Frosting Is For Donuts.

As in, don't get frosty with customers (especially CHILDREN) at 8:30 in the am.

I spent the first hour of my morning listening to weeping and wailing about available apparel choices.  No, it wasn't me who was crying.  It was ER.  Here is a very loose transcript:

Me (all happy): Please come in and pick out your outfit so we can go get a donut before school!
ER: silence/whining/silence from guest bedroom
Me: OK, either you can pick your outfit or I can do it.
ER:  You do it!
Me: (speech bubble) Alright, I will.  And I will be glad to.  Denim jeggings and a longsleeved shirt with mittens/snowflakes/winter paraphernalia it is.  Come on in!

ER then lays down on the floor, I get her Pull-up changed, and have 1 1/2 legs into the pants before she flips and rejects them with her entire body.  This type of thing went on for the next 249587498753 minutes.

Toddlers cry about things that weren't at all problematic the day before.  Oh, yours doesn't?!  Fascinating.

I try really, really, really hard to strike a balance--even in the inferno of battle--between being gentle without being permissive, and being firm without being sarcastic (kind of hard, I admit : / ).  Being a parent is akin to having yourself in an intensive psychological study every minute of your life upon birth of the baby, without ever getting any results.  It's SWELL!

We did, however, finally make it to Dunkin Donuts.  Hallelujah.  On our way in, we passed a mom and an upper-elementary-aged girl coming out.  The girl was probably in 4th or 5th grade.

We acquired our desired breakfast treats, sat down, and were finally ready to make the donuts that might have lived on only in our wildest fantasies (thanks to the dressing debacle of 1.17.13), a reality.

As we were eating, I noticed the girl who we had passed on our way out, coming back in by herself.  I didn't pay any particular attention to her, until I heard the employee (who had waited on us) saying, really nastily, "Go over to the cooler, open the door, and look for the line that says 'ORANGE JUICE.'"  What I think must have happened was the girl wanted an OJ, and instead of just going to the cooler and getting one (maybe because she had never bought an orange juice by herself in a Dunkin Donuts before), she went up to the counter and asked the worker, whom she assumed would be able to help.  El wrong-o.

Cripes!

After the girl paid, the employee turned to her fellow workers and completely ripped this girl a new one, complaining how the mom had asked her 5 times while they were in there the first time if she wanted a drink...she didn't speak up...she was mumbling...(I heard the f-bomb in there somewhere)...her granddaughter knows to speak up... blah blah blah blah.  I can't say I was "in shock" per se, but I definitely could not take my eyes and ears off of what was happening.  It was just plain nasty.  And what's it to her how that girl behaves or acts with her mom?

I am unable to see something like this and not tune in.  If I had had an experience like that when I was her age, I would have been pretty broken up inside and I probably would have thought about it on and off for the rest of the day.  I might have been nervous to go back into that particular Dunkin Donuts.

Although it's hard, and no one is perfect and immune from saying or doing the wrong thing, I think it is really important for women in particular to try to show tween and teen girls that they can comfortably (and safely) communicate with the adults around them.  That time from late elementary school through middle school is a very "make-it-or-break-it" time for girls.  We don't need our young women to be any more nervous about speaking up and asking for what they want than they are already.  Every single one of us can boost a girl's confidence.  It takes a village, people.  It takes a village.

And if this frosty broad from DD was part of my village, she'd be getting her torch extinguished right about now.

Photo courtesy of behance.net

How about a nice tall glass of shut the hell up?!