You will never truly comprehend parenting until you become one. It’s not easy at all. Parenthood is a wonderful experience, but it can also be exhausting. In this story a mom took her toddler to a coffee shop in the mall. Read the story to know what happened and let us know who is right.
Source: Reddit
So for context, I (late 20s F) occasionally take my daughter (almost 1yo) to a small coffee shop in the local mall. I’m a work from home mom, trying to run my company and to finish my postgraduate degree while raising my kid, while my husband spends all day at work, it gets a bit much sometimes. His workplace is one of those that demands a ton of team building activities etc. So he’s often away long after hours.
Anyone who’s been home alone with a baby will know how tired you get and how hard it is to keep them in good company when you’re cooped up all day. So now that finally the plague has been clearing up in my area we’ve decided to start going places a bit more. There’s a local mall with an open-plan locally owned coffee shop (the place has 3 walls and is otherwise completely open into the mall lobby with a fountain, some of those coin-slot kid attractions and such. I’ve decided to try it and have a coffee there a few months ago and found out my daughter loves it! She will look around sitting in her stroller while I drink my coffee in peace for once. The waitresses love her and know her by name and come to greet her. We leave a big tip to make up for any inconvenience we might cause.
She recently started walking and loves to use any open space. I take her for a walk outside twice a day with the stroller and we stop and she walks around whenever. When the weather is bad or when I just want to, we go to the coffee shop and sit at the very edge of the seating area, basically completely in the lobby. We go when there’s the fewest people, because I don’t want to bother anyone, we never stay longer than 30 minutes. She sits in her stroller and when she wants to, I take her out and we walk around the lobby. When someone smiles at her and they initiate a conversation, we stop and she smiles and babbles a bit at them and then we go. I steer her clear of anyone with a laptop/headphones/book/studying/on a meeting, and if she ever gets cranky we’re outta there immediately.
Recently an old lady would sit down at the table next to us and stare. She’ll whisper under her breath some things about “not in our time”, and “floozies”. Last time when we were leaving I felt it appropriate to at least say “goodbye have a nice day.” To the lady as we were saying so to the waiters and a nice gentleman who’d made funny faces at my kiddo. She looked at me like a spat at her and started mumbling something about “horrible mother” and “No decency”.
I’m not a confrontational type so I just ignored it, but it’s been bothering me. I’ve talked to my friends (most are childfree) and a few of them said I’m “out of line bothering people with my child” and that “people go there to have some peace and quiet”. The ones who have kids are on my side, so hence why I’m asking here. So… am I a Jerk for taking my toddler to a coffee shop?
What would you do in her situation? Any advice. Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
Watch for more: https://youtu.be/oSWJ4ZHX_V4
