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I used to be one of those judge-y people that saw a child acting out and questioned their parents' parenting skills, their lack of intelligence, and their right to pro-create. Why can't they get that kid under control? You should have to get a license to parent. That's the future of America?If I've learned anything from having two children with autism it is this: we need to give grace and compassion. This is especially true for children who misbehave in public and their parents. The truth is that we don't know these children's stories or that of their parents. This could have been the worst year of their life. Their dog may have died yesterday. Someone may have been diagnosed with cancer last month. Grandma may have passed away last week. We don't know the difficulties they have that we can't see. Children with developmental delays, autism, ADHD, or diagnosed behavioral or mental health issues don't look any different than any other child you might see.
If you see a parent struggling to get their child under control, think about me. You know me. You know Daniel and Gideon. You know my husband. We aren't permissive, enabling parents. We work hard and, of course, struggle, to get behavior issues under control. We make mistakes but we try.
A couple of years ago, around this time of year, Disney on Ice came through town. Through a friend of my sister, we were able to get very discount tickets. This is a special treat for our family. We don't often have extra money to spend on entertainment and we rarely take our whole family when we do (we brought an extra adult to help with crowd control). We surprised the kids, who at the time were 7, 6, 4, and 8 months. They had an amazing time seeing all the Disney characters they know and love and from movies they have memorized all the songs too. It went really well except for one tiny thing.
The dude sitting in the row in front of us.
Gideon got pretty excited to see all his friends on ice and so he began to jump around a bit and do some vocalizing. He flapped his hands some and maybe clapped a bit too loudly. The man in front of us looked to be there with a grandchild. First he started with pointed looks back in our direction. Then there were sharp shoulder shrugs and signs of annoyance which finally became grumbling under his breath about those parents and that kid. Finally, he turned around and said sharply, "Hey, do your job. Get that kid under control."
You know when something happens and you're speechless but later all the words you wished you'd said run through your head? That's what happened. We just nodded at him, embarrassed, and didn't say a thing. But later, my brain replayed the scenario where I got to put him in his place.
I should have something like this to him:
"When you go to an event for children, please expect there to be a lot of, well, children. Please understand that not all children will behave exactly as you want them. Please understand that the daddy struggling with the four year old is actually trying to make the situation better and, is not, in fact, there to ruin your Disney On Ice experience. Please don't feel the need to comment on our parenting skills; you don't know anything about us. Take a breathe. Relax. Smile and be thankful your struggles aren't the same. Have some compassion. Show some grace."
What if we all could be more compassionate and offer more grace? What if we gave people the benefit of the doubt and treated them with kindness, not because they necessarily did anything to earn it but because they exist and are here struggling though life the same way we are?
I am very thankful to be intimately familiar with the idea of grace and many opportunities to practice giving it. I can give grace to my children, for how God has formed them. I can give grace to myself (a bigger struggle there) and I can give grace to other parents and their children. And of course I can begin to understand, just a tiny bit, the amount of grace God gives to me. Broken and imperfect with broken, imperfect children, we are always given God's grace to get back up when we fall down and try again. More than that, God gives us His hand to helps us up.
Ephesians 2:8
"For it is by grace you have been saved by faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God."
No better gift.
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