Short Take: Or Mind Your Own Business

Raising kids is hard. Raising kids when there are people like Darcia Narveaz around would make it much harder. Resisting the temptation to scream at her may well be impossible, for she’s that self-righteous busybody who believes she has an “ethical duty” to stick her nose in and tell other mothers how to raise their children.

I heard the toddler wail across the store. He kept up his protest as we passed him in a cart along the checkout lines. He sounded both angry and heartbroken. After our purchases, he was still upset, tears leaping from his eyes as he cried sitting next to his mother in a booth. She asked him if he wanted to try his pizza. Distressed, we walked on by, not knowing what to do. I now consider that an ethical failure. I became haunted by my failure to help.

Kids crying in stores isn’t exactly unheard of. Kids crying anywhere isn’t exactly unheard of. That hearing a child cry “haunted” Narveaz, however, is bizarre to the point of suggesting the need for serious therapeutic action. Not for the kid, but for Narveaz. But then, her facile, yet delusional, description that  he “sounded both angry and heartbroken” provides some insight.

The kid was crying. Cries sound like cries. More importantly, to know whether it was any different than any other time the kid cried would require that she know the kid. She didn’t. This wasn’t how “he sounded,” but how his cry got twisted in her delusion.

But Narvaez has a Ph.D., and she’s an expert. We know it because she tells us.

My expertise in neurobiology and the development of human morality make me sensitive to the needs of young children and the possible harm they are experiencing when they are highly distressed. Extensive distress does damage to developing brains, leaving long term marks on brain function, like a hyperreactive stress response (Lupien et al., 2006), which undermines sociomoral functioning (Narvaez, 2014). Because thousands of synapses are developing every minute in a young child, one never knows what distress is altering in normal development.

Perhaps this gives rise to an image from a Woody Allen movie, where Marshall McLuhan magically appears to correct the boorish academic on the movie line. Maybe this mother, with her crying child, would appreciate a little support at the moment.

In our ancestral context, children grow up in a community of responsive relationships 24/7. For over 99% of our species’ history, mothers and their children have been supported by other community members. Children thrive within a ‘village’ of caring supporters. If a particular caregiver is preoccupied with something else, there is someone else around to whom the child can turn for comfort or play, or who will step in to alleviate distress. Most children in advanced economies are missing out on this web of constancy provided by familiar caregivers day and night.

Missing from this shallow perspective is that it wasn’t up to the “village” to force itself upon the mother, but for the mother to ask for help, to seek the support of others. As for a “web of constancy,” that’s remarkably wrong. There was support when needed, but it was never thrust upon a child so that they were never left to their own devices, to learn how to negotiate life.

And yet, this “expert,” apparently after much soul-searching in her haunted state, came up with what she deems the ethical thing to do.

This is what I think I should have done:

Walk up to the child and mother and say: I’m a psychologist. I’m concerned about this child’s wellbeing. Tell the child in a calm voice: It’s okay. You will be all right. Then, turn to the mother (but keep turning to the child with reassurance) and represent the child’s view: The child needs comforting. He is unable to calm down without your comfort. He feels abandoned emotionally. To alleviate that pain, he needs comforting—comforting conversation, comforting touch.

And if you were this kid’s mother, what would you do in response to this random woman in a store, pushing her way into your world as your kid is crying, smugly informing you that you’re parenting wrong?

46 thoughts on “Short Take: Or Mind Your Own Business

  1. Henry Berry

    Ending of the story: …and lo, the child hurled his piece of pizza at the prying ninny who was interfering in quality time with his/her mother.

      1. Frank

        Except that in NY 1) pepper spray is illegal without a license and 2) that’s an assault on a medical professional, a felony.

        1. LocoYokel

          Was this in New York? I didn’t see any indication of location in the article (either of them). I have always encouraged any female I know to always carry at least pepper spray but I live in Texas where your right to defend yourself is still recognized. I also don’t think much of this “professional”, she comes off like an academic with her head shoved up her theories without any real experience dealing with people or children, much like the law profs SHG loves so much when they try to tell practicing lawyers how the system really works. Even several of the comments in the article have a “mind your own business” vibe to them.

