No country for (very) young men

(This is something I posted on my more general "expat" blog, but I thought I'd post it here too!)

That's not exactly true. Italy is extremely child-friendly in some ways, but I'm finding that it's woefully not in others. Children in Italy are welcome just about everywhere - restaurants, evening weddings (I know this as we personally had Italian guests mention in passing a week before our wedding that they'd be bringing their five grandkids to the evening reception; unfortunately for us, the kids' pasta-al-pomodoro menu cost the same per person as the adult menu so we spent an additional 400 Euros on children we'd never met and technically didn't even invite...) and parties. However, this apparent love for children doesn't translate into services or infrastructure (high chairs, changing stations or sidewalks with ramps that allow you to get a stroller up and down with ease) that make it easy to take a child out and about. The other day I was struggling to get the stroller past a car parked on the narrow sidewalk on the main drag of our town when the driver rolled down his window to give my son a little smile and a wave. Moving his car so I wouldn't have to get down off the sidewalk and brave oncoming traffic with an 18-month-old in a stroller didn't occur to him, apparently...

"Guaranteed fun for all children" was the promise of this magic and puppet show in the main piazza of the beach town in Tuscany where we have a summer apartment. Too bad it begins at 9:30 p.m.!

My latest confusion has to do with the opening hours and times for things that are meant to be for kids. Italian kids apparently follow no routine and have no official bedtime. This makes attempting to raise a child who does follow a routine and has a bedtime almost impossible. I should say that my son HAD a routine and HAD a bedtime, and when we followed the routine and the bedtime, life was much easier for us as a family and my son was much more well rested. He's not one of those mellow fall-asleep-on-the-go kids (please don't try to give me pointers on how I can make him fall asleep in a stroller. Won't.Work.With.My.Kid. If your kid slept in loud restaurants, in the cinema or wherever else, it has little to do with your parenting skills - you got lucky!). If he doesn't sleep at home in his bed, there's hell to pay. Thus I like to keep him on even a loose schedule.

There's a huge carnival near our apartment at the beach with a "Festa dei Bambini from age 0 to 14" every night. Oddly it's closed ALL day every day and opens at 8:30 p.m.

But Italy is not working with us. For one thing, my son is entering that stage where he's got little "amici" and so we now have social activities to take into consideration. Dinner is usually around 9 p.m. even when children are involved and that makes a 9 p.m. bedtime impossible to stick to. We also spend a lot of time with extended family and nobody else has a bedtime for their children, so it means that if I try to keep my son on his routine, we are the "odd ones out." And I get a lot of flak.

Anyway, this brings me to a few things that left me perplexed this past weekend while we were at the beach. My son will be spending almost a week there with his nonni while we are in Milan finishing up work before leaving for the U.S. on Aug. 15. The good thing about where we go to the beach in Tuscany is that there are quite a few activities for children. The bad thing is that they all start right around the time I usually put him to bed! I have a feeling my in-laws (who don't tend to follow my routines) will have one cranky toddler on their hands, and we will pay dearly for it as well when we come to collect him. I'm trying not to stress out about it...

Here's another thing. In talking with my American friends, they put their kids to bed around 7 p.m. (maybe it's just Italian city living but I barely know anyone who is home from work at that hour...). That allows them to have some "adult time" at night after the kids are in bed. In Italy it seems the kids are always up and running wild. Don't Italian parents need a little time at night to eat dinner with their spouses, read a book, watch a movie or check their email? As much as Italy is supposedly so "family-oriented" I find the long work day and late dinner time does not make for quality family time. At 10 p.m. I'm usually exhausted and just beginning to clean up from dinner when all I'd like to do is have a few minutes to talk to my husband or relax with a book. Often my son is still up at that hour and in addition to trying to load the dishwasher, I have to try to get him to climb down off of it, bathed and into his pajamas. Does anyone else have these same problems or am I doing something wrong? Sorry for the long, rambling (and probably boring) domestic-related confessional post, but I feel like I'm failing somewhere.