Browsing at a store the other day, I was treated to a loud conversation between a mother and her tween daughter. “Shut up and hold still!” I heard several times from the mom as the daughter tried to scoot out of her reach. The disrespect and frank hostility dripping from the mom’s voice raised my usually-smooth hackles to needle-sharp points as I forced myself to pretend I didn’t hear them. None of my business, I reminded myself.
Unfortunately, nasty parents are lurking all over the place. The really upsetting part about overhearing this sort of treatment in public is that you can pretty much guess if parents are fine with yelling at and humiliating their children in the presence of others, there are a lot worse things going on in private.
I’m not stupid enough to think that this applies to every crabby parent I’ve ever seen, by any means. Heaven knows there have undoubtedly been people who have overheard a snippet of my impatient conversation with my children as we were all on our last nerve in the checkout lane and could have easily jumped to some hasty conclusions. I think overall, though, if you hear much of the conversation, you can get a good idea if the parent is just at his/her wits’ end or if he or she is being habitually disrespectful and nasty.
People who treat their children like annoying little vermin just boggle me, especially when the kids are really little. Here are these innocent, trusting children, looking to their parents to give them guidance, unconditional love and acceptance, and instead they get the kind of treatment I overhear in the store and worse. The injustice and selfishness on the part of these parents just breaks my heart. I mean, we all snap once in awhile, but is it really necessary to scream at your whiny 2-year-old to “shut the hell up” in the middle of Target?
It’s hard being a parent. I get that. Sometimes it’s so hard, I want to run away into the nearest corn field screaming and never, ever come back. (Yes, every once in awhile life in a corn field looks much preferable to life with my kids.) But there is no excuse for treating your kids as if they’re insignificant or, worse, burdensome. They didn’t ask to be brought into the world and they certainly don’t deserve to be treated with anything less than love, care and respect.
When it comes to parenting, as with any relationship, the very simple, but very true, Golden Rule applies: “Treat others the way you would like to be treated.”
Somehow I don’t think being publicly humiliated and disrespected is something any of us would like from anyone, let alone our loved ones.
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Kudos to you for this great post. My husband and I were just talking about this. We were grocery shopping, and there were three little children in a cart with a Mom. She was very refined looking, and just a tiny thing, and the children were so quiet and well-behaved. That was at the beginning of the frozen food aisle. By the time they got to the end of the aisle, the mom had exploded and was screaming at one of the kids, “Put the da** thing down, I told you not to touch a da** thing. Who the H*** do you think you are???” Well, you get the idea. I was dumbfounded…and then sad, for the kids. What a tragedy.
Very sad. I don’t get why parents who treat their children like that don’t see that they’re just crushing their little spirits. It’s heart-breaking.