They Could Not Have Cared Less That Their Kids Were Bullying A Toddler
“I was at a mall playground with my wife and our two kids. My son was 3 years old and was running around with about 20 more kids, most of them his age. Keep in mind that kids can’t be taller than 3 feet to play in this little kid playground. There was this one woman who was watching four kids, all of them taller than 4 feet, and they were playing rough (pushing each other and whatnot).
My son was going around the area they were playing in to play by himself when one of the kids tried to kick him. My wife (who is 5’2″ and 100 lbs) calmly walked that way with my 3-month-old daughter and told the women (probably 5’6″ and 250 pounds) to watch her kids because they were playing a little rough. The woman replied, ‘Ok, whatever.’ My wife stayed there to watch just in case something happened.
Then one of the older kids went running towards my son and pushed him. My wife told the kid (who was about 9) to cut it out. The woman flipped the heck out and started yelling, ‘Don’t scream at ma baby!’ Blah blah blah. My wife told her she should pay more attention to her kids and that they were too old to be playing around smaller kids.
Then this woman proceeded to tell my wife to ‘shut her mouth’ and not tell her how to raise her kids. My wife started walking away as the woman was getting louder, so from my seat 15 feet away I yelled, ‘You do not talk to my wife that way! Your kids are misbehaving and you are doing nothing about it, learn how to be a good parent!’ She shut up and looked at me in disbelief; she didn’t know I was with my wife, or that I would talk to her like that in front of so many people.
She then started to talk nonsense again so we ignored her. After five minutes of her blathering on, my wife got the security guard and got her kicked out of the place. 15 minutes after that, she passed by while making threatening signs at my wife, but when I glanced at her she stopped and looked away. I was seriously raging and wanted to give her some more, but I tried my best calm down and be a responsible adult.”
The Woman Was Clearly Projecting Her Bad-Parenting Anxieties
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“One time I was with my wife (she was my girlfriend at the time) and we were enjoying a great walk around the Omaha Zoo. We had happened into the primate area and were checking out the monkeys, apes, and such.
This one small enclosure had a climbing rope inside with a baby primate crawling around on the rope and a small girl edged a bit closer to the glass to get a better look. Just as she did, this woman stepped up right in this other lady’s face and started chewing her out. She very loudly said, ‘Ma’am, your daughter is extremely rude. She just pushed my son out of the way, stood right in front of him, and blocked his sight. You need to learn how to control your children.’
The lady being chewed out was speechless. The thing is, that’s not what happened at all. Before the woman could even respond, I turned to face the accuser and just as loudly said, ‘No, you are the one being rude. I was standing right there and the only thing that her daughter did was take a step closer to the glass. The area is crowded, and everyone is just trying to see better.’
The woman stared at me in shock as I continued, ‘She never pushed your son out of the way and his sight was not blocked. You’re the one setting a terrible example for their child. You need to learn how to behave in public because this little display of unprovoked anger isn’t it.’ Then my girlfriend and I just turned and walked off.
Every now and then, one of us will turn to the other and say, ‘I can’t believe how rude that lady was at the Omaha Zoo!'”
His Kids Ruined The Movie For Everyone Around Them
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“I went to see Avatar on opening night (for the concept art and 3d animation…shut up) and the man who sat in front of me brought his three children aged about 1, 2 and 4. He was a fat guy in his mid-thirties still wearing his McDonalds work uniform which stank of deep fryers. Whatever, no big deal. I like kids and he must have just been really keen to see the movie. Obviously the nerdy type, but a bad smell isn’t really much to tolerate.
Before the movie started, he gave all the kids some juice drinks; it was a three-hour movie and they were high-sugar drinks. I’m 25 now and the notion of having kids has never entered my head as I don’t think I’m ready, but I STILL thought, ‘What are you doing? They’re going to be crying, fidgeting and screaming before the end of the first half hour and after that, they’ll be tired and whining.’
Sure enough, it went down exactly as I predicted so I was pretty annoyed, as I was trying to get into what was going on in the movie (again, shush). The 4-year-old was standing on his seat and then started running around the theatre. Rather than collecting the kid or taking him outside to give him a talking to, the father just sat there spitting obscenities at him and telling him to sit down, as if he’s not the father, but just another patron in the cinema putting up with a hyper kid. The toddler was relatively quiet and the baby was fussy but not doing much.
