What would you have done in this situation?

[The Pandector]

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Like I said, I did none of that. I’m starting to feel demonized.

 

[ra49]

Misty, I think you took exactly the correct (in)action!

We have 10 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, and Absolutely Never does engaging with a temper tantrum help anyone in hearing distance.

I am always inclined to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. For all we know, that child has as many sensory processing difficulties as we do, and the Mom is so far past exhausted she didn't have anything left in that particular moment.

Likely everyone on the bus was irritated with the child, put out with the mother, and sympathetic to you.

Fight, flight, or freeze: I would freeze when faced with this boy (but may have looked at him as if he fell out of his tree).

 

[Rodafina]

Like I said, I did none of that. I’m starting to feel demonized.

Okay, then here is a chance for both of us to grow our empathy and show compassion.

You feel attacked and demonized by me, and for that I can say I must not be working with the correct information (thus, making assumptions) and I apologize for making you feel demonized. I would have to learn a lot more about why you said what you said about the woman.

And at the same time, this is an opportunity to have compassion and understanding for the woman who we know very little about. We don’t have the proper information to assume the things that you assumed about her (you painted a picture of her in your story that was full of assumptions).

This woman is not here to defend herself and share her story, and so if she needs defending, I will do it.

@The Pandector, in an attempt to keep the focus on the people in the original post (the mother, the child, and the OP), I am more than happy to address your feelings in a private message where I can offer further apologies to you.

 

[Misty Avich]

That's why it is called social anxiety and not social accuracy. You are making up stuff in your imagination with no evidence. Seeing yourself through other people's eyes and imagining the worst. And then you overvalue the opinion that you imagined them having. It is not easy to extract yourself from that mindset. Some people are naturally anxious, and some learn it.

You're right. My anxiety can be very irrational but often I believe it. You know how when you watch a really scary horror movie and you're alone at home at night, and after the horror movie you start becoming paranoid and jumpy at everything and you even suddenly believe that your house is haunted, and you switch on all the lights and look behind the shower curtain? Well, that same sort of reaction happens with me with social anxiety. It might come from trust issues, as I do get more socially anxious around strangers.

There is something known as the spotlight effect. We imagine that all eyes are on us. In reality, they are immersed in their affairs or paying attention to (or trying very hard to ignore) the strongest signal - which, in this case, would be the spoiled screaming child and not the child's victim.

I have this, and there are known causes from bad experiences that have happened to me in the past, from being bullied humiliatingly on my way home from school by kids I didn't know in the street, to having people online telling me I will attract everyone because of my "body language" due to being on the spectrum and typically giving off the wrong vibes, to being lectured by my peers when I was younger to "stop being weird because everyone's looking", to being targeted in public by adults when I was just minding my own business.
All this has added up to how I view myself today, and I have had therapy for it but it didn't really seem to cure me, although I do try and tell myself some of the things the therapist told me, that body language doesn't scream out my thoughts or emotions to strangers if I'm not making it obvious, and that in a busy place I'm just one out of thousands of other humans going about their business, and no-one is perfect. But there are some experiences I had that doesn't prove this and instead proves that I'm like a neon sign that attracts attention from everyone.

I also have scopophobia, which I believe is fear of being stared at. And, as I think the spotlight effect, I literally feel everyone is doing this:-

 

[kenaij]

You acted perfectly normal. The mother should not have let her child go to you to cry about the seat. The seat is taken, deal with it. If there was a very special reason why the kid wanted to be in that seat. (maybe he has Autism and always wants to ride the same seat and gets upset if he can't. Just to name a possibility) It was the mother's job to explain that to you.
I think it is pretty safe to say the people were not judging you. They were probably just annoyed by the child and his mother's lack of parenting.
I understand that it is hard. But I can say with very high certainty that you can let this one go without feeling bad about the way you acted. I would have done the same.

 

[Misty Avich]

I admit autism or other ND could have been a possibility, but even so, it was still down to the parent to sort her child out. He didn't seem anxious or stressed that he wasn't sitting in a "favourite seat", he was just whining and creating a fuss.
Then when someone pressed the bell to notify the driver to stop at the next stop, the kid's attention went straight on to that - "I wanted to ring the bell! I wanted to ring the bell!" It seemed he wanted to be in charge of the whole bus, God knows what would have happened if he wanted to drive the bus lol.
But the mother just sat and done nothing, instead of teaching her child manners and respect and that the universe doesn't revolve around him. He wasn't screaming or anything, he was just doing that almost fake sort of cry in a low, groany voice.

 

[The Pandector]

Okay, then here is a chance for both of us to grow our empathy and show compassion.

You feel attacked and demonized by me, and for that I can say I must not be working with the correct information (thus, making assumptions) and I apologize for making you feel demonized. I would have to learn a lot more about why you said what you said about the woman.

And at the same time, this is an opportunity to have compassion and understanding for the woman who we know very little about. We don’t have the proper information to assume the things that you assumed about her (you painted a picture of her in your story that was full of assumptions).

This woman is not here to defend herself and share her story, and so if she needs defending, I will do it.

@The Pandector, in an attempt to keep the focus on the people in the original post (the mother, the child, and the OP), I am more than happy to address your feelings in a private message where I can offer further apologies to you.

I’m not intent on having my feelings assuaged, @Rodafina , but thank you for caring. How about, instead, we discuss my reasoning behind what was intended to be a serious point with some instructive creative humor? See you on the outside.

 

[paloftoon]

I would've let the 4 year old have the seat too.

Then I'd be mad at myself for not expressing verbally in that moment where is the parent to discipline her child or that some creep could just take their child if they aren't properly watching their child.

 

[The Pandector]

I would've let the 4 year old have the seat too.

Then I'd be mad at myself for not expressing verbally in that moment where is the parent to discipline her child or that some creep could just take their child if they aren't properly watching their child.

Exactly so, @paloftoon . It feels like the right thing to do, but in the end it did not serve the mother, the child, the innocent bystanders, or - importantly - you. It seems wisdom's flavor-of-the-month that autists take strict care not to 'act out' in public. IOW, we need to sublimate our own needs in order to appear normal. OP was the victim, and however much grace she chose to apply to the situation is purely good on her. But for silent suffering at the hands of the truly obnoxious and malign, society is far better off if people learn to assert themselves firmly and respectfully. I think we can look around at the situation in the world today and see the fruit of accepting whatever ridiculous behavior comes down the pike at you. Society isn't society without standards, and it isn't evil or mean to remind others that those standards exist.

FTR, I would also have been inclined to offer my seat so mother and child could sit together... until the kid started yelling at me.

 

[Dagan]

I've had a bratty nephew act like this to me at the table for a holiday dinner once. I peered at him for a few seconds before saying..."okay...five bucks, two pieces of gum and it's yours."

 

[Misty Avich]

FTR, I would also have been inclined to offer my seat so mother and child could sit together... until the kid started yelling at me.

The seat I was sitting on was a single seat so would probably be awkward for a mother having to have a child on her lap. She had found a standard double seat just behind me but the other side of the aisle, so it would have been simple for the child to just sit with his mummy.

 

[Hypnalis]

@Misty Avich

You didn't have any obligation towards the child (or the mother).
Not even to explain to them that you wanted to keep the seat you were already occupying. Definitely not why you wanted to keep it (a "why" discussion is almost always a mistake).

Ditto getting involved with someone who's not behaving well. Especially the mother of a young child - they're best considered a "protected class". One mistake in how you'd dealt with her, and the people on the bus would have remembered it "forever".

You handled the situation well.