Out In The Open!
Is it just me ?
Imagine this. You are in a crowded superstore and the toddler suddenly lies on the ground and starts crawling and creeping and yelling loudly, “I am tic-toc, the crocodile! I can’t walk!”
Or Imagine this. You are sitting in a cafe on a lazy Saturday afternoon and the toddler runs up to you from the nearby play area and says loudly, ” Mommy that kid has a smelly yucky bottom!”, pointing out at a poor innocent diapered baby boy. Oh why did she smell the said bottom , is a question that could solve many a mysteries.
Or probably this. We are walking down the path to her pre-school and there is a man walking ahead of us. She yells loudly again,”Mamma, there is daddy. He didn’t go to office , he is playing in the park! Bad Boy!” The said ‘Daddy’ looks back at us and gives us a smile and walks away.
There are many more instances that keep my face almost always red ( or whatever color a brown skin turns on blushing!). I never fail to blush. This is something I never get used to.
How does a child so well-behaved most of the times, choose the right appropriate Murphy moment to turn things topsy-turvy?
It’s good to teach body parts to toddlers and its very adorable when they show their own! How cute was it, the first time the toddler showed me her belly button. But how not cute was it when she tried to show my belly button to the entire playgroup!
I dread going out and walking past any slightly healthy human being. I know the toddler has learnt the difference between thin and fat recently and she isn’t very kind to the well-endowed ones.
She also obviously doesn’t understand the difference between a fat belly and a pregnant belly. So the poor pregnant souls get judged as being plump. That is something I would not have liked as a pregnant woman and cannot be more apologetic to ones who are called so by my really vocal and loud girl.
Using public restrooms are what my worst nightmares are made of these days. That is one kind of torture I cannot push onto my husband. The girl refuses to use any one available , she has to pick the best one she says and she smells them all. Even the perfect lavender fresh smelling toilets are refused to be used sometimes. Don’t ask the reason!
But the thought with which I started this article was that, Why do I get embarrassed? She is a kid and kids are meant to be so. Why do I start getting those weird feelings in the stomach? The varying responses go up till judging my own parenting sometimes. Sigh!
All kids do it not only mine. I hope so at least. So every time I step outside of my house with the toddler, the mantra that keeps running in my mind is ‘She is a kid and will behave like one. Don’t judge yourself about it!’ Its a long mantra and hence I think doesn’t really stick in the mind for long before I start being red over again.
What are the things that your child did, to embarrass you in the public?
An erstwhile Quality Analyst, Sirisha Achanta, is now a full-time mommy to an adorable 2-year-old girl and a part-time writer. 🙂 She loves to dance, dream and read a lot!