Parenting can be difficult, mainly because you hardly ever know which path is right or wrong. There's no textbook or manual for it, and parents are bound to make many mistakes. Still, it is only right for common sense to preside over some cases. However, love is a blinding force, especially regarding a mother's love for her child.
She may see every act of correction by someone else as a threat to her child. The truth may, in fact, be that the other person is also looking out for the child. A mother can also feel like no one else has the right to correct her child — or knows how to do it correctly.
In this story, OP, a mother, gets defensive when a fellow mom confronts her about her son. Maybe she was wrong; perhaps she was right. You be the judge.
A Private Text
It started with the private text OP received from the mother of her son's classmate. You know it's about to get down when one parent needs to reach out to the other.
In this case, the other mother told OP that her (OP's) son had been calling her daughter's traditional lunch weird. I guess OP's son is too young to know about a million different cultures with unique cuisines.
The son's insensitive comments made this other mom's daughter, his classmate, uncomfortable and insecure. Such emotions could get deeper for the little girl and become complexities for her in the future, so any mother would be right to be concerned.
The other mom asked OP to kindly talk to her son to be more sensitive and respectful, so her daughter doesn't feel excluded. It was a “pretty please with the cherry on top” plea, but you wouldn't believe how OP responded.
Overcoming Insecurities
“Now, I feel for this woman as a fellow mother. No one wants to see their child feeling sad, but overcoming insecurities is a big part of growing up,” OP said.
Overcoming insecurities? Bullying comes in all shapes and sizes, and it hurts that OP was blind to see how wrong her son's behavior was.
Additionally, OP thought it was wrong for the other woman to criticize her 7-year-old son for making “relatively innocuous and curious comments about food that is not familiar to him.”
She thinks he's at a curious age and is discovering the world.
Agreed, children of that age are very curious, which is why it's a parent's responsibility to ensure that they learn the right things. However, OP said she refuses to try and limit and shut him down for not having the “emotional sensitivity of an adult.”
Is that what they call courtesy (which no child is too young to learn) these days?
Shameless, Disgraceful Act
According to OP, she politely told the other mom she was sorry her child was struggling with insecurities. Then, she found some online parenting articles about building a child's confidence to send her so she could help the other mom's daughter with some tips.
Isn't it obvious where her son got his insensitivity from?
The mother of the “insecure” girl took that as a final straw. She told OP that she was acting entirely shamelessly and disgracefully. Because of how she replied, OP said she couldn't text her anymore.
Now, it looks like OP realizes she may be wrong, and she wants to know what other people think about the situation.
Like Mother, Like Son
As you may have guessed, people are against OP on this one and think she's no different from her son. A little discipline or even a few words of correction would not have cost anything to her son's curious nature.
u/notlucyintheskye has an opinion on OP's way of thinking: “Teaching your kid to be respectful of other's choices is NOT ‘shutting him down,' it's literally part of your job as the parent to….y'know….parent.”
We know. It doesn't take a genius to understand.
Another person pointed out that her son can only learn the right things by taking lessons from those “teachable moments.” If he doesn't learn now, what's to stop him from growing with an attitude like that?
To that comment, another user said, “EXACTLY!! This is literally the moment where that happens…or doesn't, in this case—such a great opportunity for teaching and growth. Learn about the food, try takeout from new places, read some books, and learn why it's important to be kind and respectful of differences. Ugh.”
The world is such a diverse space, and at each point, people will encounter things they are unaccustomed to, which is why they must learn from a young age to accept, or at least respect, differences.
What do you think?
A thread inspired this post.
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
Featured Image Credit: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock.
Boloere Seibidor, fondly called B.S. is a Nigerian-based writer and poet. Her favorite topics to cover include music, especially Hip-Hop, film, lifestyle, and fashion. She's been published by Feral Journal, Fantasy Magazine, The Temz Review, and most notably, Wealth of Geeks. She enjoys romantic dinners, movie nights, and touring new sites. When she's not writing, she's delving back in time to the underground world of Hip-Hop, watching TikTok, or visiting the cinema.