Inaction Regret

I originally shared this with another site in February of this year. Still thinking about it, so I’m posting it here.

I work eight hours a day at a job that lately I only partially like. I get home and the job that I usually love starts. I say usually because like every parent, I get tired. I get frustrated that things that are routine for us are not being done. These kids know when homework time is. They know when they’re allowed to get on the computer or have a snack and they know that we dance after it’s all done.

But there are days. There are days when these same children are not listening, sneaking grapes five minutes before their plates hit the table, going online under the guise of research for homework, but nosy mommy sees a separate tab with Stardoll open. They have on the iPod dancing hard to PYT before their homework is finished or before they do something I asked be done 10 minutes ago. I am short with them. Frequently. And I’m working on it (mainly because I pretend in my head that we are in a secret Truman Show-like existence and I don’t want people to see me yell at my kids (or eat that piece of chicken I dropped on the floor. I still do both. I am still working on both)).

But one thing that I absolutely refuse to do: yell at my children in public. Embarrassing them is different. I do this repeatedly when I purposely sing Whitney in the grocery store or dance entire portions of Janet’s Rhythm Nation video in Target: sing it up!

I also find it hard to sympathize with parents who do yell at their children within earshot of others. Don’t get me wrong; I get irritated with my kids’ behavior in public just as much as I do at home. But I remind myself that they are children (especially the two-year-old. It’s hard to remember this in the moment of a meltdown consisting of “Give it back! Myyyyyyyyyyy toy-eeeeee!” but I do it nonetheless). Now understand. By saying I do not yell at them in public, I am not saying that I do not pull them to the side and speak a few straighten your ass up words. I do. What I don’t do is say “Shut up, you’re getting on my last damn nerve; we are not going to the bathroom” when my child says she has to pee.

There were two bathroom related situations I encountered on the same day a few weeks ago in Target. The first is dialogue I overheard an aisle over from me. I was alone, enjoying the bliss of no child asking for toys, no child asking for new shoes, no child asking for colored skinny jeans, no child asking for something, anything, so that she’s not going home empty handed — Mommy there are so many things! Perhaps being alone, with the silence of minus-a-child, I became more attuned to the little girl’s pleas to pee. She was repeating it: “I have to pee, please, I have to go to the bathroom nowwwwwwww-uh.”

Mother: Shut it up! I told you no.

(Her mom is busy going through a clothes rack)

Girl: I have to pee, please, I have to go to the bathroom nowwwwwwww-uh.

Mother: Don’t make me smack you!

Girl: I have to pee, please, I have to go to the bathroom nowwwwwwww-uh.

Mother: Destiny! You are on my last damn nerve. Shut up! God. Just shut up. And you better not pee on yourself.

Hmm. Child has to pee. Child asks to pee. Child begs to pee. Child is likely going to pee right there based on the quickness of the pee-pee dance she’s doing. I want to help the mom, I do. I want to offer to take the girl to the bathroom for her. I want to offer to stay with the younger child for her. I want to do something to make whatever is stressing her better. And yet I say nothing. I walk away, feeling sorry for the little girl, feeling angry at her mother. I can’t say, “I’ll take her to the bathroom for you” without sounding creepy. Besides, the mom wasn’t doing anything at that moment that was keeping her from taking the girl to the bathroom. They weren’t in line. She wasn’t dealing with the other child.

Maybe, like the second situation, they’d already visited the bathroom. When I encountered the second woman (again with a little girl asking to go to the rest room), I tried to be less judgmental. But once again, the mother was simply refusing to take her to the bathroom: “You should have gone while we were in there. Now you’ll just have to hold it. And you’d better not pee on yourself.” Sounds familiar. She should go upstairs so at least the little girls can do the pee-pee dance together.

Girl: I have to go bad, Mommy.

Mother: Stand still. Right now. If you leave this aisle you’ll regret it. Stand still. Now.

Girl: But I really have to go now.

Mother: You should have gone then. Turn around and come back here. Do you need me to spank you right here?

Girl: Noooooooo! I just have to use the bathroom.

Mother (grabs her arm, pulls her close to her face, shouting): You will wait until I am done. Otherwise I will spank you right here. I told you to use the bathroom when I went. You chose not to, so –

Girl: I didn’t have to go.

Mother: It was just five minutes ago. If you have to go this badly now, you had to go then. You will wait.

And then. Then she forcibly sat her now crying daughter on the floor, stepped around her, and continued to peruse gift bags.

Both of these girls were at least six years old. I don’t know them or their mothers. But I do know that a six-year-old is capable of saying whether she has to pee or not — and when. I don’t know what else these women were dealing with, whether the girls were pee pretenders saying they needed to go when they really didn’t. I will never know. All I know is that I wanted to do something in both instances (although the second would have likely resulted in my arrest) and I did nothing.

I don’t know what I should have done; I’m still conflicted over whether I should have/could have done anything. I still think of these little girls, seeing the hurt on their faces caused by their mothers. I find myself speaking sharply to my daughters and seeing their faces fall similarly. How were the mothers immune to that? That look, that realization that I have singlehandedly caused that look? It forces me to jump into their shoes, be present in that moment and see the situation with a different perspective. It’s hard and it doesn’t always work, but I keep trying (and again, I don’t know what the mothers were dealing with or whether the daughters did this routinely).

I am not better than either of these mothers. I am not better than any mother. I am getting better at being the mother I want to be. And that includes having my frustration level at its highest: tired of their bickering, hot from being overdressed because Mother Nature hates us and meteorologists smoke crack, hungry because I fed them but didn’t eat, angry that what I need is sold out. It also includes knowing, even in those ‘whose kids are these’ moments, that pee soaked clothes is not worth scoring the last Hello Kitty t-shirt or ugly neon green gift bag.