"Someday you'll have kids of your own and then you'll understand..."

Famous words of parental figures in my life when lecturing me or trying to teach my why they were treating me the way they were.

I never fully understood until I became a parent, what exactly those words meant. Now, I find myself using that same line on my own kids.

A news event happened this past week that sparked a fire with me with the reactions of some people and how they seem to be saying they condone what happened to a woman and a child in a Walmart. I'm sure you are all familiar with the news article that I'm talking about. Where a man told a young mother in Walmart to shut her crying 2 year old up or he would. Then he comes into an isles a little while later, grabs the 2 year old and slaps her in the mouth 4 times. Yeah, that one.

Shopping at Walmart is always an adventure(well, shopping anywhere there are people can be one but Wally World is a story all in itself lol). We all know it isn't the highest of high class shopping centers but its where you'll find a mix population of people. Young and old. Single and married. Parents and non-parents. Normal sounds of the store include but are not limited to check out line scanners beeping, squeaky shopping carts, "Attention Walmart Shoppers" over the PA system and of course the beautiful sounds of children running, playing, crying and occasionally you get a screamer. You sometimes shake your head and move on and sometimes if you run into the screamer and his/her parents you ignore them or you glance at the parent like "dude, come on now." For the most part, I just leave well enough alone. Probably because I myself have gone through a few temper tantrums myself with one of my own. Robbie used to throw himself on the ground and bang his head into walls(he would run full force into a freaking wall!!!) and pavement. I would go nuts trying to figure out how to stop him. Finally I just learned to ignore his tantrums and put him into bed where he couldn't hurt himself. If we were out, Id lock him in his stroller and let him scream. What more can you do? Ive learned to tune my kids out if Ive exhausted all my options. If people don't like it, oh fucking well. Walk away or go shop elsewhere. I DON'T hit my kids. I can count the number of times Ive hit my kids on one hand.

Does my lack of hitting or ignoring my kid during a crying fit make me a bad parent?? Does it mean my children are brats and are uncontrollable?? NO! My children are probably more behaved then 90% of kids out there that are their age. But, I don't lose sight that my children are just that, CHILDREN. Innocent little people who are still learning how to express themselves and how to function in society.

Now, the issues that I'm having with peoples reactions comes from comments that some make about how the child deserved it and how the mother wasn't doing her job as a parent. People making these judgements don't have children of their own or if they do, they obviously need to write a book on perfect parenting because Ill be damned is they haven't gone through at least one episode of the "Crying child" in a public store at one time or another.

Children cry. Children throw tantrums. I know this after having 3 kids. You can be the best parent in the world and try every tactic written in every parenting book but you cannot stop a child from throwing a fit by hitting them. The man who hit this little defenseless 2 year old was not even the child's guardian or parent. He was some asshole having a bad day that saw a weak moment in someone else and took advantage of it. The mother did nothing wrong in the way she was handling her own child. Its no ones business to tell her how to manage her kid unless her child was in danger or was causing someone else harm. That man had NO right what so ever to come near that woman and her offspring.

Had that happened to me, I would of given him a dose of his own poison. Id like to see someone try and tell me to shut my kid up or they'd do it for me. You wouldn't get within 10 feet of my child before you had a hard object upside your head. Its is my duty to protect my children from idiots like this guy and the idiots who are saying what he did wasn't so bad and that the child needed it. Who the hell are you to say that a child who cant defend themselves or even communicate with you other then crying, deserves to be hit in the manner that this man hit this 2 year old baby?

People are so quick to pass judgement on a parent with a screaming child. "Oh look at that, that mother cant even handle her own kid." "Some people don't know how to be parents. Look at the way her kid is screaming and crying." Jesus people!! Were you not babies once????? Did you not cry and scream when you couldn't communicate your needs or wants to your parents????

"She should of left her kid at home"... Seriously? Do you think babysitters grow on trees for all of us? Okay... let me explain this to you over privileged idiots... Not all of us have the luxury of having family around to take our kids while we make a store run. A large majority of us are military wives, single parents and stay at home moms who wear our kids 24/7. As a military wife, I moved from place to place and up until the last 3 years out of the 7 Ive had kids, I had no family or close friends to leave my children with while I went out and ran my errands. My family is in a different state on the opposite side of the country. Friends are hard to find and even harder to keep when you are a military wife. TRUE friends who you would trust to watch your kids are like a needle in a haystack.

So before you pass judgement on another person, maybe you need to step back and rethink the ignorant remark that you are about to make. If you don't have children or if you have little experience with them, then you have NO right to talk like you know how a child is suppose to act and how a mother or father is suppose to be handling them. You want to say something to the parent on their child's behavior, fine... but don't be all shocked when the parent tells you to shut the hell up and mind your own business. Ive done it before to someone telling me I shouldn't yell at my kid for misbehaving.

The whole point of this is, don't speak of what you know nothing of, do not pass judgement upon those you know nothing about and keep your nose out of other peoples lives unless they have a gun pointed at your head or are about to jump out of a 5th story window.

I'm stepping off my soapbox for the time being. But as a last warning... Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge!!!!