Today I had to take Victor (my little foster guy) for his 6 month check up—- what a people watching adventure it turned out to be! 

First, the waiting room was slightly crowded, mostly with a family that consisted of a loud mother, a father, a grandfather, three girls who looked to be somewhere between 9 and 4, and a 2 year old little boy.  Two of the girls were wolfing down chips and begging grandpa for money for a soda, while the mom yelled across the room for the other girl to give the little boy the chips he was grabbing from her.  Thankfully the nurse finally called their name, the entire family left the waiting room leaving all their trash in their wake.  The minute they hit the door the little boy began to scream—-and I do mean scream!

In just a few minutes, Victor and I were called back, and the little boy is still screaming.  Our nurse told us that he does that every time he comes in.  She also said that the nurses do paper, rock, scissors to see who has to check them in!  WOW!!!  Your child has to be really bad to fluster these nurses, they are awesome!

Unfortunately we were placed in a room right across the hall from this very disruptive family.  The nurse sheepishly said that she would tell the doctor  to hurry!  As I sat there I got the chance to listen in on their conversation with their doctor (remember I told you the mom was loud, so I had no choice but to listen).  Gratefully, the screamer had been taken out into the waiting room by the sisters.  This child obviously had some problems, but they spent most of their time talking about the fact that he was losing weight, and the mom didn’t know what to do because he would only eat cookies and chips!  She said she couldn’t get him to eat healthy food.  When the doctor told her that she needed to lay off the junk food and that he would eat when he was hungry, she said she had kept the chips from him for several hours and it hadn’t worked.  The doctor suggested that she put the chips away for several days and that he would eat healthy foods when he was hungry, she said she couldn’t do it because he would be too hungry and lose more weight. 

They finally moved off to find their little “angel”, I just hope that doctor had his Excedrin handy!

My friend Libby used to ask me if I could do a parenting class real quick if she saw a child who was acting badly.  I was chuckling to myself as I left thinking about what some of my teacher friends would  have said about the whole ordeal—-as I walked out the door there was a boy about 5 or 6 walking into the office drinking milk out of a bottle!   That poor doctor!