An hour or so into the movie, the 4-year-old was still moving around and complaining that he needed to go to the toilet. At that point, I realized that the kids had no interest in seeing the three-hour-long sci-fi movie and that the father has just dragged them along because HE wanted to see it. He wasn’t going to leave because he clearly gave zero craps about what his kids wanted to do. He eventually relented and angrily yanked the kid’s arm (quite violently) and dragged him out of the cinema, leaving the toddler sitting in her chair and leaving the baby ROLLING AROUND ON THE FREAKING SEAT.
My sister was sitting next to me and she works with teenage mothers and deals a lot with helping others to learn basic parenting skills. She and I were both staring nervously at the baby, wondering whether if it’d be worse to pick the baby up and bear the wrath being discovered holding a stranger’s child, or to let the baby fall off the chair it was rolling about on and do some serious, permanent damage to itself. We watched the baby, ready to jump in, until the father came back and jostled the boy back into his seat. The kids were all complaining hardcore by the time the movie ended. It was horrendous. He laughed loudly at the most inappropriate moments in the movie and utterly ignored his tired, bored, and unhappy children.
When the credits rolled and he stood to leave, my sister and I got up and berated the ever-loving you-know-what out of him. She outlined, one by one, the list of ways in which he had failed as a father and as a compassionate human being. He responded with something about her not knowing what it’s like to be a parent, so I explained her line of work and outlined for him, point by point, all the things which he did in the past three hours to the detriment of everybody around him. The whole packed cinema just sat and watched him leave. At the start of the film, I was annoyed at the kids. By the end of the movie, I wanted to remove them from his care. Honestly, what a freaking loser. Just thinking about him makes me want to smack him in his corpulent face.”
The Boy’s Father Was Setting A Truly Disgusting Example
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“I was taking out one of my clients for grocery shopping. My clients usually have a whole array of mental health disorders, and this one had autism, ADHD, and OCD. Overall, you knew just by looking at him there was something wrong with him.
While we were shopping, at one point a kid and his father were walking towards us with their shopping cart. As we got closer, I noticed that he took his son and drew him away from us. I merely shrugged it off, because people not being educated enough does produce some fear of the unknown. However, just before passing, he muttered to his son, ‘Watch out for that slow idiot.’
As I passed him, I said quite loudly, ‘Wow, really?’
The man spun around and confronted me, saying things like, ‘What did you say, boy?’ and ‘Wanna say that again?’ Overall, things started to escalate, but I just stood there keeping an eye out for my client who was happily oblivious as he looked at a variety of pudding.
Now this dad was a big guy and he looked to be a bit white trash. I, thought not as big, stood eye to eye to him. I know some physical defense techniques via army and mental health training, and I really wanted to show this guy a good lesson.
However, I was on the job and didn’t want to lose it, so I just stood my ground. It was like a Mexican standoff with the two of us glaring daggers into each other. About a minute later, he lost interest and started to walk away. While all that transpired, my client was still looking at the pudding as if nothing was happening. In the end, he picked chocolate.”
She Had No Right To Get Physical With A Stranger’s Kids
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“When I was in 5th grade afterschool care, some mom grabbed my brother (who was in 3rd grade at the time) by the neck, picked him up, and threw him 3-4 feet against the lockers for pushing her child out of the way when he cut in front of my brother for the water fountain line.
I could not believe my eyes and just started going off on her. I was calling her every single thing I could think of while following her out the door, and these weren’t your normal 5th grade insults. My dad was a Marine, so I was saying all the stuff I wasn’t supposed to have heard from him that I built up over the years. We’d just gone through the front door when she turned around and came at me like she was trying to kill me. There were no teachers around because they were all inside still trying to find out what was going on.
It was just me and her and I could see in her eyes that she was really going to hurt me. She grabbed me by the shoulders, picked me up, and shook me as hard as she could, and the whole time I was screaming the most x-rated obscenities at her. Then I heard car breaks and out of nowhere, my mom football tackled this woman and beat the holy heck out of her. My mom had layers and layers of that lady’s skin caked under her nails and bruised knuckles from punching her so hard. That night I got ice cream for trying to protect my brother and sent to bed early for saying/knowing such filthy words…good times. I love my parents.”
