Yesterday around rush hour I was getting ready to go out when I heard a commotion outside. Few things draw my attention more than a commotion outside.
This is what I heard:
“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!!! OPEN THE GODDAMNED FUCKING DOOR!!!”
I looked out my goddamned fucking window and this is what I saw:
A woman hauling a violently vomiting child out of the back seat of a car. The child continued to puke all over the road while the mother went ballistic.
“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING JUST SITTING THERE AND PUKING ALL OVER THE FUCKING CAR?? WHY THE HELL DIDN’T YOU OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR AND PUKE ON THE FUCKING ROAD?? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU FUCKING PUKING ANYWAY??”
ETCETERA!
Two boys emerged from the car. All three kids were about ten to thirteen years old.
The mother, fueled by rage, took control of the situation and cleaned things up, ranting and raging the whole time. She cleaned out the back of the car, and she found something in the trunk to wrap all the pukey things in.
She then proceeded to strip the child down to her underwear, right there on the side of the road!
The kid was mortified, of course, as any eleven year old girl would be at the prospect of being stripped on the side of a busy street in broad daylight. She begged her mother – in a panicky voice – not to do it (“Mom, please, people can see me, please mom please don’t”) but her mother was in full-scale high-efficiency bitch mode, and she snapped at her daughter to stand still and told her it was her own damned fault for puking all over herself like a baby.
The kid had a choice: submit to the most humiliating thing an 11-year-old can imagine, or rebel against her furious mother.
She submitted. She sobbed and looked around frantically to see who might be watching, and she tried to cover herself with her hands, but she submitted. It was awful.
I know it sucked for the mom too, having a kid puke in the car, but would it have killed her to let the kid stay in her pukey clothes till they got home?
Afterwards I kept wondering if I should have intervened somehow, and if so, how?
Would you consider this a case of child abuse?
That’s awful… yes, that was definitely emotional child maltreatment/abuse, no question about it. One can’t help but wonder how the mother (if it was the mother) treats those children at home if she’s willing to humiliate a sick child in public. It could have been an isolated incident but probably not. I’m not sure if it would have been appropriate to intervene yourself, but a call to the police might have worked. They’d know better if this was a regular sort of occurrence and could call CAS themselves if they thought it was warranted. Terrible.
Like James said.
My heart is broken for that girl! Poor thing – I’m mortified for her. What a psycho for a mother (if it was mom). I don’t know what you could have done that would have gotten any response except for “mind your own fucking business, you nosy bitch”.
What a terrible experience! Bad enough that she must have been feeling all lousy inside if she has been vomitting. And then to be subjected to the stripping in public. Crazy woman to be more worried about her car than about her child! Like Prole, I don’t know what you could have done. Perhaps take a blanket or something to the little girl to provide her with some privacy, but at the risk of having your head bitten off by the woman.
We both know how hard it is not to puke in a car…thank God our mother never did that to us. I was thinking the same thing as FurGaia, about bringing the poor thing a housecoat or something to cover herself…how were her brothers reacting?
omg! As if that actually happend. I wouldn’t have the guts to say anything to the mother, but I would have watched from my window and hope that someone else would see it and say something.
wow! no adult should speak to a child that way.
What an awful story. Yelling and swearing and public humiliation are definitely abusive behaviours, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know what I would have done in that situation, though. I’d like to hope the police would respond if you called it in, but in reality…?
What I find most scary are the mother’s lack of empathy (for her own sick child, for heaven’s sake!) and her inability to control her anger. Somehow I can’t imagine it was an isolated incident. Poor, poor kids.
I agree with all of you. I wish I’d intervened. If the mother had turned her wrath on me it would have been a fairer fight. (And it might have sent the daughter the message that her mother was wrong, which is always a valuable message for an abused kid.)
But it happened so fast, and it wasn’t till it was over that I stopped being a shocked observer and started thinking about it.
That’s definitely abusive. Her mother was not respective her right to physical autonomy. NOBODY is allowed to remove your clothing against your will no matter what (except small children but y’all know what I mean. I feel so badly for that girl.
The only intervention I could imagine would be to just give her something to wear, not even confront the mother. Maybe offer some stuff to clean up with.
Also, this reminds me of the time I puked in my best friend’s car. I didn’t know what to do as we were on the queensway. I tried to puke out the window but it didn’t work so good. She offered up her WHITE sweater to clean up with (best friends for life. Afterwards she asked my why I didn’t puke in my purse…umm…all my stuff is in there!
Responding here mostly to others’ comments…
Disturbing story, no question.
But people like that can become even more abusive when challenged. Not to you necessarily, more likely to her children, later, when you’re not there to see it. Angry hurtful shitheads don’t like being humiliated. They’ll get their own back any way they can, and with pathetic people like her, it’ll probably be against her own children again. It’s a power thing, a sense of having an outlet. Their children are the one thing they can control. (or so they think).
Disturbing, yes, abusive, yes, but does this constitute “child abuse” in the spirit of the term? Doesn’t everybody have stories in the same vein from their childhood? Who knows what’s traumatic for a given family anyways? Everyone has some family episodes that might appall. And we just don’t know what led up to that moment that Zoom so vividly described.
In terms of calling the cops – this I strongly disagree with. We empower our police forces to uphold law and order, not to act as parents. And they should be doing more of the former and less of the latter. As a society we need to try whatever means are available before we bring in the government. It’s already far too nosy for my liking.
It’s a hard situation to suss out. Sometimes those are the ones we learn the most from. What would I have done? Don’t know – but with the leisure of having had the chance to think about it, I would say I too would have done nothing. Some things require a lot more commitment than you initially expect.
Anyways, just some of my thoughts on some of the comments.
Smabs.
Smab, that’s an excellent point about her possibly taking out her anger at any intervener on her children later.
And good point too about the moments in all our family histories that might appall. Even though I have some parenting memories of my own that I’m not proud of, I can’t imagine ever deliberately and publicly humiliating my child for being sick. I don’t think this was an isolated incident for this family. The two other children were not watching in wide-eyed shock as the drama unfolded; I got the impression that, for them, this was fairly normal.
About calling the cops – interesting points, and I tend to agree with you. I don’t see her actions as criminal as much as dysfunctional and mean. However, if she is abusive – and especially if there’s a pattern of abuse involved – what means do we have for helping her kids, other than by involving the authorities?
Years ago, when my son was still a baby in a Snuggly, I witnessed an atrocity at McDonalds. A father of two small boys (maybe 3 and 4 years old) was force-feeding the younger one. Literally shoving food in his mouth, grabbing him by the jaw and the hair, and forcibly operating his jaw to make him chew. The poor kid was crying and gagging, and the father wouldn’t stop. I did nothing but watch in horror – the man scared me, and I didn’t want to get involved while I had my own baby strapped to my chest.
This scene haunted me for days afterwards. Then, weirdly, I read in a Citizen column the next week (I think Dave Brown’s column) about someone else who witnessed this same scene with this same family at a different McDonalds and also did nothing but watch in horror. But later they wrote to the columnist and asked what they should have done. Dave Brown contacted the police and asked them. They said don’t intervene. Call the police. If the family leaves before the police get there, get their license plate number.
I think that would have been better than doing nothing, especially in that case. I still wonder about those two little boys, all these years later. I wonder how they turned out.
But then, if none of us intervene people like that women have “carte blanche”. Not good. I wonder if she would have been as rough towards her sons. I bet you not……..