PARENTHOOD.IE

I don't think I've ever been as angry with one of my girls as I was yesterday. Not only was she wrecking my brain with her wailing, whining and anger, but she decided to have a real screaming tantrum in the middle of town. 

I am usually quite good at ignoring the looks of strangers around me, and the city was so busy that few bothered to look much. As I am there forcefully trying to get her to stay in one spot and explaining (with plenty of rage in my voice) that she needed to calm down, a nosy old lady came up to us. 

She told me I could not do that to the child and would end up hurting her. When I rather calmly tried to explain that my child needed to calm down, she just kept nagging that I was being mean.

Save me from helpful strangers! If you are not going to give practical advice, based on personal experience and not something you read, stay out of it. If you are not offering to mind the child and give you few minutes to gather yourself, just keep walking.

I had to end up roaring at the poor old lady, couldn't battle on two fronts, but she kept insisting to give me her opinion of my parenting skills. At the end, I had to drag my child away from there as the old lady kept at it and was making more of a scene than my roaring child.

I don't pretend to be a totally together, always mature and in perpetual parenting zen kind of mother, but unless you have anything useful to say you will just make things worse by stating the obvious. 

Instead I fell on the lowest kind of threats and bullying, with my girl:
"If you keep screaming like that when we are out, people are going to think I'm hurting you. They'll call the guards and they will take mummy away"

I cringe thinking about it, but it worked miracles. She spent the rest of the day assuring me that if the guards came, she would explain that I was innocent and that she felt like screaming. There is only so much screaming a tired parent can take.