Flattery Will Get You Everywhere

Something unexpected happened to me Saturday night at the grocery store. No, I didn’t get into . This was actually a pleasant surprise: Someone complimented me on my parenting skills.

I’m not telling this story to brag; rather I’m sharing it because most parents probably feel that we are more likely to attract negative attention while grocery shopping with two kids than we are to draw praise.

Here’s how it went down. I was walking in the last aisle of Wegmans with Isaac in the cart (Lucy and her dad were off in search of one of those coloring books that come with a small palate of water color paints). I was tossing the final item in our cart when Ike, who wasn’t seatbelted in, decided to kneel in the seat. He was well on his way to standing up when I cajoled him into sitting back down again, buckled his seatbelt and started talking a little sarcastically to him about how gosh, it’s so hard to be 2, yadda yadda yadda. I asked him to be my helper and gave him something to hold and on we rolled.

That’s when the female half of a cute young couple said to me, “I’m admiring your parenting skills. You’re doing a great job.” I thanked her and replied that she had just caught me on a good night, which is totally true.

My moves weren’t anything that will inspire a revision to some classic Dr. Spock tome, and half the time that same technique wouldn’t have the desired result, but it just happened to work this time around when someone was watching. But I have to say I was tickled to have someone notice that something was going right when normally I’m always caught in the opposite situation.

Once this spring on a failed shoe-shopping trip with the kids, I had a kindly senior citizen smarmily utter that universally annoying buttinski line, “Gosh, someone is having a bad day!” when Lucy was throwing a back-arching tantrum. Then a week or two later at the pool, when Ike decided to bellow his displeasure at being introduced to deeper water, a woman came up to me and told me that his crying was “disturbing.” So you see, I’m unaccustomed to strangers complimenting my parenting. And that’s why I’m writing this all down, so I can remind myself of the one time I received a compliment the next time I inevitably get passive-aggressively accused of doing something wrong.