I make it a point to never judge someone for their parenting. I feel like, you never have the whole story so how could I possibly begin to understand what is actually going on.
With that said, I became a judge wudgy angry person today. I was at the local WalMart to pick up a few things before getting the kids from school.
As I was leaving the store I heard screaming and I mean screaming. I look over and off to the side there is this woman *screaming*, at her daughter. This little girl is maybe alittle older than Emmett and Emmett is only 3 years old.
She had 2 other young children with her along with her boyfriend or husband.
This woman is screaming at the top of her lungs, which by the way were filled with smoke because she was smoking right in front of her kids. She was screaming, "you will not hurt yourself" over and over again to this little girl. The more this woman screamed the more this little girl got upset. She had tears streaming down her face as this woman was blowing smoke into her face.
She even got physical with the little girl as well. She picked her up of the ground by her arms and tried getting her to stand.
The whole time I'm standing in the middle of the parking lot desperately trying to keep myself from going over there and giving this woman a piece of my mind. I couldn't believe it, everyone just walked by like nothing was happening.
I mean, if this woman would be this abusive in public, what do you think happens behind closed doors.
I tired to rationalize what I was seeing by saying to myself, "Rob, you don't know the whole story".
I'll be real honest, I don't care what the whole story is, nothing that child could ever do would justify what I was seeing. I am very guilty of judging the crap out of this woman this afternoon and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
What I am ashamed to admit is that I did nothing. I figured that by the time the Police would have gotten there, due to their amazing slow response time, they would be long gone.
Perhaps I should have walked over and said something, but that would not have ended well and I was afraid the kid would pay for my actions later and I didn't want that.
So I did nothing but be very obviously disgusted by what I was seeing and I stood there in the middle of the parking lot until this woman was done.
I know that being a parent isn't easy... Trust me, I know that. However, at no point have I or my wife *ever *lost it like that. We all say things we regret but this was abuse, pure and simple.
It honestly took everything I had not to try and intervene.
At what point do you involve yourself in something like this?
Have any of you witnessed anything before that you wanted to go over and knock some heads?
I would love your feedback on this.
- Lost and Tired
Posted by Wordpress for Android via Samsungs Epic Touch 4G (provided to me at no charge by Sprint) without the use of proper editing tools and disadvantages of a bastardized version of auto-correct. So please forgive the spelling ;-)
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