Meltdown: Accomplished

Unless your kid is perfect - which I highly friggin' doubt - you've had to deal with your fair share of the dreaded middle-of-store-meltdown.

Usually toy-related, but not always, the MOSM is loud, ugly and makes you wish you could evaporate or pretend the child belongs to someone else. Neither of which really works, believe me I've tried. Evaporation is just physically impossible, no matter how much you pray to the temper-tantrum gods and kids have this nasty habit of swinging at you or latching onto your legs screaming "NO, MOMMY!!" and it kind of spoils the "who's kid is that?" act, does it not?

I love F to pieces. 99.7 per cent of the time he is the sweetest little boy any Mommy could ever wish for. He's full to the brim with unexpected bursts of love, surprise kisses and snuggles, not to mention he's so damn cute it hurts. He is shockingly caring, unbelievably smart and he never shuts up (which I take full responsibility for). But then there's the 0.3 per cent of the time that I wish I could pretend he's not mine, and he decided to use all of that today. One melt-down was bad enough, but he didn't stop there. That would be too easy. No, we laid on the floor in three different locations and kicked, screamed and acted generally nasty. Super duper.

I hate seeing the MOSM. I can usually sense it coming and try to escape to higher ground before the tears drown me, kind of like when you see rats right before a major disaster. I'm the rat, only less germy and hopefully more attractive, but I have been known to wiggle my nose and give stink-eyes. Sometimes, we escape to a less populous spot, but mostly not. Today, I managed to miss the signs altogether.

It all started with the fact that we're living in a hotel room and F hasn't seen his own toys, slept in his own bed or been in his routine for the past four days. We've been eating in restaurants or ordering in at weird hours, and spending a lot of time in malls and stores because you can only sit in a hotel room for so long. He hadn't eaten a proper lunch, mostly because it's generally frowned upon to stuff food down an unwilling child's throat and I was tired of arguing with him to eat his sandwich. Finally, it was the three-year-old "everything is mine" mentality that did us in.

We went into Chapters partially because I wanted a Caramel Macchiato at Starbs and Mom wanted to get some books for the little monster himself. In we went, walking hand-in-hand (F and I, not Mom and I - although that would have been significantly less embarassing), through the Best Sellers and into the Kid's Section. Four other kids happily played around the Thomas and Friends train table. F tried to fit in with their dynamic, but they were not having it: I'm talking absolutely no sharing. He was hurt, but he handled it pretty well (read: no tears) and we decided to go look for books he might like and check out the different toys. When the mean kids had finally left, I let him go back to the train table and he was stoked.

He played there alone for about five minutes before the next kid came along. F asked him to play with him, and they drove little Edwards along the track and flew Harold over the Island of Sodor. Then, kid number three came along and it all went to shit.

"Get Mater off the track. You must put him back on the road" F said, getting increasingly emotional. He reached over and put his hand on the other kid's hand. I semi-intervened, knowing that F was just trying to maintain control over his game. "We don't put our hands on other people, sweetie", I said gently. Realizing we were about to open a can of worms, I suggested we go get a treat. F got agitated, spit at me, and then started screaming. I picked him up and started carrying him out of the store. Having skipped breakfast and lunch, I was absolutely starving and desperately in need of caffeine. "Let me take him, he's just angry with you right now" my Mom suggested.

She's pretty well always right, so I left him sobbing onto her shoulder. I figured by the time I got him a juice and myself a large, hot, caffeinated, delicious soy caramel macchiato (excuse me while I drool on myself) he would be totally calm. SO WRONG. He was worse than when I had left him. He was screaming, hitting, kicking, flailing on the floor, spitting and screaming some more. Aaaaaaaaaaand, MORTIFIED. He eventually calmed down, but we had two repeats of this before the day was out.

