The Dark Side of the Pediatrician’s Waiting Room: Parents Behaving Badly

I feel pretty qualified to write on this topic considering I have been there 3 times in the past 8 days.  [Insert heavy sigh here]  It’s been a rough 8 days, but it appears that we are on the mend.  Thank goodness, because I can’t handle it any more.  And if I have to go to the pediatrician’s office one more time, I just might scream.

There are so many reasons to love our pediatrician’s office.  Your child was involved in a freak accident on Thanksgiving day at 5pm?  They’re open.  Six hundred miles from home and your child develops the diaper rash from hell?  They’ll call in a prescription by the end of the day, even if I call at 7pm (they close at 9pm most days).  And of course, the two doctors we see are wonderful.

One thing I don’t love about my pediatrician’s office – the waiting room.  And because the two doctors we see regularly are awesome and will never rush a patient through a visit, we see a lot of the waiting room.  In my time there, I’ve noticed that parents are either on their best behavior while in the waiting room or their absolute worst.  There really isn’t a middle ground.

The parents on their best behavior are talking to their children, have brought a vast array of activities for them to do during their wait, and have brought along their child’s favorite snacks.  You can spot the parents are on their best behavior because their child will test every fiber of their patience and yet the parents handle it with grace.  Their child’s attempts to throw toys or scale the receptionist’s counter are all met with a sing-song-like reprimand, “No, no Little Johnny”.  Their voices are never raised and timeout is never mentioned.  Perhaps the parents have nerves of steel and are really like that at under normal circumstances at home, but I think that’s pretty unlikely.

The parents on their worst behavior are far more interesting disturbing.  Like the woman whose 7 year old went to the bathroom in the corner of the waiting room.  The woman then ran over to the receptionist desk, not to ask for materials to clean it up or apologize profusely, but rather to let them know that they “should probably clean it up quickly”.  No apology whatsoever.  Or the lady who was hung over, still smelling like the bar that she was no doubt at the night before.  Ordinarily, I would give someone the benefit of the doubt here and think maybe they are just not a morning person, but the incredibly graphic conversation she had very loudly on her cell phone about the previous night’s events cleared it right up for me.  And how could I forget to mention the lady who was screaming at her boyfriend on the phone regarding some litigation that they are involved in.  I could tell you everything about their lawsuit, but I’ll spare you.  Meanwhile, the kids of the parents behaving badly sit by angelically, just watching it all happen.

I hate to judge other moms, I really do, but why do people think it’s okay to act this way?  I know kids will do what they will do, and generally I try not to judge the parents for their actions, but in these specific situations it’s the parents behaving badly.  So then, why does the pediatrician’s office bring out the “crazy” in parents?  Is it just the stress of having a sick kid?  Maybe.  I want to believe that is the reason.  No, I need to believe that is the reason.  Because I refuse to believe that their lives are like that all the time.  They just can’t be.

I’m sure there has been a time when I wasn’t on my best behavior in the waiting room, but after all I have seen during my 3 visits in an 8 day span, I’m going to be a lot more careful about it in the future.  Here’s to not going back there for quite a while!