This made me so sad wwyd?

[dakotablue]

I was in Walmart getting some stocking stuffers and saw this beautiful little girl quietly babbling and pointing...I think was about 3 (I say babbling because I couldn't hear her even though I was near by)

She was with her mom and I think grandmother.

Anyway all of a sudden I heard the mom say, "How about I strangle Dora?" in a really mean tone.

So I'm guess the little girl was talking about wanting something Dora. I just kinda stood there surprised for a second then smiled at the little girl and walked by. I feel so so bad, but I don't know what else I could have done. 

On one hand I understand how parents can get fed up or annoyed with their kids, but I don't think I understand getting annoyed with such a polite quiet child...but I think the thing I don't get is where on earth would that comment come from?

What should I have done? could I have done? would you have done?

[lynsage]

I love my DD more than life, and I would happily bludgeon Dora to death after being exposed to only a few episodes of that inane, utter piece of crap TV show. So it's possible that Mom's issue was inappropriate venting of Dora-related burnout and not anger toward her child. My niece just about gave my parents PTSD with her Wiggles fixation at around that age. 

As far as what you could have or should have done, you minded your own business, which sounds about right to me.

[love4bob]

I wouldn't have done anything. Was it the wrong thing to say to a child? Yes. But some people have different personalities, that sounds like something my husband might say actually(not to DD though, and not in anger). Also, we don't know her background. Maybe she regrets saying it, maybe she apologized about it? I am very short tempered with my kids right now. I know I say things that I regret(nothing like you heard though). I am newly pregnant, so I'm tired and cranky plus I have an unbearable toothache. Those things combines make me not so nice of a mama. My point is, you never know what someone is going through, so I try not to judge when it's not abusive towards a child. 

[Dandelionkid]

If you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes...

[treegardner]

 

I don't think there is much you can do. You don't really know the whole story, and you only heard a snippet of the conversation. I agree, that isn't something that should be said to a child, but you don't know why the mom said or if that is how the mom regularly speaks to her child or how the child was behaving before you came across them in the store. (Not that those things excuse what she said, but to me there is a big difference between a mom having a really bad day who snaps and says something she later regrets and a mom who regularly says inappropriate things to her child without remorse.)

[Drummer's Wife]

Originally Posted by Dandelionkid 

If you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes...

Yeah that.

[elisheva]

I'm on the "if I you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes..." bandwagon.

That said, I always feel awful afterward and *maybe*? if someone who heard such a comment made eye contact with me, it might help me take a breath and keep my hostility to myself in the future. Who knows?

I read the Rants from Mommyland blog and one of the posts a while back was about seeing a woman totally up in her (the woman's) dd's face at Target. Kate (one of the bloggers) remembered a similar incident with her own daughter a few years back and how an older woman stopped, caught her (Kate's) eye, smiled and said, "You're all she has." Kate goes on to discuss what an impression this made on her and how she dealt with the situation in Target...

[Alyantavid]

Maybe the girl didn't like Dora and the mom was joking?   I wouldn't do anything, you have no idea of any backstory or context.

[oaktreemama]

I was expecting a much worse comment to be honest. Something totally cutting the little girl down. I HATE Dora and like a PP said would happily strangle her as well. Was it the best thing in the whole wide world to say? Nah. Was it anywhere near the worst? Not by a long shot.

[cschick]

Originally Posted by Dandelionkid 

If you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes...

Same here. My 4-year-old is utterly completely obsessed with penguins right now. I'm at the point where I'm tempted to make every single penguin-related toy disappear and I've had to tell him to STOP talking about penguins a few times recently. Only to get maybe 5 minutes peace.

[GoBecGo]

cschick mine is also obsessed with penguins, parrots, EVERY sort of bird basically.  I must be on the wrong track with my venting though because last week at her dada's she cheerfully put her tweety pie plushy in a pot and said that she wanted to roast him for dinner....

