Occasionally a post circulates the Internet in which the author describes witnessing a mother in the midst of a public tirade against her child or children. The mother may have screamed in a way that could only be an overreaction to a small child's mistake or incessant crying. Maybe it was in the checkout line. Or a parking lot. Or at a coffee shop or on a bus. Maybe she grabbed an arm too hard and in anger, or slapped her child's face. She embarrassed him. She may have threatened to hurt him.
Everyone watched her lose it. The scene is over the top. Someone should have come to that child's rescue. Everyone reading the story agrees. The comments to these posts are unanimous in their condemnation of the parent. She doesn't deserve children. There are so many good people who can't have children, what a shame this woman has a child.
I don't personally know any mother I've read about in these posts. I don't know her story. I don't know what happens at her home. And I too have been sad and horrified seeing parents scream at their small kids over what seems like nothing.
But I've also been that mother in public. I have shrieked at my three children in a voice that doesn't sound like my own. I have scared them, and attracted the unmerciful attention of strangers. I have dragged my four-year-old son across our lobby floor — screaming at him — into the elevator while crying so that his sister could get upstairs to the bathroom. Old ladies opened their doors to stare at us, at me. The woman losing control with her children.
I have gripped little arms forcefully to get them to cross a busy street in the middle of a meltdown. Someone screamed at me to "calm down," when this happened. And as I tried to keep my three small children from being hit by cars on a busy avenue, I screeched back, "F*? off!" None of this came from nothing. We don't, however, see the intricate movements behind the scenes we witness.