When I see parents acting out or being mean to their kids, I always think I’m on a hidden camera show.
I look around wondering when the host is going to come out and confront me (not the mean parent) but me, the observer with the confused, angry look on her face for not barging in and rescuing the child.
I went to a play centre on the weekend and I watched a woman wrestle her daughter’s shoes on almost to the point it looked like the child’s ankle was going to snap. She belittled and berated the child for having wet socks despite the entire footwear area being nothing more than a giant moat surrounding some play equipment. It was raining outside and unless you were wearing plastic socks or sponges, your feet were going to be drenched.
I first wondered, “How many times have they gone through this dramatic scene today?” It looked so real, so believable. How did they get such a tiny, little creature to have such a convincing, sad and embarrassed look on her face?
The role of the angry Mother was cast perfectly. She even tore one of the wet socks off of the young girl and threw it under a chair. I wondered how many socks they’ve gone through with each take. Dozens I’ll bet.
I stood frozen with a furled brow. I can’t emphasize this enough, my eyebrows were pushed together so fiercely, I had an ache in my forehead as they overlapped and the hair from one started gripping the other.
What is going on? Is this real? Am I witnessing something that hasn’t been staged to teach someone a valuable lesson in tolerance?
The woman looked at me like we were comrades on some battle field (I wish people would stop doing that) and that at any moment I was going to say, “Kids. Who needs ‘em?” but I was so frustrated with her behaviour, I wanted to take off my wet socks and my daughter’s even wetter socks and toss them in the air and shout, “Wet socks! Who cares?!”
The longer I waited for the producer, host and cameras to come out from behind the potted plants, they never did.
And I did nothing but glare at her. Nothing.
I didn’t feel like making a joke, “One of those days huh?” because I felt like that would have let her off the hook. Like it was going to send the wrong message to the suffering child, like I was siding with the parent who was so clearly in the wrong.
What would you have done?
