Sometimes I do fit in.

This is a follow up to the entry called 'Sometimes I don't fit in', posted back in May, in which I have further problems with the same woman, only this time, I don't feel out of place for not lying to my child and making her believe that she's the only thing that matters in the entire world. Familarise yourself with that blog before looking through this one, because I can't be arsed to repeat myself: http://experiment627.blogspot.com/2010/05/sometimes-i-dont-fit-in.html

So, after that minor drunken altercation in which she expressed to me her feelings about the correct way to bring up a stable, balanced individual, I recently heard her talking to someone else about how she hates these parents who treat their kids as though they can't do any wrong, and how they act like they're all that matters. At first I didn't understand what had happened - had our conversation in the pub got to her and had she taken the things I said on board? Probably not. On second thoughts, I considered that it may have been that morning's Horoscope telling her how to act. As the conversation continues it seems she's stressed because some kid was giving her boys a hard time yesterday. It is this kid's parents she's referring to. She continues by declaring, in all seriousness, that she intends to kill the kid if he does it again today. Yep, she will murder a child if her kids have a couple of bad days with an older boy. It turns out they're all on an outing somewhere today. If anything happens to them, she also makes it known that she will kill the adult supervision. She is not joking.

Obviously, I would die to protect my daughter. Obviously nothing is more important. Obviously I don't want anyone to bully or pick on her. But this woman's loud declaration of her intention to murder a child for acting out of line as well as the adults charged with supervising her children as if it's an attitude to be proud of is a dangerous over-reaction, and is the very same thing she is complaining about in other parents. She is incapable of noticing behaviour like her own in others.

As it turns out, the person she was talking to thought this was all a bit of a twisted way to go about bringing kids up, so I didn't feel like the whole world had gone mad like I did the last time this came up. When she acts as though my own, less-crazy take on things is terrible parenting and dangerous to my child, I don't know whether to laugh, cry or scream in her face.