What matters more? Other people’s opinion of your parenting, or your child’s opinion of your parenting?
Sometimes when we are out in public with our children, our children demonstrate the most challenging behaviors. Whining. Crying. Running. Screaming. Hitting. We see people watching and worry they will think our parenting is terrible, and that’s why our kids are “misbehaving”. We might become the stern, no-nonsense version of ourselves and yell or use physical control or bribe our children in order to control them. We forget that our behavior is just as open to judgement as our children’s, but we should know better.
“What do I do?” asked my friend. “He’s lying on the ground looking like I’ve beaten him and I don’t wash his clothing. What are people going to think?” Her son had just finished a morning of Kindergarten and was exhausted and hungry. We had met for lunch, but the restaurant wasn’t open for another 10 minutes. My friend’s son absolutely lost it. Hysterical moaning and crying. Snot everywhere. Collapsed on the ground.
“Leave him. He needs this moment,” I told her. I could see the relief flash across her face because she knew in that moment that no matter what she did, short of charging through the locked door of the restaurant and firing up the grill, it wasn’t going to calm him down.
He was safe. He was warm enough in his winter gear, and he was getting the support he needed from the ground. He sobbed it out for five minutes, lied there calmly for another five, stood up when the door opened and hobbled into a booth where he ate probably 3000 calories in one sitting and then returned to himself!
She could’ve threatened him. She could’ve yelled at him. She could’ve yanked him up by the arm to get him off the ground. But that wasn’t going to address his basic human need for food, so it wouldn’t have worked. She chose harmony. We are where we are, and this will pass. She chose to leave him be even though a number of onlookers might have been concerned she had just dragged him down the street to his current position. She relinquished her pride, and in turn, she preserved the quality of her relationship with her five year old.
Breaking the bonds of trust with your child is not worth strangers’ approval.