This post is about the insane mothers that I have seen this week, or month and the pure confusion in my mind. This damned if you do, is about how to respond to atrocious behaviour by parents.
I have basically been on 24/7 patrol since March 14th, it is now April 10th and literally the sicknesses have been running a muck on my household as if they all just woke up from hibernation from our ridiculously long winter, just to see how much one mother can take alone.
But during the few times that I have been out I have encountered some strange parents, first I will discuss
The Entitled Mother:
Do you ever wonder when your child comes home sick for the millionth time, how? How?!? Your child’s school has a no sick kids policy, yet, still viruses come home. I will tell you friends, it is due to the Entitled mother!
I will tell you how it all began…the week we were supposed to go on vacation, I decided to send my older son for swimming lessons during the March Break. The very first day of classes this lady walks in to pick up her child from the previous class, with her other smaller, feverish, cranky, runny nosed, uncomfortable child walking in right behind her. Seriously this baby was sick, but still she insisted on letting him run around the viewing area crying and screaming, all I could do was watch and keep track of the things that he was touching and before I knew it, he had literally touched or some part of his bodily fluids had touched every,EVERY surface of that waiting area. Oh I forgot to mention, the lady also walked in with her mother, who was just running behind the very upset child, just letting him spread the virus. As the child was running around and grandma was watching she was talking to the owner of the swim school and myself and all the other moms, about how she was so concerned for her small son, because he just kept running this high fever for days and that she took him to Sick Children’s hospital because she didn’t trust any other hospital. Here is what kills me, ,she was so concerned, yet, she was willing to spread the virus to anyone and everyone when she could have clearly been a little bit, just a tiny bit considerate, either kept the small child home and resting for the 15 minutes it would take to pick up her older child, with her mother, or she could have made the child stay in the car with grandma (I saw the car, it had a dvd player in the back) the child could have watched a movie or continued sleeping (which is what she said he was doing before she brought him in and this was the real reason for his crankiness). Seriously what the fuck! Why?! I attempted to avoid all the zones that child touched, but it didn’t work. I got sick. Unless I missed something, please tell me, but Why the hell would she have done this? Why?!? how do you point out to someone that they are complaining about something that they will so obviously be passing on to EVERYONE that they are complaining to?! Like I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs at this woman, are you an idiot?!? do you not see that you are now putting me in your situation? do you just want us all to be miserable? Fuck! Please my friends tell me how I should have responded.
The Disgusting Dad:
I encountered this man on vacation in the kiddy pool. Any parent who used to jet set or travel knows that once you go on vacation you no longer get to spend your time chilling by the side of the pool with the swim up bar or just chill in the water, you MUST go to the kiddy pool at least once, so that your child can play with the other children on the resort, otherwise you feel as if you are the wicked witch of their childhood. We went, where we met Bill and my son, became friends with his son Vincent. So while our boys played Bill decided to pretend to be a sea monster, and then proceeded to gulp water into his mouth and spit it out at his son and mine…YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He then proceeded to do this so many times that I saw my son, go take a gulp of water into his mouth, and I lost it, I called him by his full name and Yelled through gritted teeth; “Don’t EVEN THINK about it! Spit that water out or we leave now and you will not enter a pool for the rest of the trip!”
The father Bill apologized when I guess he realized how disgusting it was, I mean for fucks sake it is the kiddy pool, how many germs are in it, and pee for that matter! Yuck, YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! and sure enough my older boy got sick, on vacation, in paradise, throwing up and not sleeping and then passing it on to his little brother so that all of us were dehydrated when it came time to go home.
What do you think did I handle this correctly? I probably could have been nicer? I hate hurting people’s feelings but damn this was just too gross for me to hold back, my husband said he saw Bill’s look on his face when I scolded my kid and it was as if I scolded him…
In my defense each time these are just a taste of some of the images that went through my head, also I’m not a germaphobe, I know kids get sick, in both the cases above it was preventable, if others were considerate:
The Get more flies with Piss mother and father:
I’m not sure if this time of mother exists outside of my suburban community, but there are so many here, and yes you read that title correctly. This is the type of parent that goes out of their way to be a high-strung bitch, man or woman. I get my son’s hair cut at a place called great clips, and for children the haircut can be as little as 8 bucks, but my son and his dad can get their hair cut at the same time by the same woman and get the same haircut, so it works perfect for us. This mother that went before us, was just constantly correcting the hairdresser as if she was the expert. This hairdresser God bless her, she just took the verbal abuse, to the point where the mother took the comb and spray bottle from the hairdresser and proceeded to shout at her about how she didn’t cut it right and that the child’s hair doesn’t sit properly, and then in the same breath just said forget it. She pushed her child off of the chair and proceeded to just say mumble under her breath and pay for the haircut, while she was paying she kept making eye contact with me and rolling her eyes, as if to say “Can you believe this shit?” I gave her the most confused WTF? face I could muster, because I didn’t agree with her even a little. Then she made contact with another mother who I guess was Italian, and proceeded to have a full conversation with her in Italian about how bad this place was. I didn’t understand all of it, but I have been around enough Italian conversations to get the jist of it. NEWSFLASH people when you switch from speaking English to another language in public when you are upset, WE ALL KNOW that you are saying something that you are too big of a Pussy to outright say!! If you are so fucking brave to complain, then fucking complain so people whom you are talking about can respond to you, don’t fucking speak in another language, that’s just bullshit, and you know it! I gave that hairdresser a 8 dollar tip, she deserved it!
