Have you ever seen anything like this go down at your local store?
It happened to me a few years ago…
I was standing in the cleaning supply aisle at Target, watching her. I hadn’t meant to stare, but the early morning shopping quiet had been shattered with the noise. The woman reasoned with the toddler to let go of a big bottle of vitamins. I heard her say something like, “You will need to give it to the lady at the checkout, will you do that?” The girl screamed, “No!” The discussion concluded with something like, “If you refuse to be helpful, you will lose the privilege of holding the vitamins and mama will have to take them from you.” That’s when the screaming really started. The woman had placed the vitamins out of reach and into the cart, next to another baby in a car seat carrier, and marched the cart toward the front of the store. The toddler continued screaming, her mouth flung open like her jaw was unhinged. She screamed, slapped, and hit at the woman’s face over and over as the cart kept rolling. The mom barely flinched; she had said her piece; she remained quiet and continued on; she seemed to ignore the blows and screams from the small child. I didn’t know if I was disgusted or amazed at her reactionless state. Why wasn’t she handling it? Or was she handling it? Or was she even handling it masterfully?
WAIT.
WAIT.
WAIT.
That WASN’T me standing in the cleaning aisle at Target watching this exchange go down…
It was me pushing the cart with the screaming and hitting toddler!!
You got it.
ME.
This happened to me with my very first in-house toddler, the older sibling to our first foster placement.
What really happened was: I marched past the cleaning aisle and abandoned the soap I also needed because I just had to GET OUT OF THERE.
True story.
The seemingly innocuous trip to Target was a big day for my parenting life. The funny thing is that I always remember it as an OBSERVER, like I had watched it all go down instead of having experienced it first hand.
I do remember feeling helpless. I was new to parenting this toddler, I didn’t know her triggers. I didn’t know HOW to handle the whole thing. So I didn’t. I bought the vitamins and left. By the time I started checking out, she was mostly done anyways.
Sometimes I wonder if I asked too much of that 2 year old on that fateful trip to Target. However, I also think giving in to her in that moment wouldn’t have made much of a difference, and it was better to hold the boundary.
I have never viewed other moms with screaming kids in tow at the store the same again.
Heaven only knows what their child has been through, what their day has been like, and how much they needed their stuff at Target.
On this particular day, I had just found out I was pregnant and NEEDED gummy prenatals because the regular ones made me sick.
So let’s do each other a favor. When you see the mom with the screaming toddler marching her cart to the front of the store- get out of her way, let her in line in front of you, and make sure she doesn’t leave her purse at the checkout counter!
We’re probably all going to be there at some point in our lives so let’s try not to judge, and TRY not to be the weird lady staring from the cleaning supply aisle.
