I know this is one of those topics that’s been done to death, but I encountered this in person for the first time and am dying to know what other people would have done. The question?

Image © camknows Used via Creative Commons License

Let me set the scene here, in as absolutely objective terms as I can. Miles and I went out to the park with some other parents/children from the local playground. Good times were had by all. The children ran around screaming, we mostly sat under a tree maybe… 100, 200 feet away? (Look at me, not knowing distances.) Toward the end of the night Miles was hanging out on one of those small little double slides with about 4 or 6 other kids.  We’re talking shorter and shallower than the one in the picture.

As I’m packing up and getting up to leave, saying goodbyes and whatnot, I notice that Miles slides a wood chip down the slide after a child — probably between 8 and 12 months, if I’m going to guess — guided down by their mother (Stranger Mom). I start walking over; it looks like the mother says something, but no big thing. He slides a couple more woodchips, and I think I call out something — but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure.

Then he starts to go down, right after another kid while the little one is still standing at the foot of the slide. I move a little faster — “Miles, wait!” — but the whole thing goes down and no one gets a foot to the face. Crisis averted.

Then, as I’m just about there, Miles starts to run off and tries to grab the little one’s hand. Stranger Mom snatches it away, shakes her finger at Miles, “No!” And this isn’t nice, gentle finger shake, this is a raised Mom Voice, YOU ARE BEING BAD Finger Shake.

Okay. There we go.

My first instinct was the lose my goddamn mind. Excuse me, but who the fuck do you think you are? What right do you have to scold my child? Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! Calm your fucking tits, I’m right here! What the fuck is your problem? Fuck you!¹

Then I realized this reaction is less to do with the discipline and more to do with the hurt pride. It would be a totally different situation if she had taken a swat at Miles, but Miles didn’t even register this outside a moment’s pause. And it’s not that I don’t do the Mom Voice Finger Shake here and there, though I like to think my voice doesn’t contain quite that much malice. I was angry not only because a stranger just yelled at my kid, but because Stranger Mom at this point feels like she has to try to discipline my kid. Stranger Mom thinks I do not, and is likely on Twitter right now — Why don’t people watch their fucking kids at the park anymore?


Upon further, more objective inspection, I even realize how it seems to Stranger Mom. Stranger Mom doesn’t know Miles. She sees this two and a half year old sliding woodchips down a slide, and doesn’t know that he isn’t doing it at her kids, but because he likes watching things slide down. He does it all the time; it’s a thing he does. She doesn’t realize that he’s not trying to kick her baby in the face, or that he’s not trying to throw her baby to the ground.

I watch the situation and I know that Miles is trying to play, but he sucks at it. He doesn’t quite get that kids don’t like to be dragged around, and that this particular little kid probably couldn’t even walk yet. But Stranger Mom has no idea. She just thinks this unruly motherfucker is trying to wreak havoc on her child, and someone has to set him straight. It’s not an attitude I like, but I can at least see how it would happen.

What I actually did? I braced myself and prepared my response in case she said something to me, but we avoided looking at each other after I stared during the event (I don’t think she noticed). I picked up Miles and we said our goodbyes to the group. I don’t know if she was so mad at my kid that she couldn’t look at me, or felt bad for yelling at my kid when I was right there, or if the moment was just over from her perspective. I pointedly did not apologize to her like I would have otherwise, because honestly? I was still mad.

But that’s my policy. If my kid is being a dick, I apologize to the parent and the child, if the child cares; I generally try to explain, “Sorry about that, he tries to hug and he just gets overzealous,” or — as I had to several times that night — “Sorry, he’s an only child and we’re still working on teaching him not to just take stuff — here, sorry he took this.” I try explain to Miles why what he did was wrong, if I feel the moment calls for it.

I’m non-confrontational at heart. If Miles is being rude and inconsiderate to a child, I remove him from the situation. When there’s a tiff about a toy, unless the other parent is insistently telling their child no, I tell Miles that it’s time to share and make him move on.² On more than one occasion we’ve flat out left a place 15 minutes after arriving, if Miles can not take important directives (Do not push the baby! You do it again and we’re leaving.) It’s hard for me sometimes to remember that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily run this way.

What would you have done — or what have you done, if you’ve had occasion to be in the situation?

(What I kind of wish I had done? Shaken my finger at her and said, “No!” I think it would have made my point, but it probably wouldn’t have gone over very well.)

---

1. To be fair, this is pretty much my mental response any time someone disciplines my son, even if he unequivocally deserves it and they’re authorized to do so. I reign this in because I know it’s an irrational reaction to my feelings regarding being yelled at as a child.
2. In the case earlier that evening, it was a ball that belonged to another child. Stranger Dad wanted his son to learn to share — apparently there was a new baby in the house — but I more wanted Miles to stop hijacking this poor kid’s ball. That kid was distraught.