Lady yelled at my son, I feel like the worst mom in the world

[YourBoldCoralDog]

Hi everyone.

As background, my dad has been in the hospital for a month. He’s improving but slowly, and I go every day since my mom isn’t up to being able to follow what the doctors are saying. On Friday he was having a hard day, and my son (5) came with me because he was off school. My husband’s job has also been doing layoffs recently and there was going to be another round that day.

We left the hospital at 1pm - both of us were hungry and my son was restless. We went to a place right by the hospital since the hospital cafeteria area was very busy. Soon after we sat down, my husband called with the news he’s not being laid off but his hours are being cut and was trying to explain it to me. As I was talking to him, but son was up from his chair and playing around the table. By the time I got off the phone, he was running around.

I know this was a total mom fail, and I should’ve intercepted him sooner. But by the time I got up to do so, he’d tripped and knocked a woman’s pasta into her lap. She was probably 25ish, alone and having a glass of wine with lunch while she was reading. My son started crying immediately, and she exploded at him - her immediate reaction to it was to say “what the fuck”. When he started to cry she told him to get away from her and to go sit down like he should have been in the first place; he just stood there frozen and she said he was a brat who was acting like an animal. I rushed over and said I was so sorry but I didn’t appreciate her cussing at and insulting my son, and she said she didn’t appreciate having her lunch dumped in her lap because I’m “too lazy to watch my kid”, and she said something like she wouldn’t have had to say a word to him if I was doing my job.

I was starting to quietly cry too and the manager came up and said she was having our food packed and ushered me away. The staff was quite cold to me as I was paying for my takeaway, and I could see they were apologizing to the lady. I keep having flashbacks to this and feel ashamed at how my son acted, but also about how he saw I didn’t stand up for him in the moment as someone insulted him. Just having a rough time and feeling like a bad mom.

What news your son off school? If he was sick he shouldn't have been at the hospital visiting vulnerable people, and certainly visiting someone in hospital is no place for a small child. If he was running wild in the cafe, I can't imaging what he must have been like on the ward 🥴
Your son is your responsibility. Your lack of attention caused the accident.
Switch it - imagine your son was well behaved and sitting with his hot meal. Imagine another kid was running wild and caused your son's hot meal to end up in his lap - what would your reaction be? You would be accusing the child's mother of him being scalded and all sorts.
That lady was enjoying a quiet meal with wine whilst reading her book. How do you not know sue wasn't up all night watching a loved one who is extremely sick? She may have really needed that fifteen mins respite.
What baffles me most is that you cried?? Seriously OP. The restaurant did well by getting you out of there asap. You caused much drama because you chose to be on your phone. Do better.

The woman had no idea of OP's circumstances and OP had no idea of hers. I think OP would have got a lot more empathy if she had taken responsibility for the situation and been apologetic to the woman. I don't necessarily agree with the words the woman used but understand her telling the son off. OP showed no empathy for the other woman and I think that's what is reflected in responses.

I have been through all OP has and much worse. At no time did I use it as an excuse to not parent my children. If anything, I held them closer as my chief concern was making sure they were okay, even before I was.

In any case, it's done now and all it can be is a learning experience for OP and her son to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Erm, yes it does make me an expert. An ofsted approved, outstanding rating, properly trained one. 20 years of experience with hundreds of children age 4-11 and I repeat, none of the children I cared for behaved like this because their parents made sure they new how to behave… even the autistic ones, the ADHD ones and a charming down syndrome child.

This mother, sadly, needs to accept that yes, this was a parenting fail. We’ve all made them - but the answer is to step up and recognise it… and take responsibility. Not blame the victim for swearing at her child when her day has, frankly, likely been ruined.

Agree with this. Don't answer your phone unless you know either it's likely to be urgent, or your son can be trusted to sit still (and at 5 most kids can't).
You and your husband could have had that conversation later.
So while you're not the worst mom in the world, you needed to think and parent better in that situation.
I wouldn't be proud of myself if I swore at a child but I can see why this woman did it.

