Don't be a Mean Mom

I walked into the indoor play area, sat down and ordered myself a milkshake while I encouraged my little man to go and play. My friend,who I was supposed to meet, couldn't make it because kids, pregnancy and life, so I decided to make the best of it and just hang out with my little guy and play with him.

It took him a while to warm up to the situation and overall setting, but once he did he just wanted to play, and play and play! He spotted two little girls roughly the same age as him and he immediately made a beeline towards them (we're talking about 1 year olds here). I followed him cautiously, trying not to be a helicopter mom, but also wanting to make sure that they played nice. By the time he got there, the moms of these two little girls went quiet. I asked how old the girls were, I tried to make small talk as our kids started to get closer to one another, and before they were in touching distance these moms stood up and swooped their children away from my son and moved themselves away from us.

Wow. Just wow. My little boy looked at them in confusion as if this was a game. Should he follow them? And then he looked at me. And you know what I did? I grabbed him, swooped him up in kisses and proceeded to go down the slides with him, jump on the trampoline with him and climb into the ballpit with him. I was his buddy for the day.

And as we went around this indoor playground, these two mothers moved away from us each time we came close.

Possibly worse still is that the one little girl kept trying to make her way to my little boy, but the mom kept prohibiting it.

So the point of this post? Don't be a mean mom. We're supposed to be raising our children with kindness and empathy, and at the end of the day they look to us (the parents) as to how to act, what the morals and values are, and how to be kind to others.

So don't be that person. Don't be spiteful. Don't be mean. Because if you are, you're just going to raise another generation of mean people, and why on earth would we want that.

I know that this kind of thing is going to happen. I know that some mothers are just like this. And yet, I will always encourage my son to be kind. I will always applaud his efforts at making friends and being friendly, because honestly there's just too much negativity in the world and our children don't need that shit.

Don't be a mean mom. The End.