I was deep in the fluorescent hellscape that is Target on a weekday afternoon — overtired, overstimulated, and very much regretting my life choices.
I wasn’t even shopping for anything exciting. Just a specific kind of drawer insert that apparently didn’t exist anymore, and I’d been to three stores already. My toddler, meanwhile, was absolutely done. Refusing to sit in the trolley. Floppy fish meltdown in full swing. People were staring — or at least, I thought they were.
And I could feel it. That bubbling sense of shame. The heat rising to my face. The voice in my head going, “You’re losing control. Everyone’s watching. They think you’re failing.”
I crouched down, trying to reason with a tiny human who could not have cared less about drawer organisation. And that’s when I heard a voice beside me say:
“I promise, no one here is judging you. We’ve all been there.”
I looked up and saw a woman — maybe in her 50s — smiling gently, not pitying, not smug. Just… real.
She didn’t offer a solution. She didn’t tell me to “enjoy every moment.” She just saw me. In the mess. In the overstimulation. In the internal shame spiral.
And with one sentence, she broke the tension. I stood up straighter. I smiled. My eyes welled up. Not because of the meltdown, but because for the first time in a long time, I felt seen.
It wasn’t a big thing. No dramatic pep talk. No deep and meaningful chat in the middle of aisle nine.
But it gave me permission — to stop performing. To stop parenting through the lens of what everyone else might think. To stop assuming that every sigh or glance was an accusation.
Since that day, I’ve carried her words like a little shield. When my toddler is having a hard time in public, I breathe deeper. I soften. I give fewer damns about onlookers. I parent my kid, not the crowd.
We don’t talk enough about how much pressure there is to “perform” as a parent in public. Like we need to prove to strangers that we’re in control. That our kid is well-behaved. That we’re not that mum.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
You don’t need to manage your child and everyone else’s expectations. You don’t need to apologise for a toddler being a toddler. You don’t need to shrink yourself or your child to make other people comfortable.
Sometimes it’s just someone saying, “I see you. And you’re not alone.”
To that stranger in Target: thank you. You didn’t know it, but you cracked something open in me that day.
And to any mum reading this, wrestling a toddler in the toiletries aisle, eyes stinging with shame — I promise, no one here is judging you.
We’ve all been there.
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