I’m sorry I lost my cool and my mama claws came out but when you saw my child crying and screamed across the store, “looks like someone is throwing a tantrum” and then proceeding to walk up to me and ask if something was wrong with my kid you really struck a cord with me.  Instead of swearing and marching out I should have just said this:

No, nothing is wrong with my child.  He is 2-years old and a boy at that.  He is not North West, sitting quietly at Valentino’s brunch admiring the expensive decor. He makes a jungle gym out of everything he can and he choose the Nordstroms escalator as his playground today.  After I took him up and down 3 times I told him we had to go and he got bummed, I mean wouldn’t you?  I am assuming you don’t have kids and you probably don’t know much about toddler boys so let me tell you, to a 2-year old boy escalators are pretty rad.

As for my outburst.  Parenting is REALLY hard.  It is especially hard to be a parent outside the comfort of your home.  You have to find entertainment in the smallest things just so you can get an errand done.  Please don’t take for granted a quick trip to the grocery store or making a return to Nordstroms because once you have a child these will become huge exercises of strength and patience.  On this particular today I was tag teaming errand running with my husband which is actually a real treat because usually it is me doing the errand running and the toddler taming, I mean entertaining, all by myself- I mean can you imagine?!  I felt like I was doing a stand up job entertaining my kid while not driving the customers and store employees crazy, so when you called this into question I took major offense to it.  Oh and by the way, before you ask why I would even bother bringing my toddler to Nordstroms when I had my husband, we were trying to get him (my son) new shoes, but the kids shoe department is conveniently right next to the escalators, so yeah.

The real reason I took such offense to these comments is because I put into question every single decision I make as a parent.  I constantly feel like I am doing the wrong thing and wonder if my decisions are going to result in ruining my child’s future as an adult.  I realize these are my insecurities shining through but the reality of the situation is it is the truth and I am not alone in feeling this way.  I just don’t understand why as human beings we can’t spend more time building one another up instead of finding ways to tear people down.

So the next time you see a sweating mom trying to wrangle a crying child, don’t ask her what is wrong tell her she is doing a good job because at the end of the day we are all just doing the best we can.

Sincerely,

Laura a.ka. a mother to a wild but totally awesome 2 year old boy