Is this a bit harsh on a 3 year old?

Firstly, if this is a one off incident, it kind of sounds like you want to have found a “gotcha!” moment from your childhood to prove your mother was a bad parent, and this is your only memory of an unpleasant moment to do that?

If this is part of a wider picture, and you don’t wish to share that wider picture (as is your right, your childhood memories and experiences are yours and you’re not obligated to dish them out to any of us), then you must know this incident, on its own with no other examples of your mum’s behaviour, is never going to be judged by strangers the way it is judged by you. The validation you want will be hard to come by when discussing it on a forum like this.

As we don’t have any more examples of bad moments, I’m only going to judge this one incident. It probably was a little bit harsh to snap at a three-year-old but in all honesty, I likely would’ve done the same. Screaming just goes through me, it makes me panic, my head hurts, I tense up, my ears ring; I just need it to stop. If you were just screaming because you couldn’t see her and she ran in and saw that, she was probably just at the end of her tether and wanted you to stop, too. Or maybe she thought you were in serious danger and had that “oh for goodness’s sake!” knee jerk reaction when she realised that wasn’t the case. Also, you tend to have to raise your voice anyway to be heard over screaming.

Yes, children do need reassurance, and to feel like they can express themselves, but parents are human and are allowed boundaries too and sometimes, they don’t respond the best way when their boundaries are (unintentionally) trampled on by their child. It’s part and parcel of the parent/child relationship; it’s never going to be 100% perfect and parents will definitely make mistakes.

You mention your mum being a career woman but felt no need to say your dad was a career man until asked later. Why didn’t your dad’s career choices require “context”? It does seem unfair, to this causal outsider, that your mum’s work choices are being judged while your dad’s aren’t. Again, just judging off this alone with no further insight or examples, it sounds like you have issues with your mother and your relationship, and perhaps you’re unpacking that and trying to seek out more examples of unpleasantness. Whether that’s because you’re weighing up going NC because she’s a terrible parent and this was the beginning of you feeling belittled/upset by her, or you’re in therapy and remembering long buried things, or you’ve had a fall out and want to remind her of her failings, I don’t know.

Memory is a very tricky beast. It’s not always our friend.

Not normal for women to go back to work… because we have maternity pay?

Maternity lasts for 10 months, not three years. I think you must be a bit hard of understanding.

I genuinely don't know why you would latch onto one memory of what you feel now, as an adult, was 'harsh'.

I can think of zillions of similar examples, but overall, my parents were loving.

Maybe you were demanding as a 3 year old and one day your Mum had just had enough!

Like toddlers who won't let you out of their sight when all you want is to go the loo in peace.

I'm guessing you don't have children.

I think this is spot on.

Maybe your mum worked full time because you, as a family, needed her income?

It sounds as if there are other issues around your relationship and you've latched onto one incident to try to give credibility to your negative feelings about her.

This sounds to me like you have been to a therapist and they are convincing you of a case against your mother. Feeling isolated because your mother worked to hard is fair enough and you could rightfully explore that. But relying on a snippet of a memory that has no context really isn’t on

I’m sorry this is something that is troubling you. It may be difficult to remember things exactly as they happened if you were three.

I'm sorry you are upset and looking back, but I can't honestly understand why you're thinking about this .

It's perfectly normal for young children to scream if their parents are out of sight when they don't understand that they've not been abandoned..

Do you have children yourself?

UNLESS something has occurred with your mum now where you feel you need to 'judge' her.

As a 3 year old your ability to understand an adult's behaviour at the time would be different to being an adult now and looking back.

What you're describing is you screaming for your Mum (she was out of sight) and getting a snappy reply.

Is that so terrible?

Maybe she was having bad PMS that day or had rowed with your dad - who knows? Parents aren't perfect!

My mum behaved very badly towards me at times - she'd chase me round the house and whack my legs with her slipper if I'd said something she thought was 'cheeky' (yet I was the most compliant and quiet child you could imagine.)

Now, she'd be reported for abuse, I'm sure.

But apart from these 'outbursts' she'd adore me.

How is your relationship now with your Mum?

I think we could all point to memories where we weren’t parented perfectly. Have compassion for your young self but also have compassion for your mum who was probably struggling. And then let it go.

I’m surprised that there are so many ‘context is everything’ (from people who obviously haven’t read the fact the child was 3yo, not 6 or 10yo, and thought her mum had disappeared)

Because I’m pretty sure that the way a 3yo screams when they’re scared doesn’t sound anything like the shouting a child does because they can’t be bothered to move or they have a tantrum etc…..
If a parent isn’t able to make the difference just by hearing the scream, then they have a pretty low level of empathy imo.

