I have had two very crappy and disturbing encounters this week that have really made me wonder if I am just naturally someone who gets bullied or picked on....
here's the story as its happened over the last couple of days.....
On Monday it was teachers only day at school. I biked the kids to kindy from a friends house so that K could get some practise riding on quiet roads. After kindy finished K and a friend were biking in the school grounds and K came around a corner tried to brake and hit a child. I had to get off my bike, go and rescue her, and generally try to calm her and L down. while I left my bike it nearly toppled over on to L, obviously my bike stand isn't strong enough to hold O's weight still on the bike, she then got a nasty scratch on her hand so was crying too......
The mum of the other kid had a go at me, i was too busy with my own upset kids to really think much at the time, the mum took her kids to the car and then came back and let rip at me, about how we shouldn't have been biking in school grounds blah blah blah... I apologised for the accident but she just kept up at me.
I wasn't very happy as I don't like being spoken too like that and esp in front of my children and a friend of theirs. Yesterday there was a school outing to the esplanade... this mum was there.... I avoided her, but I did talk to another mum I know about what happened on Monday.
After school this mum approached me again... this time she was angry as, she went off that I was talking about her behind her back... and yes I did, but not in the situation that she observed. She just kept ranting at me that my girl should have apologised etc and that i wasn't a good parent. I asked her to back off and leave me alone.. she then kept coming closer and saying I was immature etc. I was trying to get the kids ready to go in the car but she just kept ranting at me that she was going to tell kindy etc how dangerous my kids were......
I left school in tears, I felt embarrassed, humiliated, bullied, uncomfortable etc I rung Kindy about the incident and they have said it happened outside kindy time, which it did and seeing it wasn't a formal school day the school rule of not biking in the school grounds did not apply.
I am very unsure about taking L to kindy this afternoon, I will do it though.
It bought back all the painful memories of being bullied at school and that I do not cope very well with confrontation like this. I do wonder about whether being bullied at school has made it difficult for me to deal with people in these sorts of situations?
Any suggestions on how to get through this would be good.
D
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3 comments:
Sounds awful! And a very immature reaction from the other mum in fact.
*hugs*
Perhaps easier said than done, but I would suggest that you
- let go of all the feelings dominating your experience. They are completely valid but need not continue to dominate you or define who you are.
- forgive the other person for her anger and insecurities, she was reacting in the way she felt necessary at the time to defend herself and her family, based on her conditioning, insecurities, feelings at the time etc
- have a chat with your wee ones to reassure them that sometimes adults have reactions like that also and it doesn't mean anything is their fault (the kids) or yours either, just an accident and an upset person. Upset people do all sorts of things!
more *hugs*
Thanks E. I told K that it was an accident and that when they happen we need to say sorry, she told me she was trying to stop and she didnt mean to crash into the wee kid.
I think by writing about it, i was able to see that it wasnt a good situation and that I do not cope well when in these situations, I can understand the other mums anger, but feel that she should have let it go... we said sorry about the accident etc.
thanks for the hugs. D
I've had a similar-ish incident - a small child ran directly in front of my daughter and was tripped up. Very definitely not my daughter's fault. Nor the small child's fault; she just made the standard sort of mistake that small children make, and treated my girl as a stationary object instead of a moving one - small children are very bad at prediction. But the other mother ignored my daughter's attempts to say sorry and treated her like some sort of vicious nasty brute who had deliberately set out to hurt her child.
I guess when your child is hurt, you do look for someone to blame, and it can be very hard to accept that sometimes, accidents just happen. Much easier to blame someone.
Can I suggest that if the other mother remarks on it again, you say something like, "Your behaviour is unacceptable."
But I know.... easier said than done.
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