Blogger pens post calling out a stranger for taking her son’s dummy out of his mouth
A mum has spoken about an incident where a stranger plucked her son’s dummy from his mouth [Photo: Getty]
To dummy or not to dummy that is the question. But surely, it is down to the parents to choose for themselves whether or not their little one has a pacifier? That doesn’t always stop the anti-dummy brigade from having their say on the thorny matter, however, as one mum discovered recently.
When writer Corissa Rieschieck, 33 from Victoria, Australia was supermarket shopping with her two-year-old son – who she affectionately calls Gremlin – she was surprised by the reaction of a complete stranger to her son’s dummy.
After behaving himself during the shopping trip, Corissa let her little one have a post-shopping ride on a mechanical car, but when it was time to go, gremlin started getting upset. Popping his dummy in his mouth, the blogger says her son immediately stopped crying and it was at this point they were approached by an older woman.
“She reached out, plucked the dummy out of my son's unsuspecting mouth and scolded me about how he doesn’t need it. She said I was a bad parent to give it to him,” Corissa wrote in a blog post about the incident.
Corissa was left stunned by the incident [Photo: Instagram/cjrieschieck]
Both Corissa and her son were left in stunned silence and before the mum could gather herself enough to respond, the woman had walked off with the dummy in her hand.
But that wasn’t the end of the matter as the stranger then walked back to continue to chastise the mum for allowing her son to have a dummy.
“This time it was along the lines of what kind of parent did I think I was to be using a dummy’ and ‘I should know better, it’s no wonder he screams’” she wrote.
The dummy was later returned to her, and she promptly placed it back in her son’s mouth, but Corissa said that she felt frustrated she didn’t feel able to use her voice.
“What bothers me most about this entire situation is not actually that yet another person had the nerve to question my parenting,” she wrote.
“Being entirely unsure of myself in this aspect of my life I frequently do just that anyway. No. What bothers me most of all is that the absolute shock of that situation stunned me into silence.”
“What bothers me is that a complete stranger actually had the nerve to get so close to my son as to take something from him without any care for getting my permission.”
Dummies can be a divisive parenting subject [Photo: Getty]
Corissa goes on to question why some people think it is ok to comment on others’ parenting choices.
“Why do people feel the need to comment on the way those around them parent? Do they not remember how hard being a parent is? Have they never experienced moments of doing something as a parent just to get through? Or, if they’re not parents themselves, did they never learn that it wasn’t okay to be so rude?” she asks.
The post clearly resonated with the writer’s followers, who took to Corissa’s blog and Facebook page to offer their support.
“OMG I can’t believe this happened to you! I can’t help myself but to try to image the things that I would have said to this person if 1# they had done this to my child and 2# if I had seen someone do this to someone’s child, let alone to a child of someone I knew. But alas I must admit that I probably would have had the same reaction as you,” one mum wrote.
“Wow….. the nerve of that woman. Honestly you parent the best you can, there simply isn’t any other way to do it. Trial and error is what happens lol,” added another.
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