Parenting Walks of Shame

As a parent, there are many types of walks of shame in the first few  years. Some are more personal, like walking through a restaurant with two spreading headlights on your shirt as your body realizes that the baby’s hungry (except the baby’s not with you because you dared to take a long lunch with your girlfriends, first time post partum, and baby is safely at home with pumped milk in the fridge at the ready). There’s the slightly more urgent walk of shame as you hurry to the restroom to clean up after your baby has a blow-out or there’s abundant spit-up slowly making it’s way down your shirt. But these are all fully understandable in those first, hazy weeks of parenthood. It’s the later walks of shame that are sometimes more . . . embarrassing.

My daughter is recently potty-trained (it’s been six months, but I’m being generous here). One of the more athletic walks of shame is the mad dash from the far, opposite corner of Costco to the bathroom at the dreaded words, “mommy, I have to go to the potty.” Because by the time she’s uttered these words, the clock starts counting down, and you’ve got about 30 seconds before the big flood. So off we merrily go, blithely abandoning the cart, with her tucked tightly in my arms, her clutching her bottom, both of us chanting “hold it in, hold it in, hold it in” as I beat my personal best track-n-field record for the 100m sprint. So far, no major accidents.

There’s the very well-recognized walk of shame after the grocery/toy/drug store melt-down. It’s usually after all of the items of shopping are in your cart, often at checkout. There’s just something your child must absolutely have, right-this-minute, or her little heart will just break. And after a long day of diplomacy and negotiation, this is where you decide to draw the line. Hours (well, minutes really) of yelling later (and this is just from your end), it’s time to pick her up, limbs flailing, and make that walk of shame out the store and to the car. I guess you didn’t really need those groceries for dinner/toys for the birthday party/anti-anxiety meds for you.

And finally, there’s my least favorite walk of shame: the daily pick-up from preschool. Our daughter is in that lovely period of 2-4 years old, otherwise known as the 6th ring of hell. So every day at pick-up, it’s a crapshoot as to whether she has been well-behaved. On a good day, I get a smile from her teacher and a reassuring thumbs-up as I walk through the classroom door, implying to me that there will be stickers and happy faces on her daily sheet. I know it’s a good day, because her teacher doesn’t bother to get up from the floor, where she’s anchored by no less than 6 kids crawling all over her.

My level of dread, however, is inversely proportional to the speed at which she rises to give me bad news. On a difficult day, she starts to rise as soon as she spots me through the door. And then she approaches with that “we need to talk” look that I have come to know, and we chat about the “sad choices” that my daughter has made and the many adventures in not-napping that have occurred. Apparently naptime is a good opportunity for chatting to friends, or singing at the top of her lungs, or for playing with her lovey, who likes to skip around her cot and in and out of the holes and dance around her belly. This is all quite amusing . . . if it were happening to someone else. Isn’t parenting grand?

What is your “favorite” walk of shame?