I'd like to tell you about a scene I witnessed. A mother was walking along the pavement of a busy road on a grey drizzly day. Beside her was a little boy, about three to four years old. He looked very miserable and was crying loudly in protest at having to walk. Every few steps he sat down. The mother was holding his hand in a vice-like grip, and kept bending down at ear level to urge him onwards. Some of this was shouted and the words used were not very nice. He kept holding up his hands and asking to be carried. She totally ignored this and even shouted that she would leave the little boy behind. It would have been so simple to have given him a piggy back, but this did not seem to occur to her. They made their slow progress along the street, while many motorists stopped and stared at the scene.
I witnessed this because I was that woman. Looking back, it was one of my worst moments with my oldest son. I am not proud of the way I coped with his refusal to walk. But here is the context.
I had no pushchair - why?`because my son walked fine with my husband or any other adult. But when he was with me, he insisted on being carried for much of any journey. Dh had persuaded me to throw the pushchair away, so that our son would have to walk with me. Bad mistake - made a rod for my own back. But I don't think it was bad parenting.
Other reasons for this scene: I was extremely tired, having just spent 10 hours at my stall. I had lifed and carried lots of stock all day, so carrying my son was the last thing I wanted to do. My back was aching.
Lack of money, at the time, for a taxi. No time to wait for a bus.
The anger I felt towards my son for letting me down. Just before we set off, he had promised he would walk along this one road with me - about a 10 minute walk. He knew mummy was very tired. He knew he would have walked it if daddy had been there. I felt that I was not asking him to do something he was physically incapable of doing.
This was why I was so firm with him and refused to give him a piggy back.
I felt I had come to the end of my tether, but looking at me, you wouldn't have seen this. You might have guessed I was cross, but I was not loud (apart from shouting above the noise of the traffic) and certainly not violent. However, you would have seen a mother coldly and consistently ignoring her distressed child. And, in the mood I was in, if you had come up to me and reprimanded me in any way, I really cannot say what I would have done.
I never repeated this scene though came close a few times. However, to get my son to walk with me in public, I had to talk and threaten very firmly, grab his wrist to half march him, half drag him across roads, and ignore a lot of tears. I gathered a lot of 'looks' along the way.
The last time he asked to be carried was when he was six and weighed in at well over 4 stone. But by that time, I think public sympathy was on my side.