June 12th, 2009

I took my daughter to the park today again. I had a busy day all day, and got home with the kids in full uproar. Since it was around park time, I decided it was best just to take them out earlier and let them run out their energy before dinner.

Not many kids there, 3 total ages 6-9. Complete angels. No problems. The mother starts talking to my hubby and I about how parents in our area suck at parenting and how tired she is of it. (I agree with her 100%) Her kids are 2 of the angels, and she's keeping a close eye on them making sure they are good with my 3 yr old. No problems from them at all, so cute to watch them interact with my kid. Very gentle and helpful.

There has been a blond-headed little boy that shows up around this time, for about a week now, and he's really rough. He's about 6-7 yrs old, has no parental supervision and pushes/hits kids. He seems pretty much normal, except that he gets away with a lot of crap normal kids wouldn't if their parents were watching. Today was the same as every other day that this kid shows up. I haven't said anything for a week about his behavior because I figured eventually he'd stop or get told not to by his parents. Wrong move. Today I snapped.

For those of you wondering how my cursing works, I DO curse around my kids when I am extremely angry at something...like another parent in my face. I do NOT watch my language around them because the rest of the world curses just as much as I do. Hell, there is more cursing on TV then what comes out of my mouth. Anyone that usually tries to hold it against me are usually grasping at straws, and know they are goddamn wrong! My daughter is old enough to know that cursing is bad and mommy has a flaw. She always knows I'm not cursing at her.

Okay so my limit to attacks or hits on my kid is 3. Attack 1 - Kid shows up and runs up to the slide that my daughter is on, slides down into my daughter (and one of the other older kids that went down with her) and kicks my daughter in the face. Not kewl, but I understand it could have been a mistake. I let that one go.

Attack 2 - My daughter is sitting at the top of the slide waiting for the other kids to get off before she goes down. I taught her to wait, and not rush it because I don't want her hurting the other kids. Here comes trouble-boy again. He SHOVES my daughter really hard down the slide (mind you she's holding onto the sides of the slide trying to hold herself there, but he was stronger so she went down the slide...that's how hard he pushed). My daughter goes down the slide, and is trying to get back up off the ground.

Attack 3 - When she stands up, he comes down the slide almost immediately after pushing her and kicks her in the face again. By now, I KNOW this was NO accident. He did that ON PURPOSE because he didn't want to WAIT 10s for her to go down first. By the way, I'm rushing to her side and checking her out. She has 3 bruises on her face, dirty as hell from playing, and is crying because she's in pain. She also has 2 brusies on the insides of her arms from holding onto the slide that tightly.

I lost it. I admit it, I cursed at a child. I said "Hey, don't touch my kid, you little POS!". I'm sorry for cursing at him, but then again this has been going on for a week. So obviously, I have some held-in anger that he has yet to be punished for doing these things. Obviously I might of overreacted a little bit, but at this point hitting my kid purposely is NOT good. I pretty much just lost my cool because of the marks on her. That was the final straw for me.

The trouble-boy runs off, looks fine, and I forget about the whole thing. I'm watching the kids play again when I hear a hysterical crying boy. I look up and guess who's back! He's crying loudly, and holding his mom's hand. (She exists?!?!) She walks up and gets all up in my face. This is our yelling match, husband included.

Trouble-boy's Mom: You need to watch your language around the kids! How dare you yell at my child!

(She didn't even bother to ask WHY he was yelled at, and didn't even approach civilly..I would have responded differently otherwise.)

Me: I will say whatever the fuck I feel like whenever the goddamn hell I feel like it. Your child is abusive to the other children, and you need to keep an eye on him!

(I added more curses just to piss her off...tacky I know, but it worked. Also, free country people!)

Trouble-boy's Mom: My son is mentally handicapped and he doesn't know any better!

DH: Well if he is mentally handicapped you need to either watch him better, or put a sign on him letting know all of other parents that are putting up with him...that he IS mentally handicapped! WE are forced to babysit YOUR kid for YOU, how about you be a parent and watch it!

(He was just trying to get the point across that she wasn't watching him...who wants a raving bitch in your face like this, anyways? Talk about a drama whore)

Me: I agree with my husband. You weren't watching him, you never do. Just because your child is mentally handicapped (he seemed like a normal kid the entire week I've seen him, I don't buy that he is handicapped), retarded, or just plain stupid does NOT give him the excuse to ABUSE MY KID! You are seriously dillusional to think otherwise, and you need to learn to discipline your child. Don't come screaming at us just because he got into trouble for doing something bad, scream at your kid for hitting the other kids on the playground!

Touble-boy's Mom (while dragging her kid and walking away to the building): The rest of you kids shouldn't be here either, because SHE (pointing at me) is a BAD influence!

So cursing now makes me a bad parent and/or bad influence? The other parents there agreed with me that I was right. They had seen the entire thing. But apparently, her idiot kid is #1 and should even be #1 to the rest of us. I may curse, but I'm a fantastic parent. I think personally she just didn't like me yelling at her kid, because her kid is soooo "special".

She basically saw it as me disciplining her child, and got pissed off about it. When...she wasn't being a good parent to start with by WATCHING her child. I'm pretty sure if she got her ass outside and actually sat on the bench like the rest of us, her kid would NOT act like that. I think it's absolutely 100% WRONG NOT to discipline (either with a stern talking or a time-out) your child when they do something wrong. If they aren't told what is not allowed, they continue to do it.

This is my personal opinin on the experience. She threw out the retarded thing to get sympathy (so we'd stop arguing with her, and let her yell at us) and to excuse her child's behavior. I think she honestly saw how young we "look" (we look to be about 18-19, but we are really 26-29). She thought she could yell us into submission and that we wouldn't yell back. She was wrong, and will pay the price again if she doesn't watch her kid tomorrow.

I am 100% right in this instance. I hate parents like this. Especially the ones that completely disregard what their kid did and yell at the other parents before thinking. I overreact to a lot of things, but if it were my kid that came crying to me...I'd ask what happened. Then I asked the parent calmly. Inform the parent that I'll watch my kid closer next time, and inform my kid that although cursing is bad they did a bad thing by abusing the kids.

I'm also slightly under the impression that since the kid ran away NOT crying and didn't come back for a while that he only told his mother that I had "cursed". Not what he had done or that I had even yelled at him. That's why I thinks he walked away in a huff and was mainly focused on my cursing, not on anything her child did wrong. I'm not sure if this is correct, but even if a PARENT cursed once at an abusive kid, yell at your kid and don't make matters worse.