I say horrible things all the time, though not usually in anger.  I frequently tell DD i'm going to give her "a big beating" or "drown her in the bath".  A delight-giving phrase for DD is when one of us bears down threateningly with a devlish grin saying "i will BEAT you up and EAT you up and there will be NONE LEFT for *insert other parent's name*".  Everyone's relationships with their kids are different.  FWIW it's probably hard to tell on the bus, when you overhear me asking if she wants "a big beating" that i mean a chase-down-and-tickle and i have attracted some horrified looks!

[cappuccinosmom]

  A delight-giving phrase for DD is when one of us bears down threateningly with a devlish grin saying "i will BEAT you up and EAT you up and there will be NONE LEFT for *insert other parent's name*".  Everyone's relationships with their kids are different.  FWIW it's probably hard to tell on the bus, when you overhear me asking if she wants "a big beating" that i mean a chase-down-and-tickle and i have attracted some horrified looks! 

 

We say the exact same thing.  The kids loooooooove it. 

I'd say the situation in the OP could be a number of things, but might just be a mom at the end of her rope with a Dora obsession, and a family for whom "rough" language is no big deal.

If she'd threatened to strangle the little girl, I'd be more inclined to worry.  But then, I tell my children "I'll beat you up and eat you up", so who am I to talk.

[ellairiesmom]

Originally Posted by Dandelionkid 

If you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes...

hehehehe...i had a less than stellar day yesterday.  when your 3 yo asks you why you "turned the car bad" & then "said the bad words" to the man next to us, you know you didn't win any parenting awards that day.

and i have been known to vent some um, negative thoughts, about Dora AND Caillou...

[EVC]

If you could hear the things I say to my kids sometimes...

Me too. 

When dd gets silly and rambunctious, I will tell our dog to bite her: "Get her, boy! Bite her on the nose!" (Keep in mind the dog has NO IDEA what I'm saying, is a timid little Chihuahua who spends most of the day hiding under a quilt, and would NEVER bite dd, who is his bestest friend in the world). 

DD, for her part, thinks this is HYSTERICAL and will purposely act silly just to get me to say it. 

However, if a stranger ever overheard the conversation, I can only imagine what they'd think of me! 

[waiting2bemommy]

I'm alao in the "if you could hear what I say to my kid" camp.

I'm certainly not proud of some of the things I have said when having a really bad day. Luckily I'm finally getting help for my PPD so those days are becoming much less frequent. But I wouldn't judge someone else whob was having a bad day because, well, you just don't know the backstory.

However, I really don't see that as a big deal. We say crazy stuff all the time in our house and it is viewed as a joke all around. Ds is very physical and he likes to get rough and tumble so he will often say," come knock my head off!" as an invitation to play rough with him. Or we will jokingly say things like, "I'm gonna throw you in the garbage truck!" This usually progresses into ultimate silliness, i'm going to throw you in a sippy cup, I'm going to throw you out on top of a shoe inside a lunchbox on a horse, etc. There is no malice behind it and ds thinks it's funny. However I"m sure to an outsider it would be pretty horrifying to hear an adult tell a child "I'm gonna knock your head off."

As an aside, I have noticed that the mroe physical and affectionate we are as a family in a rought and tumble, fun silly kind of way, the LESS we are inclined to spank. We are working really hard to eliminate that from our home and I have noticed that correlation. Not sure why. Totally OT, but very interesting.

[new2this]

It would be a mind your own business thing. What the mom said wasn't wrong per se. And without knowing them personally its hard to tell if it was meant out of hurtfulness, anger or just playing around. 

