At a soft play area with DH, DS1 (3 years) and DS2 (1 year). I was in the little baby area with DS2, next to what sounded like a group of mums from a NCT class or similar, they all had babies around 5-6mths and from what they were saying all seemed to be their first child. BTW wasn't massively earwigging but DS2 was playing right next to them so impossible not to hear! Anyway they were discussing parenting techniques to teach their children manners as they grow up, cue DS1 to launch into a temper tantrum in the adjacent area as DH had just told him we needed to leave in a few minutes. Now DS1 is a relatively well behaved, very normal 3 year old, we have the odd temper tantrum when he is tired, unwell or just in a mood but overall I can't complain, he is a lovely boy. This group of mums were looking over to him and DH discussing how their children would never behave like that and it all came down to the parenting. They made a whole list of assumptions about how my son obviously had no boundaries, no consistency and was probably playing up for his dad as his parents must be separated and he was struggling to come to terms with it so giving dad hell on his 'contact day'. I kid not! I was gobsmacked - and the tantrum wasn't even that bad! I was rather annoyed and felt very protective of ds1, we're by no means the perfect parents, but we think very carefully about our parenting, give it our all and have two thriving, healthy, lovely boys so can't be too bad. I got up and made it very clear DS1 was my son by calling him over to me and DS2, this broke his attention from tantrum (all you really need to do to get him to move on from it) and he came over with DH, gave me a hug and DH a hug, and then (thank goodness!) was wonderfully cute helping his baby brother climb out the ball pit and to his pushchair. One of the mum's looked at me horrified realising I must have heard everything and started to apologise. I just calmly said (something along the lines of) 'just remember this conversation when your child is kicking off in the supermarket or park or wherever and you feel everyone is staring at you and judging you as a terrible mother, and from the corner of the place you will get a knowing smile of support from a mum who has been there. You will be so grateful to that mum at that point and it'll make all the stares and comments of judgements feel less important. It'd be nice if parents could stick together rather than passing absurd judgements. No child is perfect all the time and if you really expect your children to be I think you will be hugely disappointed.' I just walked off with the children and a confused DH and that was that. DH said their faces were a picture - though he at that point had no idea what I was going on about!
After we left though I had to chuckle to myself - I am sure I had thought DS1 would always be an easy and perfect child and if I just parented him right he would always be polite, well behaved etc, though I thought this group of mums very rude - I did wonder if we all start out a little naive?!