Meanies! I was sitting at swimming lessons (have you ever noticed that when you are a mom, an awful lot of your time is devoted to sitting and watching and driving and sitting some more?) and there were a couple of kids who were fairly hysterical at the thought of getting in the water and were panicking. The swim instructors were doing an awesome job working with them and the poor moms were doing their best to strike the right chord: do you ignore them? Do you encourage them? Are you gently stern? You have to run the gamut. Every mom has been there at one event or another, where your child has a meltdown and you have to figure out the best way to make life okay and not give-in. No one has all the answers. And kids are people, too. All we can do is help them be the best person they can be. My guess would have been that because we've all been there, everyone is pretty sympathetic to those times. For the people who look at you and announce, "SOMEONE's not happy," as your child is puddling on the floor and you are sweating bullets and trying to walk the line between being a grown-up and joining them in their wails, yes, you are not helping.

Anyway, so the woman sitting next to me at swimming looks at me and announces, "SOMEONE's not happy." I just tightly smiled and replied, "Poor little guy." Because the child is just scared/having a bad day/ tired/ none of my business. Unless a child is in danger and/or being harmed, I tend to keep my opinions to myself. At least until I can go home and write about them. It's hard enough helping your own child navigate the path of life. I'm not going to assume I can parent anyone else's child.

Of course the woman beside me continues to spout off her sour words of wisdom as to how the crying child should be dealt with, what the harried mom should be doing, how she wouldn't put up with that kind of thing,etc. And I'm sitting there thinking, "Really? Really? Are you really talking about this in such a public space? Are you that insensitive and rude and clueless?" For all she knew, I could be that child's mother/aunt/nanny. And she is spewing all these nasty negative thoughts about him all over me. And nothing I do is stopping her flow. I tried ignoring her. I tried saying, "Well, we've all been there," and "Well, I think they're doing their best." And then the heart-wrenchingly obese child (See how I slipped in my own frowning judgement on her parenting skills?)with her starts piping-up with, "Look at my pen! Look at my cut! I fell off my bike!"

This however, did prove to be a diversion as the woman then proceeded to tell me how hopeless the dangerously overweight child (?) grandson(?) with her is; how he screams when he takes swimming lessons, how he's scared to ride a bike. And the kid is nodding along in agreement. Oh man, it made my stomach hurt.

I guess it's easy to be cruel about someone else's child when you are that cruel with your own.

DUDE! You have to have your kid's back! If you don't, who will? If you don't think your child is the single greatest gift you've ever been blessed with in life, what chance does your child have? Everyone deserves to have someone wholly devoted to them, someone who thinks that at the end of the day, they are the greatest thing coming and going.

I may have moments where I sit in the safety of my friends with my head in my hands, wondering if I'm making the best choices or handling things the best way. But I wouldn't bother questioning myself and my parenting abilities if Mort's life wasn't my greatest concern.

For the record, I successfully avoided the hater and her child the next day on the bleachers. And the little kid who had been upset about swimming did an excellent job that day and was swimming around by the end of the lesson and the mom was right there with him celebrating his victory as surely as she had helped him through his crisis. I hope the judegy, mean parent was taking notes.