Been at a family attraction today with my family. During the time we were there a little boy, who was Asian, aged about two ended up standing near my husband crying badly and clinging on to his blankie, alone and clearly very distressed. DH and a lady from another table both came over and tried to comfort him and ask where his Mummy was, but he was too upset to tell them. There was an Asian lady sitting a few feet away looking at her phone but both DH and this other lady sort of assumed she wasn’t his Mum because she was well within sight and ear shot and was ignoring it. DH has said he was also a bit reluctant to assume the little boy was hers just because they were both Asian.
At this point I came over and the first thing I spotted was that in the pram next to the Asian lady on the phone was a little boy sleeping who was identical to the crying boy and covered in the same blanket, obviously his twin. So I took the crying boy across. The woman completely ignored us approaching (him still bawling his eyes out) and even when we were standing right in front of them she carried on looking at her phone. Eventually I asked if the little boy was with her and she looked up and gave me an absolutely filthy look, did a lot of sighing about putting her phone down and very grudgingly started comforting the little boy. She didn’t say a word to me or acknowledge me. I felt a little bit embarrassed because I thought she might be upset because she thought I was judging her so I made a comment about understanding how hard it is to keep track of twins that age because I have twins too and I made an effort to smile and be friendly and polite but again she didn’t acknowledge me beyond another filthy look. I wondered if perhaps there was a language barrier and left it at that.
Anyway, about ten minutes later more of her party came back from elsewhere on the site. There were another two ladies in the group, so she may not have been the twins’ mother, maybe an aunt or family friend, but she was definitely the only adult in the group present at the time and responsible for the two twins and they were definitely in the same party. As we left there’s sort of a tunnel you filter through to get into the car park. The phone woman was walking behind us and she started making very loud comments about how I was racist because I’d assumed the boy was with her, but...he was. I didn’t refer to her as his mother and I didn’t just take him over because they were both Asian. His twin was right next to her.
I just don’t understand what I could have done differently in this situation not to have upset her. Ignored a little boy crying?