I knew it was a bad day to leave the house today, but I felt like the kids and I could use some nice relaxation after the day we've had and I thought it would be nice to have a movie night. They had seemed to calm down a bit (more on the details later) so I loaded them in the car and drove to the local grocery store. It was a...challenging trip. So we made it out of there with the movie and an economy size bottle of fast acting advil liqui-gels (only because they don't sell valium 
)....when ds (2.5yo) had his first melt down ever in a parking lot.
There are alot of people in my town that aren't very child friendly and I just didn't think I could cope with a lecture today. So I plastered a big ol' smile across my face, grabbed his hand and proceeded to motivate him across the parking lot with lots of forced cheerfullness (and maybe a bribe or two). I have totally mastered the "move along folks, there's nothing to see here" (which I credit entirely to ds#1's toddler years). We had almost made it to the car without too big of a scene, when I spotted who was parked beside us...at which point I debated actually going back into the store...or maybe just walking home. There was a very old, rusty, beat up, falling apart pick up truck with a back woods older man sitting in it. He had the weathered led-a-hard-life type of face, and just looking at him I could already hear him saying "if you'd smack that kid he wouldn't be such a brat" or some other equally offensive comment.
But I toughed it out and went to the car anyways, and wouldn' t you know it, ds's little bit of a cranky attitude EXPLODED into a full blown screaming fit that any two year old would have been proud of.
He watched and kind of laughed under his breath while I first tried calming, then distracting, then negotiating, then bribing...then finally wrestling (it was only as bad as it sounds for me...ds had a lovely time taking one arm out of the seatbelt while I tried to get the other one in, over and over and over and over again). When I finally got out of the car the man spoke to me. He told me that he could see it bothered me to have to put him in like that, but I shouldn't worry because I wasn't abusing him. He commented on my patience (little did he know, I was faking
), and my gentleness. Then he good naturedly said that it's usually our fault that kids act up like that, cause it's so hard not to spoil them 
. He went on to say how of course when his kids were growing up that they'd give them 'a little tap' if they weren't minding, but you have to be careful nowadays because you'll probably get them taken away if you do. He said "I'm not saying it was wrong or it was right, it was just the best we knew to do. That's all you can do."
It just made me feel good because it's so infrequent that you hear someone in real life admit that they don't know what the heck they're doing either!
)....when ds (2.5yo) had his first melt down ever in a parking lot.There are alot of people in my town that aren't very child friendly and I just didn't think I could cope with a lecture today. So I plastered a big ol' smile across my face, grabbed his hand and proceeded to motivate him across the parking lot with lots of forced cheerfullness (and maybe a bribe or two). I have totally mastered the "move along folks, there's nothing to see here" (which I credit entirely to ds#1's toddler years). We had almost made it to the car without too big of a scene, when I spotted who was parked beside us...at which point I debated actually going back into the store...or maybe just walking home. There was a very old, rusty, beat up, falling apart pick up truck with a back woods older man sitting in it. He had the weathered led-a-hard-life type of face, and just looking at him I could already hear him saying "if you'd smack that kid he wouldn't be such a brat" or some other equally offensive comment.
But I toughed it out and went to the car anyways, and wouldn' t you know it, ds's little bit of a cranky attitude EXPLODED into a full blown screaming fit that any two year old would have been proud of.
He watched and kind of laughed under his breath while I first tried calming, then distracting, then negotiating, then bribing...then finally wrestling (it was only as bad as it sounds for me...ds had a lovely time taking one arm out of the seatbelt while I tried to get the other one in, over and over and over and over again). When I finally got out of the car the man spoke to me. He told me that he could see it bothered me to have to put him in like that, but I shouldn't worry because I wasn't abusing him. He commented on my patience (little did he know, I was faking
), and my gentleness. Then he good naturedly said that it's usually our fault that kids act up like that, cause it's so hard not to spoil them . He went on to say how of course when his kids were growing up that they'd give them 'a little tap' if they weren't minding, but you have to be careful nowadays because you'll probably get them taken away if you do. He said "I'm not saying it was wrong or it was right, it was just the best we knew to do. That's all you can do."It just made me feel good because it's so infrequent that you hear someone in real life admit that they don't know what the heck they're doing either!
