I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

We were at an outdoor children's museum. DD (5.5) and DS (3) are playing by this pool thing that had a narrow deck around it. It has all these little activities all around it. DD keeps pushing DS out if the way, almost pushing him in the water. I tell her to stop. She keeps doing it. So I go to take her hand and she pulls away. I grabbed her upper arm and removed her from the situation and brought her to DH. Of course she was crying and saying her arm hurt, meanwhile no marks or anything. She was crying because I punished her. I helped DS with what he was doing, and then we left. DH tells me that a girl that worked there came over and asked if he wanted to bring her to security to have her arm checked out. And another mom was staring at him. Honestly, I have never had to discipline her like that in public before. Now, when I look back, I feel like shit. For sinking to that level. But also for the judgement. DD can be very thick headed, and I usually try to reason with her. She just was not listening and then defied me. I asked DH if I was wrong and he thought I was a little rough, that it just looked bad. But she wasn't hurt. Bad mommy moment. :(

Message edited 6/23/2013 5:00:19 PM.

I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

Don't be so hard on yourself! I don't think u did anything wrong. You have her a warning and you didn't want your son hurt on a more severe level. I have grabbed my sons arm if I need to remove him after he defies me. Don't question yourself!!

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

We all have moments we could've handled better!
Don't be so hard on yourself. Think about what would've happened if you didn't react...and then don't think about this again!

Trust me we've all been there. And if not yet, it will happen soon enough lol

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

I'd probably complain about the employees making a comment. Who is she to comment abd suggest you get her checked out?? itf funny b/c a friend was just saying her kids new thing it to say ow when he doesnt want to go where she is leading or something. Kids do that. I would have done the same thing. You warned her and it was a safety issue.

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

I don't think.you did anything wrong but here's what I do when I have to physically control my 1 1/2 yr old-

I grab him by the upper arms but quickly switch my hands to his waist by almost sort of tossing him up for a second. It just looks brutal if you pull them by the arm even if you totally don't mean it that way. Plus an arm barely gives any control anyway...

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

I could see the employee asking if they heard the daughter saying her arm hurt as prev posted...

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

it's so sad, but nowadays it seems like EVERYBODY is just looking for ways to judge each other. It's just another way to make them feel better about themselves.

You're not always going to be "the perfect parent". We are human, we have emotions, we have boundaries that get crossed and we certainly have buttons that if pushed will make us behave out of character on occasion. No matter how hard we TRY to ALWAYS have the perfect reaction to every situation when it comes to our kids...it's just not realistic that you should expect that. It doesn't make you a bad parent, you didn't abuse your child. You were reacting to a situation your DD was causing that could have potentially been very dangerous for DS.


And anyone who has experience with toddlers knows that they can sometimes be AMAZING little fakers and embellishers. When my son doesn't want to do something he fake cried and tells me he has a booboo. I've watched him the whole time...there's no damn booboo. He just thinks he's SO MUCH SMARTER THAN MOMMY that he is going to trick me into forgetting what i wanted him to do.

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.

As moms there are times we can't win either way. If you had done nothing and she ended up hurting your DS people would have been judging you for that.

But I do understand the employee asking if you guys needed someone to look at her arm if she was saying it hurt. They probably can never be too careful with stuff like that.

As for the other mom staring at you, I would have told her to keep her eyes on her own kids.

Re: I was judged as a mom today....totally sucked.