The sheer number of mums that I see GLUED to their phones instead of focusing on their kids is alarming !

This is why it's important to teach children how to behave themselves properly, especially in public.
If he knew how to do this, he'd be seated while you're trying to navigate what sounds like an awful time, and that poor woman's lunch wouldn't be in her lap.

Absolutely. OP had a bad day and this post is filled with women crowing about how their children would NEVER misbehave.

I'm a pretty strict parent, and all of my kids at some point have done ridiculous things. I'm a very attentive parent but a couple of times in 15 years I have got distracted when I shouldn't have due to a difficult day.

The lack of empathy on this post is extraordinary. And genuinely, where I live (Spain) people are a lot more tolerant of children not being perfectly trained little mini adults and understand that kids sometimes do ridiculous things. Children are treated with kindness and tolerance. I found that in the UK the attitudes displayed here were common and I never understood it. Why people can't understand that children are children and part of their learning process will sometimes inconvenience adults outside their own immediate family I just don't know.

The same is the case in most of southern europe. Interestingly, we have fewer societal problems with teenagers. I wonder if the two things are linked...

I don't really think it's the end of the world (although you should have paid for her food and to clean her clothes), so I wouldn't be at yourself up too much. We all have off days.

However, I don't really think you should have stood up more for your son. How would you expect her to react- she's obviously going to be angry if someone knocks her lunch into her lap? It should be a lesson to him to be more aware of his surroundings and other people, I'd treat it as a learning opportunity with him.

If my lunch had suddenly been upended into my lap by a kid really old enough to know better, I'd have probably sworn and given him an earful as well.
That's her day completely disrupted, as she'd have to go home and change - most adults don't carry a full change of clothes around with them as a matter of course.
You should have been supervising your child more closely, and frankly deserved a bit of rough language from the affected party... but accidents happen, don't beat yourself up forever.

So you're saying where you live in Spain a child would never run around in a restaurant causing some distress to some poor other person?
Or are you saying if this event happened then the innocent member of public would be all happy and forgiving to the OP sob story?

The OP could have paid for this lady's meal and offered to dry clean her clothes. It could have ruined this other lady's day, you have no idea what she was going through either.

You would have knocked the wine over her too?
What a brilliant way to teach your child manners.

The OP doesn’t require empathy - she didn’t actually suffer, did she, other than a huge dose of embarrassment and shame - the victim here is the woman with a plate of hot food in her lap. For all OP knows, that woman had just been made redundant herself or had equally bad news. It’s all irrelevant.

Yes we all have bad days, but that isn’t much of a defence if you’ve caused harm to another person as a result of the arising negligence. She’s the adult. And she’s bewailing the fact that noone understands that she was, essentially, having an conversation on her phone when she should have ensured her child was safe… what if he’d wandered out of the cafe and in the pathway of an articulated lorry while she was having a bad day? What if the hot meal had landed on a new born baby in it’s pram? What if the child had bumped into waiting staff juggling sizzling hot dishes or just a pot of boiling tea and it had injured the child, itself? This is why parents, no matter how distracted, teach their children that restaurants are where you sit at the table and do not run around. They are not safe spaces.

The lack of empathy for the victim, the lack of awareness of the wider implications of OPs distraction in terms of her own child’s safety from some posters is, frankly, mind-boggling.

OP/Mum should suck it up and be grateful it wasn’t any worse.

I'm saying that is if happened here then the person would likely react with the WTF but almost certainly would not then yell at a crying 5 year old to go away, call him a brat etc. That the mother in this situation, even if she wasn't crying but ESPECIALLY if she was would not be "ushered out of the restaurant".

People might not be happy but the overwhelming majority would indeed be forgiving because we are talking about a five year old. Five. And a mother who made a mistake. That, in my neighbourhood, would be understood and people would be a lot kinder all round. The response would almost certainly be "no pasa nada, son niños".

