Is this precious little tush really all that offensive?
Well, some people seem to think so!
I suppose we were officially initiated into the group known as Radical Unschoolers yesterday
when we had an anonymous fellow park-goer call the police to complain about a naked baby.
It just so happens that this particular naked baby was mine!
Yes, I let my barely 2 year old little girlie freely play and run around the park in her birthday suit.
This kid has been completely naked at home for weeks now, as we are 'potty training', (hate that word), and has spent the majority of her little life naked as often as possible anyway.
Well, normal nakedness aside, with her interest in using the toilet, less is more as far as clothing options go.
As long as she isn't wearing anything, no accidents!
So, in order to make some attempt at salvaging my carpet, while also encouraging the newly developed toileting skills of my daughter, I let her spend her time at home as free as a bird! When we leave the house, we put on a diaper and clothes before going out. But on this particular day, she chose to practice her ever increasing independence, and stripped down to her bare bottom in the middle of our unschoolers group park day gathering, and made very clear that she fully intended to stay that way.
Because of our freedom as unschoolers, we are usually at the parks when all the other kids are stuck in a classroom,
so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. I didn't see the need to force her to put her clothes back on, but rather felt it more important to respect her wishes to be 'free' while also letting her revel in her sense of accomplishment for single-handedly removing ALL her skivvies without any help from me. All was well, for a while, until the 'school' people started to show up.
I became increasingly more uneasy with each upturned nose and downturned glare, each kid who pointed and screamed, "look mom, she's naked!" and their mothers' obvious irritation and panicked attempts to coax them away from the feral child. I'm sure they could have been worried that she had rabies or something of the sort, after all, considering that her hair was neatly brushed, in pigtails, with matching $5 hairbows from Gymboree. ( You'd think the brand whore mom's would've picked that up and invited us to go shopping together!) But, alas, they couldn't see past the incredibly offensive tush of a little 2 year old girl.
So, someone called the PoPo, and they were obliged to follow up on the complaint.
The poor officer must've been the rookie on the force and laughed out of the station to follow up on the naked baby complaint, because he sure did look uncomfortable about approaching our group. He wanted to know who the parent was and if the child ever wore clothes. (No, i refuse to spend my drug money on clothes for the kids, but thought it would be a wise use of 5 bucks to buy snotty hairbows.) I didn't actually say that of course, but i thought it. Ok, well, i didn't think of it then, because i was too scared i was in trouble with the law, but after the fact, it's still pretty funny.
Anywho... after answering a couple of highly intelligent questions from the young officer, like: "Does she have any clothes?" and "Does she ever wear clothes?", he made the assessment that I was not an abusive or neglectful mother (because they so often take their children out for weekly picnics to public parks to gather and play with friends), and he walked away without ever even requesting that I cover up any part of her adorable little naked body. Triumph! Power to the People! WooHoo!
Take that mother who is afraid of your sheltered and misled child seeing a little baby's bottom because he might ask you questions that you are too afraid to answer honestly, like: "What's that?", or worse, "Why can't I be naked too?"
