“It Is Hard to Be a Parent, Isn’t It?”
I’ve appreciated the posts in which people have described how they’ve connected with parents who are being pulled by their distress to mistreat their children.
Once I was walking down a busy street. A young boy was refusing to stay close to his mother. She was yelling at him, and it looked like she was about to shake or hit him. I quickly moved close to her and said, “It is hard to be a parent, isn’t it?” The mom looked at me and then talked about how hard it was to parent her son. She told me she was worried about his safety. I listened. Then I said I could see that he was a delightful boy and I could imagine it being hard to keep up with him [to be as energetic as he was]. She smiled warmly and held his hand, and it looked like he was better able to stay close to her.
Another time I was at Walmart [a large U.S. store] and saw a mom yelling at her young daughter who was trying to get out of the shopping cart. Again I said those simple words: “It is hard to be a parent, isn’t it?” She told me how tired she was. She had worked a long day, and now she had to shop at Walmart because they had no food for dinner. She just wanted to be with her child instead of shopping. I said it was wrong that her full-time job meant she had to be away from her daughter all day and then go out shopping. She smiled and said, “You got that.” [“You understand that.”]
Sometimes when I can’t move close to a parent who’s hurting their child, I shout out, “Hey, it is hard to be a parent, isn’t it?” That always stops them in their tracks [stops them immediately], and I usually get at least a smile.
I am a white woman. When I intervene with Indigenous and Global Majority parents, I try to do it in a way that contradicts racism. With white parents, I try to contradict the internalized oppression that divides us from each other.
Once at a family gathering, my daughter (age two then) refused to let me talk with the other adults. I spoke harshly to her and squeezed her arms as I picked her up. I wish there had been an ally there who had said to me, “It is hard to be a parent, isn’t it?”
USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of parents
(Present Time 209, October 2022)