If your kid doesn't behave....

It's not just that you are totally humiliated every time you go into public. It's the shame you feel at having failed to control your child and that you are a bad parent who hasn't taught her child to be kind, patient, quiet, obedient, respectful, gentle and considerate.

It's isolating and lonely to always have to be avoiding play dates with sensitive children (or sensitive parents), or places which are loud, busy, too exciting, or too quiet, or restrictive.

It's terrible to not be able to go places where you might have to wait in line, or a restaurant where the service is too slow, or the seat belts on the highchairs are broken, or even the seat belts on shopping carts, because any of those can lead to extremely unpleasant behavior from your child.

And lets not forget the situations you can't predict, or one's that were great one time and terrible the next. And, last, but not least, the constant fear that at any second your kid is going to do some unimaginable thing to cause unpleasantness for everyone around.

If this is your life, then you understand the excruciatingly long days where most of the conversation with your child is about how many minutes he's to stay in time-out, and why its not nice to hit your brother over the head with a truck, claw your mother's face, kick the cat, or fling spoonsful of yogurt onto the walls. You, too, know what its like to pour over every child care book looking for a magical strategy, or lie awake every night wondering how in the hell a child can be sweet, thoughtful, helpful and smart one minute and spiteful monster the next.. And you wonder if it sucks to be him, and what to do about it.

But, you never wonder why other kids don't want to play with yours. Ever.

If this is you, too, I get it.