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I hate to write two bummer posts in a row – I’m not depressed, really – but I have to tell someone what I just experienced.
Babby and I were out for our walk with Beloved Dog, and while I picked up poop I could hear the screams of a tantruming child coming from a distance. In our family-friendly complex, this is such a common sound that it took me a while to register it on a conscious level. I began to realize that the pitch was… more urgent than a normal tantrum, and that the words that were being screamed were alternately “Mommy!” and “help!”
I looked around and spotted a small child, no more than three, clinging to the other side of the fence in the old abandoned school yard. People often take their dogs and kids back there to play, since there is a soccer field and playground equipment. I waited for a parent figure to show up and deal with the child, but no parent was in sight. I waited, and waited. No parent, just a small kid screaming for help.
So I crossed the road and started to walk towards the child. There was an open gate about thirty feet away from him, so he wasn’t trapped. But he was pressing his face to the fence and screaming for Mommy. Just as I reached him I heard an angry voice answering from a distance. I looked around and couldn’t see anyone. Was his mother shouting from a window? Maybe he had left the house without permission and gotten lost?
No, there she was, coming up the street a block and a half away on the other side of the street with two dogs on a leash and an irate expression. She was shouting for him to get his butt over to her. He heard her and redoubled his efforts.
“MOMMMMMYYYYY. HEEEEELLLLLLLLLLP MEEEEEEEEEEEE.”
“Just go around! Go around and then get over here!”
He continued to wail while trying to climb the fence.
“Get over here NOW. I mean it.”
What, across the road and everything?
I went through the gate and beckoned to the small boy. “Over here, sweetie,” I said, “just come over this way.”
But he clung to the fence, oblivious. “I want yoooou to come to meeee,” he begged his mother. “Mommmmy pleeeeease. Come to meeeeee.” His voice had that rough sound that kids get when they’ve been screaming for too long. Babby gets it all the time. You could see it in his face, this longing, the need, for his mother to return to him: to prove that she loved him.
He continued to sob as she stormed up through the gate, and grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out. He struggled to regain his feet and followed her sobbing heart brokenly while she told him how much trouble he was in. He kept trying to reach for her hand.
“I can’t hold your hand,” she snapped, “I have to hold your train. Are you going to hold your train?”
“Nooooooo….” he said, grabbing for her hand, which she yanked away again.
“Well, then,” said the mother. I watched as they went down the road, the little boy desperately trying to get affection from his mother and continually being rejected.
I held Babby extra close to me as I watched them go, and thought “Huh. So that’s what an insecure attachment looks like.”
Now, before all of you with three year olds jump in and tell me how hard it is, let me say as a disclaimer that I realize I have no back story to this episode.
It was pretty evident from what I heard and saw that the boy had refused to leave the playground and that she had threatened to leave without him (a common parental threat which, let’s face it, usually works) and then followed through with it, going at least two blocks away and certainly out of sight.
Beyond that, I don’t know anything about the child’s usual behaviour, the mother’s personal life, her day leading up to this incident or any of the rest of it. I know this. I accept this. No mother is perfect. But I’m empathetic by nature and in this case my feelings were all with the little tot.
The thing that got me was that she was holding him to adult standards. She expected him to calm himself down, find the gate, cross the school lawn, cross the road diagonally, catch up to her, and probably apologize. If you had listened to the scolding she gave him, you would have thought she was talking to a much older child, even a teenager. But he wasn’t a teen, or even a big kid. He was maybe three years old. At most.
The whole “if you don’t come along I’m going to leave without you” threat is a risky card for a parent to play. Sure, it works most of the time, but what about the one time when the kid calls your bluff? If you fold, then your child learns that you don’t mean what you say. If you follow through, you actually have to leave your kid alone at the park… and you’ll have to come back for him eventually.
In general, I feel that love makes for a bad bargaining chip. To threaten to withdraw your love and protection scan be below the belt. When you’re little, being abandoned by your parents is your worst nightmare. You need your parents to survive.
How many of you have a hurtful memory that involve being rejected in some way by a parent? Hopefully it was a minor incident: Your painting not being put on the fridge. Finding last year’s Mother’s Day card in the trash. A parent missing a baseball game, or a concert. Nothing worse.
But even those minor memories still sting, don’t they?
I can’t help but wonder if this will become his first memory – crying alone in the park, convinced that his Mommy had left him forever, and too paralyzed with misery to leave and search for her.
Am I wrong to feel that this mother went a bit too far?
Do you have a memory like this from your childhood?
I’ma go hug my baby for a million years and wonder what I’m going to do the day he doesn’t want to leave the park.
"Just you wait til I can run..."
If By Yes 
So the difference between an obnoxious parent and a good one is that last line of yours. The obnoxious ones say, “I would never do such a thing”… and then often end up doing either the same thing, or something different but just as bad. A good parent recognizes the inherent difficulty and tries not to be judgmental.
I have learned never to say never when it comes to my kid. Let’s hope Babby doesn’t give you too much of a run for your money. 😉
The main reason why I think it’s not LIKELY that I would do that is that I am far too anxious a person to leave a three year old totally unattended near a cross road.
