Clint Edwards is a father who chose to share with everyone through social media a story about his 2-year-old daughter who had a small crisis at a restaurant, his message went viral because he is very strong and all parents can recognize themselves in what he says, here is what he wrote:
“I’m stuck in the car with the baby. I went out to a restaurant for a family dinner, and she had a crisis because her mother wouldn’t let her throw chicken on the floor. So she screamed and screamed, and got upset, and since I was the only one who had finished the meal, I had the pleasure of carrying Red Robin, my daughter, outside.
I took her in my arms beyond the bar and everyone looked at me badly, most of them had no children, I suppose. No one who had a child would have looked at me with that look that seemed to say: If you can’t control your child, don’t go out.
No, I can’t control it.
Not always.
Not yet.
She is two years old and it will take me years to help her learn how to behave in public, and the only way to teach her is to show her what is good behavior and what is bad. How? Saying NO to her a million times, letting her have this kind of behavior, so that when she passes I can say NO again.
These lessons require patience, a lot of work, and real-life experiences and I’m sorry that all those people at the bar were irritated by my child’s crisis, but you’re part of the lesson too. Your parents did the same to you, and now you know how to recognize when a child is doing something annoying in a restaurant. That’s exactly how you learned to say: Those parents need to control their child.
That’s how you learned to be a respectable person.
I understand. Children are annoyed when they become noisy in restaurants. Know. I’m living this. But before you get angry or start judging, understand that the situation you are witnessing is not proof that we are bad parents, but proof that we are parents trying to solve a problem.
What you actually see is what needs to be done to turn a child into a person. ”