Bad Parent Sightings: Bullying Mom in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
As readers of my main blog know, my wife was recently out of town covering the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. She came back last Sunday via a direct flight from Toronto. As misfortune would have it, she hadn’t had her feet back on American soil for more than 30 minutes when she and I were both witness to a Bad Parent Sighting.
As we were leaving the baggage terminal of Seatac International Airport, we saw a mom, a grandma, and a little boy no more than three years old walk past us. The boy was doing nothing more than fooling around with a balloon - tugging at it, letting it go, re-catching it, and skipping a few feet ahead of the adults. His mother snapped, tore the balloon out of his hand, and kicked him hard in the ass. Not a love-tap, mind you - a forceful boot that almost sent him to the ground.
Being a pussy when it comes to confrontation, I was content to let it go and just write it up later. Not so my wife. She spun around, looked the mom in the eye, and said, “Hey! You don’t treat a child like that! That’s not right.” To our surprise, the grandma nodded furiously and said, “Yeah!” To our even greater surprise, the mom bowed her head and muttered, “Sorry.” Kim said she seemed genuinely chagrined by the experience.
Let that be a lesson to us all. Sometimes, speaking out against slappy parenting will earn you nothing but an insult and an admonition to “mind your own damn business”. But occasionally, you may end up changing the way someone treats their kid.
(That’s the brightest ray of sunshine you’ll find on this blog for a while, folks. Bask in it while you can.)
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Tags: airport, bad-parent-sighting, seatac, seattle, washington-stateRelated Stories
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6 opinions for Bad Parent Sightings: Bullying Mom in Seattle-Tacoma International Airport
Hsien Lei
Sep 30, 2006 at 8:08 am
Hooray for Kim! And a smaller hooray for you for writing it up. ;)
Ava
Oct 18, 2006 at 9:14 am
OMG, it has a happy ending-that almost never happens in stories of this nature… YAY!
Now if only we could do that to the other millions and millions of… yeah-well yay for this time!
The Zero Boss
Oct 18, 2006 at 10:08 am
Yeah Ava, it’s nice to run into these stories once in a blue moon.
Francine Piatigorski
Nov 1, 2006 at 7:50 pm
What a crazy bitch who kicked her son! Good thing your wife scolded her for doing such a thing like that!
larissa
Aug 8, 2007 at 3:56 am
lol. Everyone should keep that in mind when you witness something like that. sometimes the parent themselves just needs a “kick in the ass”.
rockdoll_71
Oct 17, 2007 at 3:17 am
Good for her…
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