Dear Lady Who Judged Me Today

I don’t know if it’s just my kids, these ages they’re in, stages of development, the sun and moon in terrible alignment, or something else altogether, but I would rather have a root canal than take my children into a store. Any store.

Mostly, Emma has a serious case of Ants In Her Pants and she wants to talk and talk and grab and hold everything she sees. She’s nearly three. While I have no recollection of Joshua being this way, I was also in the throes of very, very new second motherhood and rarely ventured out of the house with both of them. I have one distinct memory of shlepping them both to two separate Target stores in search of a Rock-N-Play for Emma and Joshua having an epic meltdown which resulted in me practically dragging him out of the store while Emma screamcried from inside the Moby but I’ve slept since then. A little bit. The details are fuzzy.

The details of today’s excursion are not.

Today I was openly and publicly judged for my children’s misbehavior and I’ve got to say that it was definitely a shitty experience.

The scene:

A very energetic almost three-year-old and her six-year-old brother are taken into a Dollar Tree, bastion of classy shopping. While inside, said three-year-old has a very, very hard time not looking at all the things and wandering away to do so, despite being asked and told to stay with her mother. Mother holds daughter’s hand tightly, until it’s time to pay for the three items on the conveyor belt which must be purchased for big brother’s class Easter egg hunt tomorrow morning. Mother regrets not putting toddler into a cart, but she was only stopping in for THREE THINGS.

Then all Hell breaks loose as the toddler AND the big brother begin running a marathon around the store while the mother is trying to pay as quickly as possible so she can corral her children and GTFO. A worker at said store shouts across four aisles, “STOP RUNNING BEFORE YOU FALL AND GET HURT!” and a lady two behind the mother in line says “those your kids?” with that “Mmm-mmm” in her voice that says no children of hers would ever be caught acting like that and then she clucks her tongue as the mother grabs her bags off the checkout stand and begins darting in and out of aisles to find her children in order to march their giggling, energetic behinds to the car.

In case you thought this was some sort of hypothetical situation, let me clear up the confusion. This mother, toddler, and big brother are me, Emma, and Joshua, and this is a totally true story.

A totally true, incredibly humiliating story.

First, I was humiliated by their behavior. I don’t know why they act like heathens whenever I take them in public, but I’d say the two of them conspiring not to listen to me happens regularly and I’m regularly driven mad by it. But I can’t stop running errands and it’s not always possible to run them without children and/or with only one child, so sometimes they both have to go. It’s just…life. Life doesn’t stop because things get inconvenient. I actually cannot order everything on Amazon so as to avoid ever having to take my children in public again and not taking them in public doesn’t actually teach them how to behave in public. It’s a chicken-egg predicament I’m in.

Secondly, I was humiliated by the woman who deemed it her place to openly and publicly judge and shame me for not being able to control my children.

What was I supposed to do? Hold up the line while I chased them down, further angering the people in line behind me for making them wait? Retrieve the kids and then stand there, mortified, while I paid and Emma fought to get down again, throwing a Threenager Tantrum at the checkout?

Which situation would have made that lady feel better? Probably neither.

There was no way I was winning in any scenario other than having perfect, quiet, well-mannered children who listen to everything I say like tiny automatons and never step even a hair out of line. HAHAHAHAH. Those are…not my kids.

When we finally got to the car after doing our march of shame out of the store, I screamed and yelled and shouted and I wasn’t proud of the mother I was as my children began to cry. I was scaring them. I was parenting out of a place of embarrassment and not love.

Hell, I wasn’t actually parenting at all. I was just being angry at my kids who cannot just listen when I ask them to do something simple and angry at myself for dragging them to the store after school. But mostly I was angry at that woman who deemed it her place to say something to me about my children who were acting up in public LIKE I DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW THEY WERE ACTING UP.

OF COURSE I KNEW.

I knew and I had been embarrassed by it longer than she had been aware we were even there.

So thanks for the judgment, lady. That’s just what my Tuesday afternoon was missing.