How many times has a complete stranger made a comment to you or your child?

Probably more than you can count.

I never realized how interactive strangers could be until I became a mom.

Now, stop and think. How many times has a stranger passed judgement or given unwelcome, unsolicited advice during a difficult parenting moment? Say, during a public temper tantrum?

How did you react? What was your child’s response to the interaction?

I can tell you that I have been everywhere on the spectrum from fuming with frustration to stunned into silence.

Our Family “Fun” Day

“Let’s go to a basketball game!” My husband said enthusiastically one evening. He had planned out a whole “family fun day” which included going to a local university basketball game, and out to lunch with our 18-month-old daughter.

I was cautiously optimistic.

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We all know that children are naturally inquisitive. We also know their inquiry sometimes manifests itself in annoying ways or at inopportune times, “Are we there yet?” or “Is that lady having a baby?” being among the most common examples.

Our culture inundates us with examples of parents losing their cool with inquiring youngsters, from Al Bundy to Homer Simpson. In malls and grocery stores across the country, mothers and fathers are telling their little ones to stop asking, be quiet, or shut up.

In so doing though, they run the risk of stifling their children’s curious nature, which could hamper learning and close the door on possible futures at a very early age.

How to Respond to Questions You Can Answer

When our little (or not so little) ones ask us questions, we are presented with an opportunity to explain the world to them. Kneel down so you can be eye-to-eye, and discuss dinosaurs or stars or which bugs hide under rocks or why we have belly buttons but the doll doesn’t. If you’re driving, turn down the radio (you’ll hear the song again) and address the question.

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My 14-year-old daughter was asked to babysit a few nights ago by friends of mine.

My daughter has been babysitting now for about two years and is considered one of the most reputable babysitters in our community, as she is considered mature for her age, responsible, and dependable.

On the afternoon of the evening she was set to babysit, I headed out to take my son to his weekly wall climbing class, but noticed my daughter sleeping on the couch in the family room with the lights out.

This seemed very strange to me. What teenager takes a nap at 6 PM in the evening? So, I flicked the lights back on. She reacted immediately, “Turn the lights back off! I’m resting!”

I shrugged my shoulders, turned the lights back off, and left the house. On my way to the car, I considered she was just tired and wanted to rest before needing to stay out late babysitting. I beamed with pride for her maturity and sense of responsibility.

When I returned home three hours later, I found my daughter still laying on the couch, with the lights out – a half an hour after she was supposed to leave the house to babysit! What was going on?

I was furious! How dare she break this commitment to this family who was depending on her! What kind of kid is she? Why didn’t my friends call her when she didn’t show up at the set time to babysit?

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“You’re moving?” the other mother said to me.

I looked at her in confusion.

“I am?”

Apparently this news had come to her by way of my kindergarten-age daughter, who had announced to some of her classmates that we were moving.  The impending move was news to me.

I looked at my daughter, who stared back at me impassively. Her face betrayed nothing: no guilt, no shame, no trace of wrongdoing.

“Maybe she is,” we laughed, “but the rest of us aren’t.”

A few years ago I would have been appalled by my daughter’s bold-faced lie, which seemed to have come out of left field.

The rivers of my horror would have been deep, except that her older brother had already taken me for a swim in those waters.

A few years before at school pickup one day my son’s preschool teacher and I struck up a conversation. She asked me how my husband’s job in Washington, D.C. was going. I looked at her blankly. My husband was traveling but he’d only gone a few hours away, not coast-to-coast. Had she confused me with another parent?

No, she had not.

My son, it seems, had told his class at circle time that his daddy was working in Washington, D.C. for the foreseeable future. He’d said it with such assured confidence and great specificity that multiple teachers believed it to be true.

It wasn’t the only thing that he’d said. Over the course of a week or so, he’d shared vast quantities of information with Room A: his grandparents had come to live with us, we’d had pizza for the previous night’s dinner, and he had a pet snake. Unfortunately (or fortunately in the case of the snake), none of it was true.

My heart sunk. If he could tell such off-base whoppers with panache at four, what deceptions would he be engaging in later in life?

His future flashed before me: It was a barren wasteland, full of disgrace and awash in criminality.

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When was the last time you felt guilty and inadequate as a parent?

A year ago? Last week? This morning?

We’ve all been there.

You get a call from your child’s teacher, and they want to set up a conference about his behavior. And you can’t help but wonder what you could have done differently.

Your teenage daughter is not happy, and you just know it’s your fault.

Your son is struggling to make friends. If only you had been more attentive.

Your aunt criticizes your handling of your child, saying she would certainly be behaving differently in their house. And she probably wouldn’t have ADHD either. And you want to crawl into a tight ball.

Your toddler fell out of a high chair and hit his head. In the middle of a restaurant. With patrons all around. And you just…

That last example is mine.

We were just finishing up lunch and getting ready to leave when my rambunctious toddler tried to climb out of his high chair and fell backward, hitting his head on the floor. SPLAT.

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