Kindness of Strangers?

 

One day recently, I was in the dressing room at our local pool with my daughter, after her swimming lesson. A friend and her son were close by, and he, being tired and hungry after a mid-morning lesson, was being a little whingy and uncooperative. After his Mum had warned him that his behaviour was not ok, he hid his face in her skirt – at which point an older woman approached, bent her considerable frame down until she was face to face with my friend’s son, and yelled at him in raspy tones, “Don’t you bite your Mummy!” (He wasn’t.) “You’re a VERY NAUGHTY BOY!” My friends son, all of three years old, immediately burst into terrified tears at this nightmarish vision, while his shocked mother tried to comfort him. By the time my friend had gathered herself enough to declare that she was sorry that she hadn’t punched the woman on the nose, the assailant had fled the scene.

Later that very same day, I was walking down the stairs of the cathedral after having lead my own three-year-old on an expedition to find “the princess” – (Well – it looks like a castle to her, and that’s where princesses live, right? There’s not much time for magic, and plenty for the truth later on, I say!) As we came down the stairs, we saw the princess! (In reality, a bride having her photos taken.) My daughter stopped on the stairs, staring in awe, whilst I continued down to the bottom. Then, a red-faced man approached me and yelled “Your daughter’s about to fall down those stairs while you’re wandering around with your head in the clouds!”

Now – my daughter’s been walking up and down stairs since she was eleven months old. She has balance most describe as “freaky”. I’m more than confident about her ability to negotiate a set of shallow, not especially challenging cathedral stairs, particularly given the fact that I was not more than ten feet away. So I apprised the helpful gent of the fact that she was fine, and actually very capable. “No thanks to you!” he snapped. Now normally, I’m quite a calm individual, but the rage flowed as I considered grabbing the man by the throat (Batman-style) and explaining to him that I have nurtured and encouraged every step of my daughter’s development, that I am acutely aware of her capabilities, and that I am a VERY GOOD MOTHER, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!! But – then I realised the ridicule in even attempting to convince a perfect, angry stranger of the excellence of my parenting skills, so I swallowed my rage (bitter!) and thanked sir very much for his concern.

What was going on, this sunny, Sydney Friday? At first, my mind still angry at the insults and churning with a hundred biting unsaid comebacks, I decided it must have been some kind of grumpy old person action day. Later, however, as I calmed down, I started to consider more likely (and generous) explanations for these events.

The man on the cathedral steps might have been cruising around on the lookout for random acts of parenting negligence to intervene in – if so, he really should have worn his underpants on the outside so that we knew we were in the presence of a superhero. It’s more likely that he was motivated by genuine concern – that he really did think that my daughter was about to fall down the stairs and it gave him a fright. Could he have handled the issue differently? Certainly, the “head in the clouds” comment triggered my defensiveness – if I had felt less judged, I might simply have thanked him for his help. In addition, the “no thanks to you” really sent me over the top, and made me feel as though his interest lay in attacking me, rather than actually being of help to my daughter.

The behaviour of the lady in the dressing room I found more difficult to justify – I can only assume that she was motivated by a desire to be helpful, and that she genuinely didn’t realise that her size, volume, tone and proximity could only be a terrifying experience for a child far less than half her size. I certainly understood my friend’s desire to punch the woman on the nose – her own instinctive drive to protect her child resulted in her sympathetic nervous system providing a rush of adrenaline and triggering the “fight” part of the “fight-or-flight response”. Which raises a different question – would these people have intervened in such aggressive ways if the children had been accompanied by their fathers?

Mothers come in for a lot of criticism. From media commentators, parenting experts, mothers-in-law,  and random strangers. Everything from where and what you feed your child to what kind of car you drive and how early or late you return to work is up for comment and judgement from one quarter or another. Now, I do not argue that mothers know it all or are completely beyond reproach. Simply that, in truth,  most of us are simply trying to do the best we can. When our children are young we’re often far from our extended families, have limited financial resources, and are lacking sleep. I am a believer in the village. I think there are times when a helping hand from a stranger would be very much appropriate and appreciated. I hope that if my daughter had tripped and fallen on the stairs, that someone who was closer to her than I was might pick her up and dust her off. I’d just hope that it would be without the side-serve of judgement and aggression.