The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

At least in our little part of Bolivia, I have noticed that people generally love children and are quite welcoming to families. In the churches we’ve visited, many people keep their babies and toddlers in the service, and no one seems to mind a little noise or them moving around. At several of the churches, they have the children come up front and they say a long prayer of blessing before they go to their class. At the many parks in our area, I always see entire families playing together when we are there. Cashiers in stores smile and talk to Avery, and even taxi drivers pay some attention to her.

There are several down sides to this enjoyment of children, though. The first is that it is customary in this culture for nearly everyone to touch children, even if they’ve never seen them before. They come up and stroke their hair or face, and make loud exclamations about how cute they are, etc.  Avery happens to get this treatment more frequently due to her unique blond, curly hair. Unfortuanely, Avery doesn’t take too kindly to random strangers grabbing at her. I sort of don’t blame her, but it is a little embarrassing when she gives them a dirty look and swats at their hand. I try to explain that it is okay, but I don’t think she’s buying it. Hopefully, we can teach her to at least moderate her reaction a little bit as she gets older.

Another problem that seems to go along with this attitude toward children is that Bolivians are generally very permissive and indulgent with kids. A few examples for you. . .

- one babysitter (an adult, mind you) thought it was perfectly okay that Avery wrote all over her white shirt with orange marker because that’s what Avery wanted to do 

- we have to limit how much time she spends at one friend’s house because when we pick her up she literally has a lollipop sticking out of her mouth, a cookie in each hand and a bag of treats to come home with her. This same family gave her about 10 oz. of pink sprinkles to eat straight out of the cup because Avery liked them!

- Tom and I went out on a rare date by ourselves to a pretty nice restuarant near our apartment. We went at 7:15 p.m., and we were pretty much the only people in the place. We were enjoying our quiet dinner until families with young children started to pour in over the next two hours. I saw children as young as 18 months old there that late. That wasn’t so bad, but the six year old boy who RAN around the restaurant throwing a paper airplane throughout our meal did bother me quite a bit! I gave him and his family the evil teacher eye, but to no avail. He walked up to us at least ten times, asking us personal questions and then reporting the answers back to his family. He knows where we are from, how many children we have, and even exactly how old we are!

So all that to say, I’m glad we feel comfortable, welcome and safe here in our area with Avery, but the lack of inhibition with personal space and the absence of boundaries takes some getting used to!