The Mother’s Obliviousness Led To The Law Getting Involved
“I work as a nanny and frequently take my kids to the park where we do the normal make friends and play routine. There’s a mom I see often whose youngest child we play with. One morning, we were playing when I looked up and realized that I was alone with the two toddlers and her older child, a preschooler. I called for her and looked around for 15 minutes before calling the police. 20 minutes later and I still didn’t see her, but the police and a social worker arrived, took my statement, then left with the abandoned children.
As I was walking down the street about a block from the park, the mom came running up to me and pointed to the park, asking where her kids were. I told her what happened and an argument ensued. She was enraged that I didn’t just sit and wait at the park with her kids, because she just ran to the store and I should be able to handle extra kids as a nanny. I proceed to, as calmly as I could with the baby present, tell her what kind of mother she was, how much she endangered her child, and give her a general earful about being an irresponsible, expectant idiot.
There was some kind of court hearing after that where she claimed I was babysitting the kids and called maliciously, but when she couldn’t provide the judge with my name or contact info, I was in the clear. I was not privy to how it worked out for her and her kids, though.”
The Girl Was Far Too Old To Freakout Out On A Flight
“I used to fly a lot for work and often had to deal with the typical flying annoyances (crying babies, people who were too wide for their seat, obnoxiously wasted guys hitting on the flight attendants) but the one that sent me over the edge was when a 9/10-year-old girl in the seat behind me began to kick the back of my chair repeatedly, yelling at the top of her lungs for no reason.
I turned around, glared at the girl and at her mother sitting next to her, and simply asked her to stop. The girl almost immediately resumed the kicking and yelling, prompting the flight attendant to come over and speak to her mother. Less than a minute after the flight attendant had returned to the front of the plane, the kid started kicking again. I undid my seatbelt, turned around, and, completely ignoring the kid, I ripped into the mother:
‘Is this your kid? Yes? Then act like a parent and control your daughter. She’s acting like a spoiled little brat. I’ve already spoken to you about this and so did the flight attendant. Now I don’t care how you deal with your kids when you’re at home, but I’m sure as heck not going to put up with your daughter kicking my seat and yelling in my ear for the next three hours. If you can’t keep her quiet and behaved for a three-hour flight, you shouldn’t be on a plane.’
The daughter was smirking the whole time her mom was being reamed out, so I said, ‘You think this is funny?!’ and gave her a death glare until the smirk disappeared. ‘Answer me! DO. YOU. THINK. THIS. IS. FUNNY?’
The girl finally gave a very quiet, ‘No…’
I replied, ‘I don’t think it’s funny either. You’re going to sit in your chair quietly, and you’re going to watch TV or read a book or something, and above all else, you are not going to kick my chair or yell for the rest of this flight, agreed?’
She just nodded back at me. As I turned around in my seat and put my seatbelt back on, the whole plane gave me a round of applause and the flight attendant gave me free drinks for the rest of the flight. From then on out, the girl never made a sound louder than a whisper.”
She Was Raising Her Kids To Be Judgmental Little Hate-Monsters
“One time my boyfriend and I were waiting to eat at a restaurant that is always busy. No matter what day of the week you go, you always wait at least an hour to an hour and a half to eat. We were sitting on the bench by the door when we saw a family of four walking up. The dad was talking on the phone while the mom was looking harried and yelling at her two kids to quit messing around. The boy was probably around 9 and the little girl was 6ish. The mother was also clearly pregnant with her third, so my boyfriend and I got up and offered the bench to this family. The mother sat down with her two children and immediately started glaring at me.
After giving me the stink eye for a good ten minutes while I desperately tried to ignore her, I calmly asked if there was a problem. She then proceeded to call me a tramp and told me that I wouldn’t be able to flaunt my body for long (I was wearing jeans and a white v neck) since I’d soon get knocked up and dumped, and she hoped I’d learn my lesson.
I stood there flabbergasted and speechless, as I had done absolutely NOTHING to invoke this lady’s anger. Her kids were sitting next to her on the bench watching gleefully as their mother yelled at me. After she finished, the little boy looked at me, pointed, and said, ‘TRAMP! You’re a tramp!’ while his mother patted his head and told him good job. The little girl was just sitting there laughing.