          1. LocoYokel

            Looked up her bio, it said Notre Dame so I doubt this happened in New York. That said I don’t know the laws in Indiana so the could have some dumb laws about not being able to carry self-defense articles either. And she’s a prof, as I guessed, so not a medical professional.

    1. Casual Lurker

      “blob:24A1F9F1-855B-4F82-9D57-EB1064F1F9B2”

      Are you trying to say that, like a GUID* (Globally Unique IDentifier), each child is unique?

      *For you non-STEM types, the particular format of the above string is that of a Windows Registry GUID, as typically generated by the GUIDgen app, that’s part of most Windows SDKs. (Software Developer’s Kit).

      1. SHG Post author

        01010111 01100001 01110011 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100010 01110110 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 00111111

        1. Casual Lurker

          01001111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110010 01100100 01110011 00100001

  2. DaveL

    The child needs comforting. He is unable to calm down without your comfort.

    As a practitioner of the science of psychology, I don’t suppose she checked back 10 minutes later to see whether this was true?

    1. DaveL

      BTW, the link regarding the effects of stress refer to experiments with rats subject to “restraint stress” – namely being kept alone in small cages with wire mesh floors, for days or weeks on end. But I’m sure that totally translates to the effect on human toddlers of being told they can’t have dessert before dinner.

    2. Skink

      Well, DaveL, because it’s what I do, I hit the link and her name to figure the cause of the nitwitocity. Her bio is a mash of junk, but it looks like 10 minutes wouldn’t be nearly enough time:

      “WHEN I WRITE ABOUT PARENTING, I assume the importance of the Evolved Nest or evolved developmental niche (EDN) for raising human infants (which initially arose over 30 million years ago with the emergence of the social mammals and has been slightly altered among human groups based on anthropological research).

      The EDN is the baseline I use to examine what fosters optimal human health, wellbeing and compassionate morality. The niche includes at least the following: infant-initiated breastfeeding for several years, nearly constant touch early, responsiveness to needs to avoid distressing a baby, playful companionship with multi-aged playmates, multiple adult caregivers, positive social support, and soothing perinatal experiences.”

      We’re all hunter-gatherers! Who knew?

  3. Beth Clarkson

    I am reminded of an incident that occurred nearly 30 years ago when my daughter was a toddler. She had a serious tantrum at the grocery store when I declined to buy her candy in the checkout line. At one point, an older gentleman, disturbed by the noise, came by and peered at us. He looked at her – arms and legs flailing while she lay on her back screaming at the top of her lungs. He looked at me. I looked at him. He then turned and left without saying a word. If I had been hitting her, no doubt he would have intervened. Things were different then. A tantrum wasn’t considered a symptom of abuse.

  4. L Phillips

    Easy answer:

    Mother clutches child to her breast and screams, “That woman tried to touch my child!”

    A crowd of the woke will gather firewood and handle the problem from there.

  5. Jim Ryan

    “My expertise in neurobiology and the development of human morality make me sensitive to the needs of young children and the possible harm they are experiencing when they are highly distressed.”
    Yeah, But:
    Education, Experience and Expertise are not an excuse for being an ASS.

    1. B. McLeod

      Hey, her expertise make her sensitive. She an obvious sophisticate. Her village missed verb/subject agreement.

  6. Anonymous Coward

    Lovely, she presents an argument from authority, used to justify her lust to control other people coupled with no evidence of actual experience as a parent. Said experience teaches that babies and toddlers cry because that’s their major communication tool and when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Also Narvaez apparently forgets that not always getting what you want is important to development.

    1. Kathleen Casey

      My sister confronted a Banshee meltdown from her daughter in a parking lot back in the day, with screeching, crying, flinging herself on the pavement, flailing, stiffening her back, and startled witnesses. All because the kid wanted to drive. What’s the busybody’s answer to that problem?

        1. Kathleen Casey

          I thought about the Admiral’s female mascot. That could be niece today. A self-obsessed Millennial. She doesn’t mind working for a living though, that I see.

