Today, I got to listen to a tantrum at a check-out counter, and inside I bowed down to the growing-up gods and said “thank you, thank you, thank you for getting me past that stage.” I have this experience a lot these days when I am at the library or at the grocery store or a restaurant. My heart goes out to the parents enduring the rage because I have so been there. (And not to say we won’t go there again—I see the potential, but it will likely involve heavy door slamming within the confines of our own home).
It happened at Target. I was there with my two kids and one of Ty’s friends, who dutifully came along on our errands so he could get out of his mom’s errands (because, after all, if you’re with a friend, the errands aren’t quite so painful).
Anyway, I let the boys hang in the toy department while Leah and I were in another area and they were happier than pigs in…well, you know. When I went to round them up them, I noticed a mom and her two daughters also trying to escape the toy department without anything in hand. The mom was, at any rate. At a rapid pace.
Next thing I knew, her younger daughter, maybe about five, was charging down the aisle after her mother with something in her hand and huge tears rolling down her face. “I waaannnnttttt thhiiissss,” she was wailing. The mom, to her credit, kept moving and didn’t even stop to talk about it.
About fifteen minutes later, we were at the check-out counter, and we could hear the same girl sobbing loudly at another counter. Except for this girl’s tears, you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone was listening, and the woman in front of me turned to Leah and said, “I’ll bet you didn’t cry like that.” Uh, wrong.
The thing was the kid wasn’t angry so much as utterly heartbroken, and panicked that she really wasn’t going to get this thing (and she wasn’t—her mom silently paid, knowing she was being stared at by the masses, trying not to feel completely humiliated, and then headed for the exit with her younger daughter left behind to follow when she was ready, which turned out to be immediately in a flurry of escalated wails). I really felt sorry for the kid. And I felt sorry for the mom, too, and I can imagine tonight’s conversation and the eye rolling with her husband when the kids are in bed.
But I was impressed. That mom had such grace. I know I wasn’t that together, and I’m ever so grateful my kids are the ages they are because I don't think I could do it again.