Being a parent is not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, sleepless nights, tantrums, and others’ judgment take a toll. Vivian Curren, a mom from Freeport, Maine, has come to know the struggle all too well over the years. But one simple act of compassion from a stranger became a turning point in her life.
Vivian Curren had gotten so used to being judged whenever she took her son Benjamin out that she began avoiding public places altogether. Then one hot summer day, she took her 3-year-old to Winslow Park in Freeport. Benjamin could be unpredictable in public, and she already knew what happened when other parents saw him act out.
“They just looked at me like it was crappy parenting,” Curren recalled. “Like, ’Why can’t you control your son?’” The park was close to her home, so she decided to try. If things got out of hand, they could leave quickly.
There were only two people at the playground at that time. A woman and her young daughter who was playing in a large sandbox. Curren was relieved. She tried to get Benjamin interested in the swings but he headed straight for the sandbox.
“I definitely had a sort of ’oh no’ feeling,’” Curren shares candidly. “But he was already playing. And I wasn’t going to explain to a stranger, ’You don’t want your kid sitting next to mine.’” Things went okay at first, but then Benjamin did the unexpected.
“My son picked up a big pile of sand and threw it straight at the other little girl,” Curren said. “I was horrified.”
Curren reveals that whenever her son had such an episode, she always walked him through it. So he could understand on his own what went wrong.
“I leaned over to my son and said, ’Benjamin, what do you do now? And he said, ’I help clean her up,’” Curren reveals. “And I said, ’Benjamin, why do we not throw sand at people?’ He said, ’Because it could hurt if it got in their eyes and people don’t like having sand thrown at them.’”
“And then I said, ’And what are you going to say to your friend?’ And he said to [the girl], ’I’m sorry, I won’t throw sand at you again.’”
Then she waited for the reaction. She expected the familiar, judgmental look. Maybe a frown or a comment on her parenting. But instead, the other mom’s reaction caught her totally off guard.
“This mom turned to me and said, ’That was masterful,’” Curren adds. “And all I could think to say back was, ’I’ve had a lot of practice.’ What I wish I had said was, ’You have no idea how much I needed to hear that today.’” She had admiration on her face.
For the mom who always felt judgement from others, it was a “turning point,” Curren admits. After years of feeling like strangers were silently judging her, someone had finally looked at the same situation and thought she was doing a good job.
The woman then packed up and left. Curren never learned her name. She doesn’t know where she lived or whether she ever realized how much those few words meant to her. She made her feel like a “good mom”.
I wondered from the start how children can be considered especially unpredictable, they are, at 3, precisely that. I'd have thought the sand throwing incident to be typical of a child who hasn't absorbed the necessity of thinking things through and your response was entirely appropriate. Your son will only be unpredictable if he keeps making the same mistakes!
