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Challenge: Perfectly Imperfect Parenting

Here’s a little PSA for all of us: Don’t correct other people’s kids.

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Yesterday, another woman called out and corrected my child in front me.

It.
Has.
Not
Sat.
Well.

With me that is.

With my kid, it sat fine….because she knows who she is and who’s she is. [Go Girl!]

But with me, I’ve been irked by it ever since.

And in trying to process my feelings around an incident (or lack there of) that perhaps only I interpreted as one, I’ve come to this conclusion:

Unless you are a child’s

parent,

grandparent,

guardian,

aunt,

uncle,

brother,

sister,

coach,

teacher or

babysitter or caretaker in any form,

OR

unless bodily harm towards self or others is immediately or remotely imminent,
do not directly comment on their behavior in the form of a correction.

Here’s how it went down:

My seat neighbor at a vacation dinner show had one too many glasses of wine and was all up in my ear and space.

And when my 6-year-old daughter also got up in my ear and space - where she was fully welcomed by me - this women verbally chastised her for interrupting the unwanted and unwelcomed conversation she was forcing upon me.

And do you know what my brave, humbly, self assured child did, she clapped back at this lady

— ever so politely of course —

and she didn’t back the heck down, nor should she have.

My confident and powerful girl looked directly and curiously at the overbearing, dramatic lady and then back at me and said

“Do you know her mom? Who is she?”

and then she kissed and hugged on me.

Because I am hers, first and foremost, and who I am most definitely not is a drunk woman’s sounding board or a mom who’ll let another mom step out of line when it comes to my kids.

That lady got a view of my cold shoulder the rest of the evening and thank God she felt the freeze and didn’t attempt further conversation.

So here’s a little PSA for all of us:

Don’t correct other people’s kids. Also don’t be a drunken idiot — that too.

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