I’m not a parent.  I know that most people who hear someone who’s not a parent comment on parenting instantly think that we don’t know what we’re talking about.  I am an aunt, though, and I have been the child to parents.  I think that when you’ve been through certain situations as a child, this gives you a perspective that can be valuable to others.  I also think that any authority figure (even if it’s the part-time position of aunt) can give a different perspective.

That being said, there are two incidences from this weekend that disturbed me.

I had to go to Target to get some items for my upcoming trip.  As I was browsing through some racks, I watched a young girl (probably 9 or 10) playing with her younger sister (around 3 or 4).  They were rough-housing but no more so than most kids I see.  In this particular instance, the older girl was being asked by the younger one to flip her.  The older girl was getting tired and told her sister that she didn’t want to do it anymore.  The younger one practically begged and her sister obliged.

Of course, because the older sister was getting tired, this is when an accident would happen.  She dropped her sister in mid-flip.  The floors beneath the thin carpeting are hard and the little girl hit her head and cried.  Of course she was hurting.  I would probably cry, too.

You might be asking where their mother was during this.  She was wandering around but the minute her smallest child cried, there she was.  And this is what I overhead: “Get the f**k away from her.  Just get the hell away.  Don’t you EVER touch her again.” 

“What did I do, momma?”

“Get the f**k away.  I’m warning you.  You dropped her on her head.  You need to stay away from her.”

The older sister continued to ask what she had done wrong and the mother continued to berate her.

At this point, my heart is in knots.  My stomach is upset.  It’s not because a mother was upset or a little girl got hurt.  It’s that the mother was choosing one child over the other, telling one that she wasn’t as important.  That’s what I saw.  The older child was definitely at a loss in understanding what was happening.  She sees her mother holding the “baby” close to her and yelling at her to stay away.  She was playing big sister.  Accidents happen.  How can she even begin to understand that her mother was scared?  How can she understand that her mother probably didn’t mean to push her away?  How can the mother even begin to understand what kinds of things she’s really saying to her daughter?  That these kinds of words may stay with her for the rest of her life and may define how she thinks of her role in the family?

I wanted to say something but I didn’t want to make it worse and I was completely at a loss.  I wanted to say “stop!  Listen to what you’re saying.  Where were you when they were playing?”  But I didn’t.  And I wonder if that is the bigger crime.

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I talked about Dakota last week and how much he means to me.  Well, my niece and nephew are even more entrenched in my heart (and that’s hard to say considering Dakota is my child).

This weekend, my niece, who is almost 4 (next week!), spent the night at my house.  I love having her over.  There is nothing like that little girl smell, that little girl laugh, the little girl crocodile tears.

Unfortunately, that little girl also inherited the evil redhead gene that I’m too familiar with.  I think she’s feeling out of sorts and not sure where she belongs.  Her cousin is only 4 months old and gets doted on continuously.  She is aware that she has a brother or sister coming in the next few months (from her mommy’s tummy, she tells me).  She is showing signs of jealousy and meanness at times.

We were out shoveling snow and she was playing.  She kept calling Dakota to follow her.  He’s not really a “play” dog but he is very tolerant of her and has been since she was born.  Since he wasn’t doing what she wanted, she kicked him.  Well, he’s been hurting as it is and he yelped, of course.  I didn’t see what happened but I heard the yelp.  I asked her what happened.  “I kicked him.” I asked her why and she shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”  I told her that she couldn’t do that.

She ended up doing it two more times without me noticing (because she did it behind the car where I couldn’t see her).  She admitted to it when Dakota wouldn’t go anywhere near her.

I was so upset with her for doing that.  I’m not a yeller and I don’t hit but I told her we had to go in and have a talk about this.  I explained to her that we don’t kick animals…that it’s not ok to do…not ever.  We don’t kick people, we don’t kick animals, we don’t kick anything.  I could feel that fury beneath the surface but I refused to let it come out.  What good would it do to unleash that on a 4 year old?  It would hurt her (and me) more than it would ever help.

I think she understands now.  I can’t promise it won’t happen again but at least I’m proud of the way I handled it.  I think that’s the hardest thing to do.