[GoBecGo]

It's funny you should mention - we are No Spank parents, always have been (though i once smacked DD1's hand when she was small, for drawing on a wall with permanent ink - i am still feeling guilty!).  FIL is very pro-spank but remarked the other day after watching me stalk and "beat and eat" (during which i said there would be none left for Papa to eat and DD shouted "save him my toe bones!" and screamed with laughter) that i smack her way harder in play than he would ever have smacked his kids in punishment.  I frequently walk up the stairs behind her at bathtime smacking one side then the other while she tries to keep her balance (frequently unable to breathe with the laughing she is doing!) and compensate for the smacks.  I definitely think for us the physicality of our play renders that whole category of physical punishment impossible to use and not at all appealing.  If i feel like hitting DD i get us laughing and have a tickling rough-and-tumble with her, because for ME smacking is never about the kid's behaviour, always about the adult's response.  So getting down and reconnecting physically really helps.  In fact thinking out loud, i wonder how many parents who were spanked themselves spank in some underlying hope of reconnecting...?  Or is that crazy talk?
 

Originally Posted by waiting2bemommy 

I'm alao in the "if you could hear what I say to my kid" camp.

I'm certainly not proud of some of the things I have said when having a really bad day. Luckily I'm finally getting help for my PPD so those days are becoming much less frequent. But I wouldn't judge someone else whob was having a bad day because, well, you just don't know the backstory.

However, I really don't see that as a big deal. We say crazy stuff all the time in our house and it is viewed as a joke all around. Ds is very physical and he likes to get rough and tumble so he will often say," come knock my head off!" as an invitation to play rough with him. Or we will jokingly say things like, "I'm gonna throw you in the garbage truck!" This usually progresses into ultimate silliness, i'm going to throw you in a sippy cup, I'm going to throw you out on top of a shoe inside a lunchbox on a horse, etc. There is no malice behind it and ds thinks it's funny. However I"m sure to an outsider it would be pretty horrifying to hear an adult tell a child "I'm gonna knock your head off."

As an aside, I have noticed that the mroe physical and affectionate we are as a family in a rought and tumble, fun silly kind of way, the LESS we are inclined to spank. We are working really hard to eliminate that from our home and I have noticed that correlation. Not sure why. Totally OT, but very interesting.

[waiting2bemommy]

Yes, on thinking more about it it seems like maybe we are releasing our frustration and using our aggression more positively so when there is something serious we aren't so full of pent up rage that we just start wailing out on him. That's not to say that the occasional more "serious" smack on the butt (as in, "stop goofing off and pick up the toys, NOW, <insert light smack>) does not still happen but really I can't think of the last time ds was actually spanked, by either of us, which quite frankly is amazing considerign how we were raised and where we came from. Especially for daddy who used to think that spanking was the asnwer to everything under the sun. Major, major progress, and a lot of it I can attribute to those rough and tumble, silly, playful parenting techniques.

[dakotablue]

I can't stand Dora either, I guess it was really more an issue of tone...it was so mean.

I know so of you are saying you've said not so nice things to your kids, but I can't imagine you'd speak like that. Or if you did it would be an end of the rope thing. I should mention she was casually chatty shortly after this when I saw her again (not to me but to grandmother.) But I don't know...

It was the kinda tone that would make me sad as an adult to have someone speak to me that way, the kind meant to cut you down and I'd be fearful for Dora if this women ever came across her. I just think for the little girl...it made me sad.

I will say we joke with DS, but it is done in jest and love or at least in a jestful and loving voice (like when I tell him he is the biggest bug in the world)

[camracrazy]

I have a 3 year old, and I don't think she would understand the meaning of the word "strangle" (simply because it's not a word we use), but she would probably pick up on my tone if it was mean.

I have often had people act shocked when I tell them how crazy my kids are driving me. At other places like church, Scouts, grandma's house, etc, they are usually angels! The girl may have been acting cute to you, who couldn't hear what she was saying, but may have been whining and crying earlier in the day for Dora this and that. Not that it gives the mom a license to speak to her daughter in a rude tone, but sometimes enough is enough, yk? My oldest chatters constantly, and I am SO not that kind of person. I need quiet atleast part of the day! I told her last night that chupacabras eat chatty girls, but of course she is an expert on chupacabras and stated that no, they don't. LOL