The Restaurant Experience
Last week, Eric and I decide to take our family out to our local Mexican restaurant.
We where celebrating him getting a Leadership position at a new job. Anyone that knows Evie, know why taking her in public is a challenging. As soon as we walked into the restaurant, she immediately started loudly crying for one of the suckers they keep by the cash register.
I asked Eric to just go ahead and buy her one. She never eats her food while we are out anyway. And maybe, just maybe, it would keep her quit through dinner.
As we are having our drink orders taken she dropped her sucker on the floor. Somehow it managed to roll under the table of an older couple in a booth across from us. Naturally Evie started whining and crying. This couple gave us the stink eye while Eric polity asked to duck by their table to retrieve it. He quickly went back to the front to buy another one, and while I juggled the baby at the table, I noticed a middle-age woman also shooting glances at us. Probably judging us as awful parents because our child has cried for/about suckers since we walked in. Eric came back with another sucker, but this one wasn't the flavor she wanted, and Evie loudly refused to take it.
Our food arrived and we manage to distract her for a minute. She eats three bites of her food and decides she is going to sit with the baby, on my lap. So, Eric and I juggle the kids around, and I eat around her. Then she decides she wants *in* the baby's carseat and tries to climb in. We quietly correct her and direct her back to her chair. Lilly is a good sport and swaps chairs with Evie, because Big Sister's chair must be better than the one she originally chose. Through all this, the old couple across from us are scowling at us. And the middle-age lady is watching Evie bounce all around our table. These people all think I am a horrible mother, and that my willful middle child is a brat. I just know it. The old couple finally finished and got up, passing us with side-eyed glances. Then the middle aged lady got up to leave, as well. And she stopped at our table. I expected her to give us unwanted advice on how to "discipline" her. What she said made me teary eyed and I have been thinking about it ever since. She told me she thought we had a beautiful family, and that we where wonderful parents. She said she admired how we had been so patient and kind to Evie all through our dinner, and she wished other parents where the same. And I stared at her, probably open mouthed, because I did not expect that at all. I thanked her, but I wish I had told her how much that meant to me. I thought she had been judging us to be bad parents, but she hadn't. I know Evie isn't like other children her age. And many people look at her and want to label her a "bad" kid. Or a "brat" like I saw in one article I read today about a similar child. I struggle with Evie every day, but I will never call her mean names. She is a delightful child with more love, light and, yes, energy, than most people can handle. I will never squish that out of her so that other people wont judge me a bad mother. Or so that she fits into some "Seen and not heard" mold. But I want the people in Evie's life, the ones that love her and *enjoy* her for who she is, to know how thankful I am they take the time to get to know her without judgment. Just as I am thankful for this stranger, who saw us doing our best to enjoy a celebratory dinner with our young family, instead of seeing a child that should have been hidden away at home, least she inconvenience anyone. I wasn't going to post about this, because I thought it would just open my parenting up to judgment. But when I saw that article today, on a well liked mommy blog, with a mom commenting on how she didn't like her child a lot of the time, and though her child a brat. It made me want to cry for all the times someone looked at my child and thought those same thoughts and how grateful I am for the people that don't.