I take my daughter for swimming every Thursday evening, she always look forward to it because it’s an opportunity for her to see her friends once. As usual, after their swimming, you need to see them gist, sometimes I wonder what they talk about, and this makes them slow with their dressing and hair drying. But for yesterday, they have finished dressing, they weren’t screaming, but kind of loud and with so much excitement about the Christmas, coupled with the sweets and chocolates they were given by their instructor. While they were doing that, I was having a chat with one of the parents who is English right there in the changing room.
Another aged woman in her 60s who just came out from the shower room said with so much a^ger and with a loud voice said, can this children just keep quiet, this is not a playground, their noise is too much, When she said that, I didn’t say anything, but the lady I was chatting with responded saying, ‘’but they’re just kids’’, then the older woman said, ‘’I know they’re kids I was once also a kid’’, she responded, ‘’but they can’t help it they only see each other once in a week’’, the older woman responded, ‘’but this is not a playground’’, they both kept going back and forth and it was getting hotter and hotter, Honestly, I didn’t say a word while all of this was going on, I was just looking at both of them until I said come on girls is time to go home, that was how we left.
While we were leaving, the lady I was chatting with said to me, was I wrong the way I responded? I said no you were not; can we analyze what just happened? she said yes! So, I said
First, this woman in question is aged, she is not our mate so for whatsoever reason, I think she deserves some respect irrespective of her reaction from us.
Secondly it could be that she’s got health issues that has affected her ears, you never can tell the noise was actually affected her. There are people who can’t stand a noisy environment due to one reason or the other.
Thirdly, she may be having a bad day like we all do sometimes and you may not know so for her, hearing this noise made her became more agitated and left her with no choice but to react the way she did. I’m not saying what she did was right, but then you can’t stop people from being who they are, but you’re responsible with the way you react to them.
I’m not here to claim a perfect woman, before now, I know I would have reacted the same if not even more. Intentional parenting have changed literally everything about me even though I know that I’m not there yet but I know it like I know my name that I’m not who I used to be. If you become intentional parents, believe me, a lot of things about you will change because parenting is first about you the parents before your child.
Also, for the older woman, I honor and respect your old age but respect is reciprocal. You earn respect. I understand that the children’s noises were affecting you, if you were polite with this approach “Oh! Please, can you ask your kids to lower their voice, it really affecting me, I’m feeling it in my head’’ or if she had even gone to the children to say, ‘’please children I know you’re excited to seeing to yourselves but can you please lower your voice, it affecting my head’’ honestly this approach would have earned her more respect; we would have responded to her request or the children would have listened to her. This is where manner of approach comes into place; I can’t blame 4-years-old children for being children. It is actually two adults who chose to react instead of responding.
All this while, she didn’t say a word, she was just listening and by the time I finished, she said, you were so calm, that’s nice, and what do you do? This was an avenue to market myself, I told her all what I do, guess what? She’s booking a session with me.