The reality is that toddlers have meltdowns. Every parent or caregiver has dealt with it, and we all feel like shit when it happens. The looks of pity, disgust and utter fear we get from the other shoppers don't help, and that sense of "how can my kid be acting this way?" just seals the FML deal. Learning that you can't always have what you want is a hard lesson - especially for a spoiled kid like F. I know he's spoiled - he's my only child and I want him to have the things he wants whenever I can make that possible. My parents absolutely dote on him. But F has also had a little life filled with unease and change - he's been shuffled around with me for the past three years, from my return to school when he was an infant, into our new home, back to my mom's and now on this new journey. He's not old enough to process it and he's not old enough to understand that wanting something doesn't make it his, and we both survived the meltdowns - even if just barely.

And I love him too much to really pretend he's not mine anyway.

[non]Judgemental

I have a crazy idea.

Let's not judge people we know absolutely nothing about. Let's not even judge people we do know things about - because we probably don't know the full story.

I'm tired of getting the look. The one I got when I was trying to cope with a threatened miscarriage, when the nurse in the ER asked my marital status - as if only young, single women could possibly run into trouble with their pregnancy. The same look I got from the book store clerk when, at 21, I bought What to Expect When You're Expecting. The one I got at my first *real* ultrasound appointment, when my Mom and Dad - not the father of my child - came in to see. The look I got sitting in the hospital room alone, terrified of the idea I might go into labour without the support of my Mom and boyfriend.

I've tried to dress "grown up" when I'm out with F. Do my hair a little nicer, wear sophisticated clothing. I even wore my wedding band and engagement ring out shopping after my break-up, partially because I felt naked without them but mostly because it's a little thing people notice. At the end of the day, though, I'm still a young single mom. It doesn't make me less of a mom or less of a person. I've gone without the look  for some time now, or perhaps I just haven't noticed it. I was [un]fortunate enough to receive it about seventy times simultaneously on Friday. Have you ever experienced that level of mortification that makes you wish you could evaporate? Yeah, it was that bad.

After over five hours spent in the car, an hour of unpacking, and three days spent with a cranky, over-tired Mommy, F was not a happy kid. He was both anxious and confused, cooped up and uncooperative. I was stroller-less, and we were in a mall. I'm sure you can anticipate how this story ends. What you probably can't anticipate is the exact moment that led to the look.

"NO MOMMY!" he screamed at me. Both hands collided with my face at the same time, he stuck his tongue out and spit, flailing his arms and arching his back. At over forty pounds, I can barely carry him for any length of time or distance when he's cooperating. I pleaded with him to settle down, and then it came - out of nowhere. "FUCK OFF!" As clear as day, those two words echoed through the busy food court. Even over the buzz of people, my toddler was heard by every person around us. People turned and stared.

"We're leaving," was all I could muster. I clambored through the crowd as F cried and cried. We were both tired, hungry and frustrated. He was mad at me, and I was mortified. I could feel eyes burning into me as I walked away and I could just imagine what people were saying. It boiled over in the car in the parking lot as I collapsed into tears.

"Maybe I'm not cut out to be a Mom. I'm so mortified, and my kid is swearing at me. My toddler is swearing at me! Every person in there just looked at me like the worst mother ever. What kind of mother am I to have my two-year-old using the "F" word?"

That look. The one we all have, the one we make when we think no one is going to see us. The one that crosses our face as we lean over to point out what a plight on society another human being is, without having the slightest clue what that person's story is. Do you know where my sweet little guy learned the F-word? I don't. I'd love to. Was it when he heard me talking on the phone, angrily letting it slip? Was it listening to my brother, my Dad or even my Mom? Was it on a movie that I was watching and didn't think he was paying attention to? A song?

It's not the only bad word he has in his vocabulary, unfortunately. My brother, who I love dearly, is responsible for teaching him a fair few. He thought it was hilarious to see my two-year-old throwing out words like "shit" and "bitch". What he didn't realize is that two-year-olds don't have filters like we do: they throw those words out in the moments when it is least acceptable. Or maybe they realize that it's the absolute worst time to say the words, and that is why they do it. I'm not entirely sure on that one either. What I do know, is if I were one of the people standing and staring at me marching out of the mall with an F-word slinging, hysterical two year old, I was make the assumption that the mother was swearing at her kid.

And that's just not the case, but not one of those people will ever know the difference.