But then children are not disliked here.

Yeah…That poster is talking a pile of crap basically.

Instead of a parent supervising their child it’s now on a customer to sit and cling to their food for fear of a child knocking it over? Is this really where we are as a society? Have parents completed absolved themselves of responsibility to others as well as their own child who could be hurt if that were a hot liquid.

And also if this was a bowl of soup for example even if she held on to it, it’s likely it would have spilled anyway once the kid jolted the table. There’s a reason - many of them actually - why kids shouldn’t be running around restaurants.

I used to work with kids in care and kids from very deprived backgrounds aged 5-16. We took them on day trips to museums, and fairgrounds and parks and theatres and of course went to cafes and food courts for lunch sometimes. Sometimes it was one or two kids I had on my own. And sometimes it was 8-30 kids (with the support of other staff of course).

I will tell you this not one kid under my supervision was allowed to behave like this whether it was a small or large group. I’d have nipped it in the bud straight away.

The only time anyone remarked on their behaviour was to say how wonderfully behaved they were.

If a child had behaved like that on my watch, I’d have rushed over apologising and taking the blame for being distracted and their behaviour, and focused on de-escalating the situation.

What Op did in her response was to escalate things and make things worse for the woman, her child and herself.

If she had apologised unreservedly and offered to replace the food, I doubt the woman would’ve went off on her child.

But the 5 year old in question should not have been disturbing other customers and running amok in a restaurant. A 5 year old should know not to run about in a place like that..they're not a toddler.

The mum could have redeemed herself by offering to pay for the lady's meal and covering costs of clothes if she had to go a long way home. (Again you had no idea if the lady had somewhere important to be and her clothes were essentially ruined)

I would have been mortified if that was my child and completely would have told him/her off, and apologised again and again to the innocent lady.

The OP didn't even say in her post she was sorry for the lady and put the blame on her instead (?)

What a load of virtue signalling nonsense.

I don’t understand why you can’t watch your child while on the phone but then I whole never have taken a phone call in a cafe anyway.

I would have been swearing too! Look after your kid. Completely unreasonable. Of course the staff apologised to her.

When mine were at that age I couldn't afford any distractions. If anyone rang me while I was out with them, I'd ignore it until I got in the car or home. Did you apologise to the woman? I know you're going through a rough time right now, just try to get through it. But ignore distractions while you're out with your child.

I’d have been mortified if that was my kid and apologetic rather than picking up on her swearing.

Id swear to if my lunch ended up on my lap.

Did you buy her another lunch?

Hopefully your ds has learnt running around in restaurants isn’t a good idea.

Team pasta lady

Back rub of sympathy from me.

A waiter in a posh restaurant in Hampstead parked the dessert trolley less than a foot away from my son's high chair. Son had sampled I don't know how many desserts before I realised what was happening. Of course I apologised profusely and left as fast as I could, and the waiter just said "madam, I don't know what to say," but I'm still blushing I won't say how many years later.

It's at times like this that I fall back on the late, great Peg Bracken's words of comfort for when you have acted like a jackass: "... and at the very least, you have served as a bad example."

Reassure your boy that what happened was an unfortunate accident and the lady was so cross because she was taken by surprise and annoyed that her lunch and her clothes had been spoiled. Don't tell him it wasn't his fault, because it was, but explain that this is why we need to be careful and considerate of others in public places even if our mothers aren't looking.

Well yeah accidents happen from time to time. Very unfortunate. Could you have been looking after your DS a bit better? Possibly, but hey the perfect parents on here never make mistakes do they!

But I’m afraid that anyone - particularly someone significantly younger than me - who swore and raised their voice like that would’ve got very short shrift from me.

The woman behaved badly and I have no sympathy for her at all. You did right to put her straight. How dare she insult a child like that. Nasty cow.

Not virtue signalling at all. Just an assessment of I think how members of a different society would have reacted to this situation.