Kids can be so Cruel

We are in Chicago on vacation visiting my brother and his family. It's pretty cold today and the kids were itching to get out of the house. We took them to the mall to play in this big tree house play area and some boy around Hanleys age squeezed Hanleys face as hard as he could, TWICE, with his nails too, and made her bleed.

It took everything in me not to punt him and I made him take me to his mom.

I brought Hanley with me to his mom and I told and showed her what happened and she said "He's normally a pretty good kid" and I said "Well he obviously is going to need watched a little better" and she said "Well I can't watch him every second since I have him" (because she had a smaller baby on her lap) and I said " She's bleeding!! If you can't watch him better then maybe he shouldn't be here at all!" And then they left.

I cried and cried and cried. I couldn't stop because I was so angry. Plus, I'm sure I'm a little hormonal haha

She did apologize and made the boy apologize (not that he knew why, I'm sure) but it wasn't enough for me at the time, not much would've been enough because I was so upset. Then I started to feel guilty later after I calmed down that they left because I'm sure it's tough with a little little one and then a toddler that wants to run and play. I might not have reacted so strongly but when Hanley was a little younger, she was playing at another mall play area and some boy just came up to her and bit her chin and left perfect teeth marks on her and I watched the whole thing and Hanley never provoked anything. You can actually read about the first biting incident here . She's such a sweet spirited girl, it makes me so mad these kids do this to her. That first time we just left and I didn't say anything to his parents, even tho I should have.

And apparently while I was gone shopping in a store nearby for 15 minutes before this incident, Hanley was trying to walk up or down the stairs and some girl basically put her in a choke hold and threw her down. So then, when I got back Michael said "I gotta go walk around for a couple minutes" because he was getting overwhelmed. There was tons of older kids running around and climbing up the slides, which is so annoying, when it was definitely for younger kids. It was chaotic since it was a Saturday and pretty chilly outside.

And I totally get that she might get knocked down or run into by bigger kids because she's small, dainty and young but I shouldn't have to worry about kids being cruel to her.