But yes, I don’t like to say “never”. It’s tempting fate.
thank you. i didn’t know how to comment on this one. you took the words out of my mouth.
My uncle left my cousin and I on Granville island bridge when I was little. She was probably 3 or 4 and I was 6 or 7. I couldn’t imagine an adult actually leaving…but he did! I was terrified, but luckily managed to find our way back to my grandfather’s condo which wasn’t very far away. My mother was furious!!! With my uncle, not us. She got her revenge by giving my cousin her first barbie doll 🙂
I think from that, I’ve learned that abandoning children, threat or reality, is never a good idea. My heart breaks for that child too…sometimes children just don’t understand what adults want – or how quickly the snap can happen between annoyed and angry.
Wow, if I were your mother I’d be furious, too. That’s a busy bridge!
I think I agree with you in terms of insecure attachment. As you said, it’s hard to know what happened before this, what this woman’s life is like beyond this snippet of a moment, but I have to agree with you that if I saw that, my heart would break for this child.
I wonder what I would have done if his mother hadn’t shown up??
That poor little thing. My heart would be breaking for him too. I try to withhold judgment on parents because I know I can’t imagine how hard it is, and have no context for the moments I see or overhear. But sometimes when I see somebody really berating a little child or something, I can’t help it. I get angry. And my empathy goes into overdrive.
And as sad as it is, I would imagine that little boy may not even remember this when he’s older. Because it may not stand out for him as an unusual moment in his life.
That’s even sadder!
My mom put Corinne and I out of the car one day because we wouldn’t stop screaming & fighting in the back seat. We were probably 6 and 3 – maybe 7 and 4. I can’t remember exactly.
It was a country road, very quiet, and she came right back – we were probably standing by the side of the road in shock for less than a minute.
I say I would never do it… but I did just walk out the front door one day when the kids had been especially out of control. So I don’t know.
I think that every parent has at least one instance of resorting to drastic measures. My mother slapped me once when I was small and kept running into the road. It worked, too.
I have a friend who made her son sit in the van while the rest of the family finished dinner in a restaurant, waving at him from the window while they did it, because she had told him that if he didn’t stop acting up, he would have to leave. Drastic? Yes. Effective? Yes. Is she the kind of person who would ever put her kid in jeopardy or make him feel abandoned and unloved? Hell no.
I think that when such incidents are the exception, rather than the rule, they do very little damage, and can make a deep impression when you really need to make one (say, to teach your toddler never to run into the road).
I think what really got me in this case (besides the fact that that the kid was left for at least ten min and possibly longer) is that she was so angry with the kid for being upset. I mean, if you do end up leaving the park without your child, isn’t the whole POINT to give him a good shock? But she seems really pissed off that he made her come back for him, and that he was making such a fuss about it. That makes me think that she had no idea how drastic her measure really was.
I was hoping you’d bring this up! This is the first thing that came to my mind too.
And I’ve never misbehaved in a car since.
No dice in the mirror for you, eh? :-p
And we ALWAYS buckle our seatbelts while the car is in motion.
Even if I’m just moving it to a different part of the driveway.
*nods* yup.
A friend of mine was telling me about how, on a long car ride, she changed her baby’s diapers WHILE IN MOTION – it involved unbuckling herself, turning around, taking the baby out, changing diapers and putting the baby back. I didn’t know what to say to that. She was so proud of the feat.
I really hope I misunderstood.
I’ve heard of mothers, on long car trips, unbuckling themselves and leaning over the baby’s car seat in order to breast feed them on long car trips so they wouldn’t have to stop every time the baby needed to eat. Because, if they got in an accident, a baby growing up without a mother is a better alternative to adding time to the trip, right?
Well, I used to do this with my seatbelt still on. Not ideal and not as safe as sitting properly back, but desperate times and all that…
Hey, at least that’s not unbuckling the baby, right?
Oh, man… Sometimes I wonder what people must think of me and Liam in such situations. Not that I’ve left him all alone in a park and walked away out of view, but I’ve certainly left him howling in the nursery school class room. And I’ve even left him wailing and clinging to the play-yard fence once, too. And in those cases, it’s often been after pushing him forcefully along down the hallway as he cries and clings and wails and talking to him in a harsh, exasperated tone because, frankly, dealing with a screaming kid fighting you tooth and nail for the whole hour before we even get there wears on the nerves.
*sigh*
Obviously, that’s different. But I’m sure it horrifies some people who don’t know the whole story, and makes me feel like crap. We won’t even mention what the people in the clinic must think when he goes to the doctor. Or the things my neighbors hear on a regular basis all because his tv show is the wrong episode or he needs his nose wiped and I’m scooping the cat box. Or… or…
I wish parenting were easier. I’d love an instruction manual for dealing with special needs like my kid seems to have. And waaaaay more patience. Empathy can be hard by the tenth meltdown of the morning.
I’m going to fervently hope they were just having a very bad day and this was not the norm. I’m glad you were there, though, just in case. Poor kid.
Personally I never judge a parent based on how their kid is behaving. Kids are kids, forever and ever, amen. They are going to have tantrums and anxiety fits and rages and stubborn moments. That doesn’t say anything about the parent and my heart doesn’t bleed over the frustrated rages that are a daily occurrence in young childhood. That’s just how kids are.
