We Were All Children Once

I am always a little disheartened to meet people my age who tell me they hate children. Perhaps disheartened isn't the word. Confused is more like it...

How can a person hate an entire facet of every society. Every type of person from every country, every type of family, rich, poor, black, white, etc, was once a child. So that means that they are basically deciding to hate an aspect of themselves. Though upon reflection, it seems unlikely that these child-haters, hated themselves when they were young. On the contrary, they probably thought they were the coolest thing since Disco.

Allow me to list the pros and cons of children beginning with the cons:

Children are

• noisy
• smelly
• demanding
• selfish
• expensive
• stupid
• small

Now the pros:

Children are

• funny
• cute
• fascinating
• naive
• always eager to learn
• care free
• small

I understand that there are things about children that are sometimes hard to deal with, but let's face it, they technically are people. So I beseech the self professed child-haters to explain to me why they think it is actually appropriate to hate someone because they are underdeveloped. That's really all it is. Because these people don't necessarily hate normal sized people. That is usually a case-by-case thing.

By justifying the cons, the pros actually start to make sense. Let's observe:

• A noisy child, often times just needs attention. Why, does this child need attention? Is it because it is completely self centered and wants to make your life a living hell? No. Usually it needs something simple like food, sleep, or stimulation. A hungry, tired, and bored child is a hard to deal with child. But not one that is worthy of hating.
• A smelly child needs to wash its hands, take a bath, or change its clothes. The hard part of that is that children need help doing all of these things. So it is really the adult's fault, and any irritation should be directed to them.
  
• A demanding child is usually either spoiled or seriously ignored. Either one is the fault of the adults around it. If you, child-hater, happen to be around a child demanding attention, you might try granting it some. See how it responds.
• A selfish child has not yet been taught about sharing/giving. Either that or it is shy. Either way the skill has not yet been gained and the only thing that can be blamed here is the fact that it is not an adult. BTW there are TONS of selfish adults.
• Children are indeed expensive. That has no bearing for the child-haters, because you don't actually spend any money on them. So that is dumb.
  
• Children are stupid. Hahaha. Yeah. But they will learn. Just because they have no choice but to have a smaller brain than you until they grow up, is no reason to hate someone.
• Children are small. Get over it. As you saw above. I listed that as a pro. Can you imagine a full grown version of the above? I shudder to think.
  
• Oh wait, that full grown version is YOU. You are noisy enough to bother me with your complaints. Have you ever heard of deodorant? Your constant demands for fewer children are what makes this society difficult to deal with. You are obviously too selfish to ever care for anyone but yourself. Your expensive school and apartment are never going to be enough to make you less stupid because you are too small to see the bigger picture.

Ok so that last part was a bit harsh. But it made my point. Next time you think about hating a child, go to the Aquarium, or the Zoo, and take note of all the happy faces. The last two times I went to the Aquarium, there were tons of children there, and not one of them was crying. In fact they were all completely immersed in the happiness of learning and the beauty of the world around them. Which is probably more than you can say for yourself.