A mum has opened up about her experience of being shamed by another mum when her children were being loud at the supermarket.
The mum wrote about her experience on the forum Reddit, explaining how she was criticised by another mother at the supermarket.
'My daughter is holding onto the [trolley] and my son hates it, so he starts screaming at her', the mum wrote in her post.
'I tell my daughter to stop touching the bar and go to the other side of the [trolley]. She does, but that is not good enough for my son. He doesn’t want her touching the cart at all.'
As her children were not settling and all she wanted to do was to get her shopping done, the mum says she decided to carry on.
'I let it go. I just needed to get done and get out of there. They were loud, but they were occupied!', she wrote.
However, some people in the supermarket were not happy about how the kids were acting, which she soon found out as one lady came to speak to her and said: 'You know, your kids are being very loud in the store. You really need to teach them to use their inside voices.
'My kids are in college now but when they were little they were never that loud because we taught them to use indoor voices,' the stranger said.
The mum says she was completely shocked by the stranger's comment and that the only thing she could think of saying was 'Oh my God. Get away from me' - but the woman insisted in lecturing her, until someone intervened by pretending to know her.
She added: 'As this lady starts to enter my bubble (the bubble which I gauge whether I need to forcefully protect my children), this other lady comes up to me and says, ‘Hey Susan!’ (not my name). Haven’t seen you in a while. Come on, let’s catch up.'
Not surprisingly, many parents have commented on the post to show their support for the mum, with some even sharing their own stories of being publicly embarrassed by their children.
One wrote: 'When I see a kid melting down / crying and the parent looking ashamed and upset, I tell them: "Yeah kid, that’s how I feel about shopping too." Often the parent starts to grin or laugh, and sometimes that means the kids is so surprised they stop crying.'
Reflecting on the incident, the mum also said that being a parent is hard and that we need to have more empathy for each other.
'Someone once said, "everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about". Parenting is hard, no one is a perfect parent at all times, and we are all trying our very best. It is just some days you just can’t win and can’t be your best.
'We need to try and have more empathy for each other.'
