Wednesday, September 2, 2009

What Would YOU Do?

Today my friend Kelli and I went to the park to let the kids play and have a picnic. Sounds nice right? It was, until this woman who was trying to get her little girl to leave the playground started crying because she didn't want to go yet. This lady was yelling for her to "come on, we're leaving now" to screaming at her to get into the car. This screaming was head turning and of course people are going to look because of how out of control she got from a 2 year olds tantrum. As the woman is putting her baby in the car seat she is SCREAMING at the girl to shut up and get in the car and soon comes around and grabs her extremely rough to put her in the car seat SCREAMING "Shut up! The world doesn't need to hear you cry!" It gets worse...she gets in the car and peels out and drives past Kelli and I and flips us off! Speeds off, erratically out of the parking lot. It was really shocking. Now my question is what would you have done? I am kicking myself because I really feel like I should have intervened on behalf of the child because of the way she was being treated for what was really a normal behavior for a kid that age, so what is going on in private if that was that lady's public display of discipline? Next, I should have gotten her license plate number for her erratic driving and endangering her two children all because she is upset that people were looking at her for her all sorts of crazy behavior. If you have ever watched Primetime:What would you do? They have actors to play out those type of situations to see what people would really do if they saw something abusive, neglectful or dangerous going on. I failed miserably. I was just waiting for the host to come out and ask, why didn't you step in and help? I just hope the little kids are ok and their mother may come to a realization that what she is doing is NOT at all acceptable.