Game over. My boyfriend lost his mind, walked over to the dad, ripped the phone out of his hand, threw it on the floor, and stepped on it. He then told the dad to discipline his kids and teach them some manners. The dad took both kids away to ‘talk’ to them, and I turned to the pregnant mother and gave her an earful, basically telling her that she was unfit to be a mother. I also said that I felt especially horrible for the unborn baby because it had the misfortune to be born into such a storm of hate.
The manager of the restaurant came out and asked the family to leave (a patron waiting outside had informed him of the situation), explaining that the restaurant has the right to refuse service. The lady started laying into him and the little boy came up and KICKED THE MANAGER IN THE SHIN. At that point, I pulled out my phone and called the cops. The family finally decided to cut their losses and leave, but good GOD if that woman hadn’t been pregnant, I would have straight up beat the you-know-what out of her. Unfit parenting: I fear for future generations.”
She Said The One Thing You Should Never Say To Your Child
“I worked at Walmart years ago. When it was slow, cashiers would be sent out to the floor to tidy up the store and help out the people working in different departments. I was helping out a friend of mine in the children’s department one day when a woman and her two kids came in. One child was still an infant, but her daughter looked to be around 4 or 5.
The woman was looking around, completely ignoring her daughter who kept trying to tell her mother that she had to go to the restroom. The kid wasn’t whining so much as saying, ‘Mom, I have to go.’ The mother kept ignoring her or absentmindedly telling her to hold it. Finally, the little girl said, ‘Mom! I! Have! To! GO!’ which woke up the little one. The baby started crying and the mother finally addressed her daughter by yelling at her for being a pain in the butt. My friend and I were listening to this interaction (it wasn’t hard to overhear), looking at each other as if to say, ‘Man, what a witch,’ but there wasn’t much we could really do.
Then the woman screamed, ‘Will you shut up?! I wish you had never been born!’
I was stunned; I couldn’t believe anyone would say that to their child. My friend literally dropped what she was doing and said, ‘What did you just say?’ The woman started to say something about minding your own business, but my friend cut her off by launching into one of the most frightening displays of righteous anger I’ve ever seen. She tore into this woman, telling her that it was obvious that the little girl had needed to go to the bathroom because it’s all she’d been saying for the past five minutes and that it didn’t matter how frustrated you were with a child, you never tell them you wish they hadn’t been born. The scumbag woman couldn’t say anything in her defense because she was caught being terrible to her child.
I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I’ll never forget how it ended: My friend finished telling this woman she was a failure as a parent by saying, ‘You’re the reason birth control should be mandatory. Take your kid to the bathroom.’ I could have wept, it was so perfect. Then the woman left without saying a word. My friend got hauled into the office shortly after that (apparently the woman complained to management on the way out), but she said she was completely justified in what she did and would do it again. The manager told her that he agreed with her, gave her a warning, and said, ‘Good job.'”
He Didn’t Even Have The Energy To Deal With Such A Moron
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“As I was entering a grocery store after a hard day of dealing with a megalomaniacal boss, I stopped as I noticed a child of 2 stomping merrily along far in front of his mother, looking back over his shoulder instead of where he was going. Like some kind of self injury-seeking missile (as I now understand toddlers to be), he made a beeline for my shins with a full head of steam, his head turning back to face me and recognize the obstruction in the same instant he struck me face first.
The impact barely registered on my stationary 6-foot frame, but few face-to-kneecap interactions aren’t pleasant and this one sent him onto his diapered butt. As the crying began, his mother’s maternal instinct rematerialized and she swooped down to his side. I was still somewhat in shock, not from the force of the blow, titanic as it must have seemed to the child, but from the surreal nature of the situation.
A moment later, it got worse when the mother looked up at me and demanded, ‘What’s your problem?!’ Her expression conveyed that she was attempting to set me on fire with her mind.
As I snapped back to reality, my mind darted in several directions. ‘Her child ran into me, not I into it! Her lack of parenting and oversight skills is my problem?! I’m no baby-hitting monster! How best to convey my righteous indignation?’ The following string flowed from my mouth, verbatim, remembered in detail to this day: ‘Lady, it’s been a long day, and I don’t have the anger or the energy left to respond to in a way that meets my needs at this point. So, let’s just say I came up with something witty that insulted both your child’s intelligence and your ability as a parent, that you got righteously indignant and stalked off, and we’ll call it even. Deal?’ I can only assume she accepted the deal because an indignant huff was all I got in response.”