Wanna stand in the cart? Fine.

I’m no expert on the subject, but I have two eyes. Dutch children seem to have liberties that parents the world over might not recognize. For example take play, you know, recreation. Getting wet or muddy or even injured is viewed as part and parcel—it goes with the territory. As the Dutch say, “je bent niet van suiker” (you’re not made of sugar). Children on school playgrounds are not often denied their recesses because of the weather unless an ark floats by first.

I mention all that as contrast to a rare sight we witnessed at the train station recently. From our seats on the elevated platform we could hear the stereo wails of two children riding the escalator from the lower deck. Sure enough a woman and her two crying daughters joined the crowd.

Their crying was so intense, so conspicuous that everyone’s attention was drawn to them. They seemed to feel each other’s pain as they matched one another in volume and intensity. There’re all kinds of crying, right? There’s sad crying, and there’s hurt crying. There’s mad crying, and there’s denied crying, and then there’s the kind of crying we heard. Theirs was the parallel reality crying of children so far over the line that only sleep will erase.

Over the side of a ferry? Really?

I don’t care how much someone professes to love his or her children; there are times when devotion is suspended just long enough to deliver a cease-and-desist order. My father used the palm of his hand on the soft parts of my posterior. My mother wasn’t averse to using the business end of a fly swatter. The lady with the two screaming children selected the time-tested method of hands on both shoulders and the unmistakable tone-of-voice that only fed up parents can muster.

I have to admit—it was conspicuous, but as a guy living among people that rarely—I mean really rarely—discipline children in public, it was, to say the very least, unusual. I’m not prone to staring, but as you already read, the scene developing directly behind us—the screaming, Mama’s raised voice, snatching up the little girl—it got my attention (as well as everyone else).

The older girl seemed to regain composure while mother scooped up the little one, who began the hyperventilation of a kid who knows she should stop crying, but can’t—breath…syllable…breath…syllable…breath… Like I said, the whole thing was unusual, but what happened next was down right noteworthy. I told you that the Dutch love their children. Apparently they just love children. The woman sitting next to us opened her bag, retrieved some bottled water and handed it to her husband. He opened it, walked a few steps to the bench behind us and offered the bottle to the older girl. She drank and handed it back. He offered the bottle to the little one, but without taking the bottle she lowered her head onto her mother’s chest and seemed to catch her breath.

With a decidedly different tone, the girls’ mother thanked the man, moved the sweaty hair from the little girl’s forehead and pulled her exhausted daughter close.