      1. Rojas

        I’m no hostage negotiator but when or if interviening in a situation like that one needs to assert themselves athorativly using a protocol both sides will recognize. Calling shotgun or bitch will allow one to insert themselves between the antagonists for the next best opportunity for de-escalation.

    1. Frank

      Only if you want to be arrested and your child placed in foster care.

      Bringing cops into it only makes things worse — they only have hammers and you look like a nail.

  7. Ross

    The words “fuck off” and “bitch” come to mind. I might also see if I could make the interfering biddy cry as much or more than the infant.

  8. Robert Fickman

    I would have pointed out that I was a criminal defense lawyer and I would have given her my card. I would have told her to keep my card as she would need it. I would have told her that I would be “haunted” if I did not fulfill my ethical responsibility to tell her that her own child reminded me in every possible way of Jeffrey Dahmer. I would have told her that I would be shocked if he hadn’t already murdered and eaten at least a half dozen humans. I would have inquired if any pets had “gone missing”.

  9. Chris Ryan

    as a stay at home dad for 14 years, living in a college town, i have been faced with similar situations to this multiple times. usually i just smile sweetly at the idiot and pointedly ignore them as i go along my business. If they persist, a quick fuck off, seems to work wonders.

    1. SHG Post author

      I suspect many women want to tell you that you’re doing dad wrong and how you should be doing it right. It’s kinda like mansplaining.

  10. KP

    “My expertise in neurobiology and the development of human morality make me sensitive to the needs of young children ”

    Definately sounds like she’s never had any, in fact her whole attitude reeks of someone who hasn’t had to deal with a tantrum. No doubt she will be pushing for some laws to be passed to save the children and will manage to make the world a worse place in the end. The anti-smacking laws in Australasia have failed exactly as their critics said they would.

  11. David Meyer Lindenberg

    Fascinating type of person. She’s at once preposterous and threatening… not so much because of anything she can do, but what her interjection might lead to, from a possible social-media shaming courtesy of bystanders to the situation spiraling out of control and the authorities getting involved. People with a tragically misguided sense of self-importance were a joke once, but rather a lot is done these days to amplify their signal, isn’t it?

  12. REKnight

    I would strongly suggest she get a refund on the miseducation she clearly got from the so call universities she had allegedly attended.

  13. Dissent

    “Walk up to the child and mother and say: I’m a psychologist.”

    Yes, identifying myself as a psychologist to a screaming toddler has always worked out well for me in my practice because all toddlers know what a psychologist is.

  14. bl1y

    Is Narvaez’s description of the village even accurate? It’s distinctly at odds with the picture of pre-1980s parenting portrayed in The Coddling of the American Mind.

    After progressing beyond their toddler years, children were most often in the company not of village caretakers, but of each other. If the mother was not watching her kid, no mother was, because the kid was off exploring or playing games with other kids, far from the direct observation of any adult.

    If something went awry, they did not have a village elder there to provide comfort or to alleviate distress. They learned to deal with the problem themselves.

    Far from missing out on a constant web of caregivers, contemporary kids are under the watchful eye of an adult more than ever, and they’re already worse for it without the Nosey Narvaezes of the world chiming in.

  15. Erik H

    “morality research” and practicing child psych are not at all the same. I’m a lawyer but I don’t give CDL advice.

    And yes I am sharing expertise: (My holiday table has a psychiatrist, a therapist, and three psych doctorates, only one of whom is a child clinical specialist. They thought the linked article was batshit crazy)

    1. SHG Post author

      My niece is a Ph.D. child psych (research, not clinical), teaching at a college in PA. Based upon her child-rearing theories in practice, I wouldn’t allow her to babysit, no less give anyone advice. As a profession, they are unimpressive scary as fuck.

    2. Skink

      I have defended at least 100 mental health cases. That table would make me sip turpentine. Everyone would be talking at the same time!

  16. Lee

    Anybody want to be against her NOT having children of her own? (I know my views on the subject changed radically once I had my own little monsters). 🙂

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