This morning Brooklyn had an appointment with her Pediatrician, and we happened to arrive a few minutes early (must have been a full moon or something...). So Brooklyn began playing with the toys in the waiting room as I held Whitney when I noticed another mother with her young son come in. No biggie, it is a Pediatrician's office after all.
Then, it happened.
Brooklyn had been playing with her doll in a plastic shopping cart, she left it to play with something else but upon seeing the little boy that just arrived was interested she immediately returned to claim said shopping cart. As I was speaking to her about how it is polite to share and that it would be nice if she let the little boy have a turn the boy's mother came over and scooped him up. She proceeded to walk him to the other end of the room, but not before uttering "come on, we'll go play with the toys over here, obviously that little girl does not know how to share". Of course she refused to make eye contact as she walk past me, and all I could think was is this really happening? You would have thought Brooklyn went over and kicked the boy out of the way in order to get to the toy. OMGoodness.
Shocked *picks jaw up off floor* I said "really? she's four-years-old, give me a break".
Her reply: "yeah... really"
Still trying to figure out why exactly she felt the need to try and make my daughter feel bad I said "wow, you've got a lot of class", laughed and walked away. Luckily the nurse had just called us in to the Dr's office so we didn't have to sit in the waiting room with the passive-aggressive you-know-what because I was beyond disgusted.
How can you honestly believe that is any way to solve a situation between a four-year-old and approximately 16-18 month old? (which I'm sure doesn't share 100% of the time either...). As adults is there no way we could have solved this differently? Well, I can say I'm an adult- this other person who thought it was necessary to talk down to a four-year-old, I've got a few choice words to call her (and 'adult' is far from top of the list) but I'll keep it clean.
If you're so annoyed that my daughter took a toy away from your son that you feel it's necessary to go to the other end of the room why not say "here, so-and-so, lets go check out these blocks". Why do people feel the need to be so snarky and belittling?
I strive to teach Brooklyn to be fair, share, play well with others and of course I want her to be a strong independent woman. How do I do this? Simple. I let her resolve her own (minor) issues and problem solve on her own (when appropriate and with my supervision). Of course if she were being physical with this little boy I would have by all means stepped in, there is no reason for violence in any situation.
How will she ever learn to share if I just rip things away from her to give to someone else to play with?
How will she learn to communicate well if being snippy is the way I talk with her?
How will she become independent if I do everything for her?
How will she ever respect anyone if all I treat her with is disrespect?
And believe me, I am so not the poster woman for being a perfect Mother. I've made plenty of mistakes, and will continue to do so because parenting is a constant cycle of trial-and-error and every now-and-again if I'm lucky I'll get a thing or two right. So I really try not to judge other parents because I'm not walking in their shoes. Each of us are fighting our own battles and going through our own hardships so instead of breaking each other down, why not build each other up?
Moral of the story: Treat each other how you would like to be treated... is it really so hard to do, and to teach our children to do?
No comments:
Post a Comment