I have a little story for you.
While using the automated postal kiosk at the Post Office this afternoon, I dealt with an incident regarding a woman and my 6 year old son.
I was standing at the kiosk and asked Jonah to please throw away the sticker backing for me, thinking it would give him something to do while I finished shipping items. He decided to play basketball with his brother and threw the paper over to the can. I turned around and reprimanded them saying that there were other people around and they needed to be respectful and not throw things because they might accidentally hit someone. So Jonah decided to slam dunk the paper into the can. He reached in and retrieved said paper and I turned around, took the paper and said "Jonah, that's gross. DO NOT put your hands in the trash can." I turned back to the kiosk to print my reciept and Jonah went back into the can for his paper, when the woman who was standing at the table next to him grabbed his hand and said "Hey! What did your mom tell you??" Then she proceeded to get in his face and scream "KNOCK IT OFF!!" at him. Jonah came to me scared and I was telling him to stop acting up because he was disrupting the other customers when I overheard the woman mumble something to the person next to her about 'bad kids'.
It took every ounce of restraint to keep myself from confronting the woman and in doing so, set a bad example in front of my kids. I decided to use it as a learning situation and explain to Jonah (and the other two kiddoes) that you have to behave in public places because some people may get upset with you, and then you'll get embarrassed and so will Momma.
But really, I wanted to slap the woman and tell her to keep her crazy hands off my child and shut her judgemental mouth before I shut it for her.
Did I do the right thing in keeping quiet and leading my kids out of the Post Office? Or should I have stood up to her and defended my family?
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4 comments:
Defend. The end.
If it would have just been the snide comment under her breath, I would have let it go. The second she laid a hand on my child, the gloves would have come off.
Kudos goes to you though for maintaining your calm...
You did what you thought was best in the situation. It's probably never come up for you before.
But, for me, she would NOT have liked what I would have said and it would have been gloves off like Mama Mack said! After that, I would have explained to the kids WHY I did what I did and let them know this is not always how you handle things, but it needed to be said and done.
She had NO right whatsoever..incredibly and inexcusable rude and intrusive.
Gosh, that's one of those situations where you just don't know what to do at the time... then you look back with all these really great comebacks.
My heart was pounding when I was reading this! What a rude, ridiculous woman! If I could have thought to say it in enough time, I would have just told her to keep her hands off my kid. What the heck, seriously? I'm so sorry this happened!
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