Also as this is an ongoing thing, aka just not responding to a child making them feel unseen and uncared for, then yes it’s consistent with the pattern of abuse the OP is mentioning.

@Cordswain what your alluding to is those moments that can be extremely hurtful, esp when repeated, but look like a non event from afar. That’s why you have so many answers along the lines of basically ‘can’t see the issue’. It doesn’t mean it’s not hurtful. It must have felt awful as such a young age to be dismissed in that way and basically been told to not bother your mum even for something really important to you.

Im sorry. It’s a heavy load to carry.

Your children will remember the general thrust of how you were with them, not the few occasions when you yourself were upset and shouted.

A child can feel isolated if their Mum goes to work and leaves them. Yes they might have to as they can't afford it and yes they might need to do it for their self esteem, but a baby doesn't know about your issues so it can only feel how it feels. The uncomfortable truth for you is that they can feel abandoned so that's something for people to address instead of pretending it's not a thing.

Yes it's harsh. 3yos get upset for all sorts of reasons and the way they develop coping skills is for an adult to provide comfort and work it through with them. Parents aren't perfect so otherwise good parents might do this as an isolated occurrence if stressed or not coping, but no, it's not good as a standard response to distress from your child.

No it's not really that normal. We have maternity pay in this country.

Bloody hell. I try to be extremely gentle and very rarely lose it with my kids, but I have shouted at them and stormed away to calm down on a small handful of occasions. Now I'm worried this is all they will remember!

These things stick in your mind and can come back sometimes either out of nowhere or when reflecting.

I At the age of two had the absolute cheek to start to have what may have developed into my one and only tantrum, I got angry and stamped my feet. I can remember being hit hard on the legs and if I couldn’t remember I was often told in self congratulatory times by my parents how clever they’d been to do this.

i also got a “don’t start that” from my mother aged 11 just after I’d been sexually assaulted by a man breaking into our apartment. The comment came because she’d tried to hug me and I’d not reciprocated because well I assume I didn’t really want to be touched by anyone at that time.

so sympathies op, you feel how you feel,

Abuse comes in many forms.

My mother used to lock me in the small hallway if I screamed for any reason.

This taught me not to ask for help. I was later sexually abused as a child. I didn’t scream or tell anyone…

As said by many context is everything! Having listened to my own 3 yr old 'screaming' for Mummy a lot of the time her screaming is not justified at all and it's just frustration at not getting whatever it is she wants in the moment because Mummy is doing something else or had the audacity to step out of sight! Mummy cannot be at the beck and call of a 3yr old 24/7

An isolated memory like this means nothing and even you don't know how accurate your 3 yr old memory is.

Of course, I think it’s unusual for a 3 year old to behave this way and there’s obviously a reason behind it (which is obviously not the child's fault). That’s why OP needs to tell us the full story of why she felt so insecure at ‘losing’ her mum.

But the thing is that OP probably can't even remember the context from when she was barely a baby. She may not even have understood the context at the time. I have a couple of memories of my dad going apeshit at me at a similar age and I don't really have a clue what I did wrong. Is my dad my favourite person in the world now as an adult? Hell no! Was I ultimately still much better supported and loved than lots of children? Probably yes. Can I blame my parents now for my successes and failures as an almost 40 year old adult? Not really. Is there any point causing now elderly parents anguish by reliving these events? No. I have maintained the contact that I see fit with my parents and am living a good life independently of them. That's really all that matters

Of course nobody is perfect as a parent - least of all me. The point is that it's possible to slip up and lose your temper from time to time and the child still knows at some level that it's okay to be their messy, emotional selves. They are still loved. The fact the OP remembers this early occasion suggests she did not have that underlying feeling. If she did, she would have forgotten the incident long ago.

Obviously the memory has lingered so it looks as if you feel that your needs were dismissed. However as others have said, without context it is hard to add much more. Were you alone? what had happened to make you cry? did this sort of thing happen frequently or does it stand out for you because usually your mum was emotionally present? None of us are perfect parents who are always patient and child centered. As for working, women work for lots of reasons, they need the money, independence, because they have trained for a role and do not want to fall behind in the workplace

This, on it's own, doesn't sound like anything worth dwelling on years later.
Presumably it's part of a wider picture.

You sound like you’re blaming a 3 year old here for being scared/upset when they couldn’t find their mum? Surely not. Obviously if a 3 year old has insecure attachment, they themselves are not the one to blame.