at least i didn't wait until tomorrow...

i went to target today to buy mother's day cards. ugh. it was a freakin zoo. there was this little boy basically flailing around on the ground in front of the display where i was standing. the woman next to me didn't seem to be noticing. i finally said to her, "is this your kid? i don't want to step on him." and she said that, yes, it was her son, and then said that maybe if i stepped on him, he'd learn not to be flailing on the ground like that.

...

uh... so, her parenting approach (gotta love the irony of her being in front of the mother's day cards) is for strangers to indirectly teach her brat kid lessons, so that she doesn't have to actively discipline him? right. the second i would've stepped on that kid's ankle, the woman would have been completely on my case for hurting her precious little angel. i was so shocked by her statement that i lost all focus on finding a card (not that i had any anyway trying to not step on her kid). so i relocated to another picked over section to search for cards that weren't too lame. finally had success, but needed to take an advil when i got back to work (partly due to inexplicably awful traffic today).

i've seen "passive" parenting before and been annoyed by it, but this was a new twist - a parent coming out and basically saying that she was indeed not actively parenting and was actually hoping that a stranger would step in to motivate a change in her child's behavior. wow.