Today I was one of "those" moms

Today Sydney & I returned to Little Goobers & I turned into one of those moms that I disliked when I was a kid. On one occasion I was helping Sydney and a couple of her friends in a climbing area when three bigger boys came plowing through & sent Evelyn for quite the tumble. Of course, I stopped the little guy (he was probably around 7) & told him that he needed to be careful around the little ones. He apologized to Evelyn & went on his merry way. Now I recognized that he did not do it on purpose, he was just in a hurry during his quest to have fun.

There was a separate incident however, that was not innocent. After almost three hours of playing, Sydney was exhausted & very quick to tears. I am explaining to her that it is time to go because she is getting tired, but that she can go do one last thing before we leave. Then this kid comes up and pushes her from behind for no apparent reason (because there was definitely plenty of room to go around). She starts bawling & I am looking around for this kid & he is off & has done something else to another kid. My friend Tara is now trying to talk to him- telling him that he needs to be careful, so I go over to her. I ask the little guy (around 5) where his mom is & he shoves at me. That was it, I went on the search for his mom myself.

I am sure the last thing any mom wants to hear is a stranger asking, "who is the mom of the boy in black & blue". She of course was apologetic & looked very embarrassed. Part of me felt bad for her, because it does seem that she has her hands full with that little guy. However, he really was being unnecessarily rough with a lot of kids & could really hurt someone the way he was acting.

I probably would not appreciate seeing someone else disciplining my child, however I hope that I am always appropriately in tune with their behaviour so that someone else does not need to do it for me. If Sydney was to cross-check a kid from behind & I am not around to see it I sure hope that an adult does tell her that what she did was wrong. I will probably then hear about it from Sydney, because I am sure that she would come crying to tell me that someone talked to her. She is a sensitive wee thing these days.