Children

Eid Mubarak! or Iyi bayramlar! (Arabic and Turkish respectively).  Today was the end of Ramadan and the beginning of the three day Eid, or post-Ramadan holiday.  This morning Ramadan ended when the adult men went to the mosque to pray around 7 am.  After that, families have a three day holiday.  Many families head out to visit relatives and neighbors and they take sweets and other gifts.  Those who do not leave the city are likely to be on the road or on public transportation on their way to visit people.  This means that today the public transportation is mobbed.  Most stores and museums are closed, so for those of us who don't have family here, this is a good day to rest and stay local.

For whatever reason, the first day of Ramadan Bayram in our neighborhood seems to be when the kids decided to run wild.  There are always children around, and they aren't in school right now, but usually things seem calmer. This morning there was a lot of yelling and crying from upstairs (sounded like kids and a mom), and then a bit later a group of 8 and 9 year-old boys were running around in the street.  They had fireworks, cap guns, and matches, and found every possible way they could think of to start a large fire or blow something up.  There were several small fires and a lot of noise and explosions, but so far no permanent damage seems to have been done.  Throughout it all, no adults have shown up to tell them not to blow things up.  I find this sort of curious.  Turks really love kids, and from my perspective they don't seem to be running out to protect their little kids from fireworks.  Maybe the parents purchased them or maybe they see them as harmless entertainment.  It's also possible that this is part of a male stereotype that little boys are encouraged to emulate.  Certainly these don't appear to be very BIG firecrackers, but the kids do have a rather large quantity of them, and children can be ingenious.  I saw a number of little experiments with stringing them together for more firepower, adding fuel, containing them in smaller vessels to try to create shrapnel, etc.  It did look from my perspective like the little tykes were making some pretty creative attempts at blowing their fingers off.  If I had a little better Turkish I could have offered them some creative redirection and threats to follow up with their parents, but short of shaming the parents I'm not sure what good that would have done.

In general I've heard from several Turks and read articles in Turkish newspapers about how Turks are secretly a little baffled about why American children behave so well.  Of course, if the recent popular books in the US are to be believed, French children are much better behaved than American children, and I think most of us can attest that it's not some sort of genetic miracle or inborn trait to behave well.  In any case, I think because they love kids so much, Turks often tend to give them what they want when the kids are little.  Once they get a little older, of course the kids continue to expect this, and the parents don't seem to know how to curb it, and as a result the kids don't have some of the constraints on their behavior that might be ideal.  I have been asked this question of how we get our kids to behave well, and it's a little hard for me to know how to respond.  Is this is a serious request for information, and would it be seen as condescending for me to offer any help?  I tend to err on the side of trying not to be condescending, but I'm never sure exactly what the question means.  Most of the times I see parents having difficulty with their kids the problem would be helped a lot with a little information about behavior management.  Parents make idle threats and demands but then don't follow through, so of course the kids don't listen.  I've been told that there really aren't good popular child behavior and parenting books available for parents, so I think that's part of the problem.  I try not to jump in and get involved with the kids unless they are doing something really dangerous or something that's harming another kid or animal.  I did have to intervene when I saw some little kids closing a cat up in a box and hitting the box with sticks.  They seemed genuinely surprised when I explained to them that the cat would be afraid, that it was unkind to do something that would scare the cat so much, and that they would not want to be in the cat's situation.  Our kids tell us that Paul and I talk to them more than most parents do, and that may be true, but this type of thing seems pretty basic.  I debated a lot about whether to intervene with the kids outside today, but adult Turks didn't, and it would surprise me if the parents of all these kids were really completely oblivious.  The explosions were loud enough that they were echoing up and down the street.  I didn't want to usurp the parents' authority, and I'm aware that I'm sometimes overprotective, but I also didn't want any of these kids getting hurt.