Many things have happened that are really funny when I look back on them, but they did not seem so funny at the time they were happening.
The funniest one of that type that I can think of right now, is the lady who came up to our table in Wendy's to criticize my parenting abilities and she actually sat down with us. She objected to me holding my daughter's wrists, which I was doing only because she had just hit someone, and I tried explaining this to the lady. She kept on and on, so I eventually let go of my daughter's wrists and my daughter immediately chucked her chocolate Frosty at the lady's face. The way the lady looked with Frosty dripping from her hair, down her face, onto her shirt was pretty comical, looking back on it even though I was mortified at the time.
That is priceless to bad you don't have a video. How did the lady react?
She was actually pretty nice about it, all things considered. My husband took our daughter to the car and I tried to help the lady with the chocolate Frosty face by giving her all the napkins from the table and I kept talking to her for another two or three minutes. It turned out that she had two younger autistic brothers and she had been upset by her parents' discipline of them, which she considered too harsh. She kept saying something about an action causing an equal but opposite reaction. I explained that we used lots of positive discipline methods too, but I needed to hold our daughter's hands when she was out of control because otherwise she could do something that could get her into really bad trouble, like this.
Have you ever had strangers come up to you and critique your parenting techniques before?
That is an awesome story.
I had a guy call my kids brats once, but they kind of deserved it.
I never use cream in coffee, but my wife does. We, the four of us, were sitting in a Cracker Barrel restaurant, fairly late one night, and my son got the idea that he could partially open one of those little half ounce cream containers and it would make a good squirter. He was right. They both squirted each other and I stopped it as fast as I could, but this guy in the next booth made some snide comments to his party. I ignored it and thought it was over, but my son who was six at the time, loaded up and blasted the fucker, "I'm not a brat!" he said as he turned and sprayed this guy from eyeglasses to fancy shoes, all down his very fancy three-piece suit.
He stood up, so I stood up and said that it was an accident. He said, "What kind of accident do you call that?" and I said, "An unfortunate one." (The best I had at the moment) I had a biscuit in one hand and a butter knife in the other and he was acting like he wanted to back down, but glance/checked with his buddies and they were all snickering at the situation.
About that time my wife, who was stunned and speechless, let out a miserable, "NO!," but it was too late. My daughter, four at the time, nailed this guy in the chest and across his vest and crotch once again and said, "I'm no brat either!!" He was really pissed, but I told him he could have my biscuit if he would let it go, trying to make light of it and his friends all busted out laughing.
He said I needed to control my kids and I said he needed to control his friends as they were making a disturbance. He finally smiled at my son, who was glaring at him, and shrugged. He said that he never had this trouble with his grandkids and I told him they were MY kids and that I was very sorry.
They were done, anyway, and we had just arrived, so they all left, with a little prompting and apologies from the manager, who had rushed over to find out why two of his patrons were facing off. I really didn't know what else to do or say to the guy, but that I was sorry.
Chldren were "grounded" and we did not go out again for a long time. Later that summer, after we had had a number of conversations about proper behavior in a public restaurant, I re-directed his instinctive understanding of fluid dynamics and made little water blasters out of those long, skinny, plastic frozen fruit pop containers. They were fine as long as they understood that they could use them in the pool or the back yard, but not inside the house and never pointed at anyone who was not ready to go for a swim!