I’ve seen father’s do this, and it grosses me out equally as much, if not more when I see the verbal abuse that some father’s lay out on to customer service reps or front line workers like the clerks at winners etc.
The Snickering Bitch Parents, in their cliques:
I’m writing this one last because it angers me the most! It wasn’t even my own experience, it was one of my friend’s. She also had been home all week with her children and decided to take them out to the McDonalds playground by her home. Her eldest son, has Autism, and although I’m not familiar with too many of the details she said that he broke free from her and when she found him he was eating someone’s chicken nuggets. She apologized, profusely and offered to pay for new nuggets. (Keep in mind she has three boys under 5, and she is such a good mother) But instead of being a fellow understanding mother, these women said “Oh we were wondering where his mother was!” as condescending as possible. Seriously?!? I have had random children come up to me in department stores looking for their parents, and once after an hour looking for the parents as annoyed as I was, I just told the parents that their child was outside, and that she was cute and someone could have taken her, even though I wanted so badly to punch these parents in the face! (they didn’t even thank me)
The only seat my friend could find in the play area was in front of these women, and they just continued to snicker about her. If I had the chance I probably wouldn’t have been so understanding, I most likely would have turned around Exorcist style and thrown some nuggets at them and reminded them that this wasn’t the fucking Ritz Carlton they were at for lunch but instead the McDonalds playground!
I don’t understand, how grown men and women can act like children. My questions to them are along the lines of did they grow up in barns? Are they just mean spirited bitches? They couldn’t have been having a bad day and just be lashing out, because they were outright snickering?! What kind of people still do that? I am so perplexed! How can we judge other parents so harshly? How can we lack so much Empathy, for our fellow human beings? Not just Empathy for parents, but the elderly, special needs, and just your neighbour in general? How?!?
My last gripe is about the lack of empathy lately that I hear for parents of young children. Since I was pregnant with my first child, in 2010 they introduced priority parking spaces for Pregnant women, and parents with small children, they are next to the handicapped spots, in most commercial parking lots. Recently on April Fools some news station played a joke on twitter about an able-bodied person being upset that they had to walk so far because all the pregnant women got priority. People on social media went off, and lambasted parents for saying that the parking spaces weren’t for them but their children. I can personally attest to having used these spots during the DEAD of winter at -35 or colder and taking both of my children out of the car, setting up their stroller, getting them both in, and hoping their don’t freeze their fingers off. Also I guess I missed the memo that as an able-bodied member of society, I can sacrifice a parking spot further away, so that a baby (not necessarily the parents) won’t be out in the cold for too long. Fuck, seriously when did people become so bloody judgmental and entitled? I used to always park my car at the end of parking lots when I had not kids and still do when I don’t have the kids with me or during nice weather. A little walk never killed anyone I agree but a little baby finds it very hard to keep their fingers inside a stroller at all times and if it is -35 degrees outside but feels like -45, a child could get frostbite, you try explaining that to a 1 year old. oh and for all you old school mothers that haven’t had children for the last 10 years, shut your mouth about how you survived with your children. way back when you barely needed car seats, let alone had to deal with babies mixed with the polar vortex!
I think I’m just feeling a little bit like this girl today, mixed with Anger!
Please people open your eyes a little bit today and just have some empathy towards others, parent or not, you never really know what someone is going through. The strongest people usually are silent about their gripes and hardships because they don’t want to be perceived as weak, but it doesn’t mean that they couldn’t appreciate others showing them that they understand.
now i must go back to my sicky poos..
Think about Empathy bear when you are out in the world today:
The Crazed Indian Housewife 