Judge Not?

I try not to judge other parents.

Really, I do.

Mainly because God knows there are moments they could judge me, so in my what-goes-around-comes-around way of thinking, I tend to think it's best not to judge.

I try to remember that I am only seeing only a moment of their lives and not the whole picture.
That I have no idea what their life is like, beyond this moment that I'm witnessing.
That I don't know what that mom may be struggling with, or how little sleep she got last night, or what challenges that child may be dealing with.

Because, basically that's how I hope others will treat me.

I also try not to judge because, in the absence of abuse or neglect, it's really none of my business how people choose to parent  their children.

This is truly how I feel.

It's also my long winded way of telling you that I'm about to judge other parents.

Yesterday, N and I went shopping.  By ourselves. I imagined an hour or so of mom and daughter time, where we could leisurely look through racks of clothes at Kohl's, without the boys to distract us. We did get to do some of that, but soon after arriving, we stumbled upon a family therapy session gone wrong in the women's clothes section.

They appeared to be a middle aged, apparently middle class, mom and dad, with their son. The son appeared to be an average twelve or thirteen-year-old, as he stood there, alternately looking at the ground and at his parents, as they talked to him about why he hadn't been in the part of the store they told him to be in.

Mom asked him why he hadn't been where they told him. The boy attempted to explain. Then dad told him he was lying, and that his problem was that he didn't listen.

OK. That may be considered a  perfectly reasonable response to your child not being where you told them to be, right?

What if the "talking to" grows to include lecturing, berating, and belittling, at an above average tone of voice, by both parents, in the middle of Kohl's, for fifteen minutes?

Because that's what happened.

And I don't even know what happened before we got there.

I know it lasted for fifteen minutes because, frankly, after they had been berating their son for more than five minutes and it was showing no sign of stopping, I decided I needed to look at every rack of clothes there in the ladies tops section.  At one point I even asked them politely if they could move so I could get to the rack of clothes they were belittling their son in front of.

I thought it might diffuse things a little.

I thought it might give their kid a break.

In fact, it just caused them to move, and then for the father to yell at the son, We are NOT done here. Look at me.

In spite of their less than ideal choice of location for their disastrous family therapy session, my guess is that these parents had actually spent lots of time in a therapist's office.

They used phrases like, What do we need to do to solve this problem? and Your explanation doesn't make sense. Do you think this could have happened another way than what you told us?

They even took turns using these types of phrases. One parent would stop, and the other would start. Repeatedly. Of course, any value that their psychobabble may have had was lost since their voices were loud, their body language over bearing, and they clearly had no interest in actually hearing answers from their son, though he stopped trying to provide any after the first few minutes.

What they appeared to be interested in was tag teaming their son, and they didn't seem to mind that it was all on public display.

This was not "pull your kid to a corner of the store and have a little talk". This was berate, belittle, and humiliate, publicly and loudly, in the middle of the ladies clothes section.

In fact, they almost seemed to enjoy that aspect of it.

They lectured him about his selective hearing.
They lectured him about not listening.
They loudly and repeatedly asked why he didn't have an answer for their questions.
They took turns lecturing him about looking them in the eyes when they were talking to him.
His father at one point grabbed the boy's face in his hand to make him look at him.

Wow, can't imagine why your son won't look at you. Could it be because you're publicly humiliating him in the middle of Kohl's?

And my next thought was, if this is what they do in public, what are like in the privacy of their own home?

I don't yet have a teenager, and I probably have no idea what I'm in for.
I'm sure they had some reason for doing it their way. At least I hope they did.
Maybe this child has severe behavioral problems and they've been told there is some benefit to public humiliation.
Maybe they really couldn't find him, and their reaction was based on fear of losing their child.
Maybe they're just incredibly frustrated from dealing with the same behaviors, over and over and over again.

Much of what they said would have been appropriate, in some circumstances.
In their own home.
In a therapist's office.
In a meeting with the school principal.

In a different tone of voice.

But in the middle of Kohl's?
For 15 minutes?
In a manner that guaranteed that this was a very public display?

I'm just not sure I see the value in that. For anyone.

I don't know what's going on in this family's life. But as a mom, a therapist, and a human being,  I know this:

Nothing they said couldn't have waited until they got home, or in the car.

Parents who seem to enjoy tag teaming their child with their parenting "skills", in public, worry me.

Nothing is served by publicly humiliating your child, who by the end of this, was sitting on the floor, arms hugging himself, under a rack of bathing suits.

Without a doubt, children can behave in a way that wreaks havoc on their families.

And so, unfortunately, can parents.