Truly, I do.
Now I’m not a violent person. I’ve only had altercations with people after they have physically attacked one of my little sisters, but goodness if it were acceptable to drop-kick your kid, I would.
You are sitting 50 feet away on a blustery day. Relishing your “alone time” as your Four Year Old Terror wrecks havoc at the park. You are far enough away that you can’t hear the other kids cries for help. That’s right. Your precious child is attacking two boys and throws one off a ten foot ladder.
That’s right. THROWS.
I am fifteen feet away and not close enough to run to the rescue. A horrified mother is running to the aid of her two young boys with her one year old girl flung over her shoulder and comes up five feet short to catching her baby.
I am enraged.
As she tries to comfort her little man. The Four Year Old Terror yells that he doesn’t like those two boys and that they are not allowed to play with him. The two boys did not want to play with him, they simply crossed the wrong bridge to go down the big slide that morning.
I run over and offer help. She had tears running down her face holding her baby. We immediately started yelling for The Terror’s Mom. Looking around she wasn’t within earshot nor line of sight.
She realizes that two grown women are yelling, YELLING and calmly walks over, perplexed at the situation. She quickly figures out what happened, of course denying that her baby could do such a thing and walks off talking to him. No apology. Taking the word of her Four Year Old Terror instead of two moms.
How dare you.
Both of us(mothers) remove our kids from that area of the playground. My little man did not understand why we were the ones that had to leave the big slides. He didn’t do anything wrong. Sadly, that’s true on the majority of our trips to the parks these days.
An alliance was formed and our five children play on the fire trucks and school buses together. They share turns driving and relish their time playing with other kids. Thirty minutes pass and all is quiet on the park front.
Today of course is one that will live on in my heart for a long time.
Two little boys, four year’s old as they proudly proclaim to the load of kids on the fire truck, come over to play. Their moms sit over in the shade, break out their phones and chat all the way across the park(100 feet?) Now there is nothing wrong with this if your kids are well-behaved, surely all parents need a break, and HECK you did bring them to a park didn’t you? Yes, bravo. But know your child AND take responsibility for their actions.
The two boys declared the fire truck their’s and quickly forbid everyone from playing on it. They yelled, stomped, and threw tantrums. Em scares easily(self-preservation?) and took off in the opposite direction of the truck. As I turned around to tell her to stop, that she was indeed ok, Raymond got pushed out of the firetruck, backwards and landed like a pancake. The Four Year Old Boy smiled at me. His mom couldn’t see him and he just got away with it.
He smiled.
My son was gasping for air. He fell nearly four feet down, backwards. I wanted to drop-kick the boy.
I wanted him to feel the pain, the embarrassment, and sadness my son felt for being picked on.
I wanted him to hurt.
Thankfully for him, as a former teacher my voice gets LOUD and COMMANDING. I looked at the other mother, the one whose son had been thrown off the ladder, who won’t leave his mother’s side. She nodded with agreement.
When did it become okay for you to not watch your kids at the park? I thought surely this has to do with the social media era and that it couldn’t have been that bad when we were younger. My mother disagreed. Lazy parents. Bad parents are always going to be around.
Unfortunately, their lack of responsibility gets thrust upon those of us that are present with our children.
Parenting takes a village, they say. Well, my dears, you are kicked out of mine.
How do you handle the local Terror at your park?
We almost always walk away.
What do you say to them?
I only speak up if their actions could physically harm one of my children. I usually say that they are not being very nice, not a very good sharer…
Do you approach the parent?
I would love to hear how you handle these unfortunate situations, that occur all too often.