I do sometimes judge the parent based on how they react, though, if they react in a blatantly inappropriate way. It’s a parent’s job to coach their child through these emotions, not reward bad behavior and punish good behaviour as I so frequently see parents do. I actually judge a parent more if they give in to whining to avoid a scene than if they stand calmly and let a tantrum run its course.
Kids will be kids, and they have so little experience with the world that they overreact to everything. That’s ok with me most of the time, and most child tantrums don’t touch me in the least. But the parents should be parents. When I see a parent acting like a child, or expecting the child to be an adult, my heart goes out for the poor child trying to make sense of it all.
My empathy needs a sticky-plaster now. Poor child. 😦 Sure, the mum probably had her reasons, but surely a responsible parent wouldn’t leave him like that for ten minutes?
Can’t say that I have similar experiences as such. I remember once when my foot got stuck in a hole in the middle of the lawn near the playground and I couldn’t get up. Don’t remember what age I might’ve been. I saw my mum coming out and going into our next door neighbour’s house without hearing me. Can’t even remember if she finally saw me when she came back out again and helped me or if I was helped by someone else who happened to pass. Another time, I was with my dad in Gothenburg and we were on the tram. He got out first, and the doors shut before I got out but he just yanked the doors open again and got me out before it had a chance to drive off. Frightened the life out me, and I started crying hysterically immediately after the doors slammed shut. (All alone in a big city, on a transport I had never really been on before, and I was maybe 5 or 6?) Still, nothing dangerous happened, and he made sure to let me get off first the next time. The only “threat” I remember from my childhood was that I’d have to sleep in the bathtub if I had another bottle of soda, but they never actually went through with it. 😉
…and then yell at him for not running across a road? Yeah, I feel the same way.
I don’t remember threats from my childhood either. But I had a nightmare once that I got off of a ride in Disneyland only to find that my father was driving away without me, back to Ontario. I woke up crying!
I’m just going to say we all have bad days and moments that we regret. And after four children, I have learned to not say “I’ll NEVER” or “my kid will NEVER”…nothing is a surer invitation to fate.
LOL That’s what I said!
My mum and dad once kicked me and my brother out of the car for fighting too much on a long road trip and actually drove off. My brother was 13 and I was 8. I remember screaming hysterically. Of course, they probably drove about 15 feet before they stopped but it was very effective. Now I have made long road trips with my kids, I can really understand how my parents must have been at breaking point to go to that extreme. I can’t imagine doing that to my kids, but then again, they are only 6, 3 and 6mos, so it’s not even an option. Who knows how I’ll feel when they’re 16, 13 and 10.
That poor little boy! I think I’m most upset by the fact that she expected him to cross the street. Even if it’s usually super quiet, you never know when it’s going to be that one time that some idiot will decide to drive down it at breakneck speed.
It’s not like it’s a bustling main drag, but it’s the feeder road for all the little subdivisions, so a car goes by ever minute or so. I can’t imagine expecting a three year old to run nearly two blocks, crossing a street to get to me, and then yelling at him for not doing it. Especially when he was clearly too distraught to even find the gate!
Poor little kid.
Yikes, that sounds like a really hard situation to have observed and been (almost) involved with. Like most of the posters here I hate making judgments about another person’s parenting, because I just don’t know what I’ll be like as a parent, but it sounds like she was being very harsh. Hopefully she is a wonderful mum who was just having a very bad day. Hopefully the boy was so freaked out because her reaction WAS that unusual.
I hope the same thing!
A while back I did carry through on the threat to leave when Hugh wouldn’t come down off the climbing frame in the playground. Let it be noted that the playground is right in the middle of the park – I just went round the corner and watched him from behind a hedge – and I did hug him and everything when I came back. It’s still not my proudest parenting moment – but you get so desperate when you need them to come along and they just won’t, and the idea of climbing the climbing frame and carrying a kicking and screaming three-year-old down off it and then all the way across the park back to the car strikes fear into the heart. (What if I dropped him on the way down?)
I just don’t have a right answer to this one. I also always feel very conscious of everybody around judging me pretty much whatever I do. Maybe they aren’t, but I always feel as though they are.
yeah, see, THAT I don’t have a problem with. It was the going at least two blocks away, yelling at the kid for not crossing a street on his own, and then dragging him by the arm while still yelling at him when he wouldn’t. That’s what upset me.
THat does sound bad. Actually I experienced something analagous last time we were in England and Hugh was playing in a soft play area in the Sealife Centre in Yarmouth. THere was another little boy who was playing a bit rough and not getting on very well with the other children, though not spectacularly badly either. He fell and hurt himself and was crying and his mother just came and yelled at him. My impression was that she’d got the idea into her head that whenever there was crying – his or anybody else’s – it must be because he’d done something bad. I felt terribly sorry for him, and I also took it to heart as an awful warning always to try to listen to my child’s side of things, however naughty his mood seemed to be. I tried to show some sympathy to that little boy in the soft play area, but I’m not sure he spoke much English and in any case it wasn’t me he wanted comfort from.