To the Mothers Who Rescued Me When My Son Lost His Mind at the Airport

It was about an hour before we boarded our flight from Memphis to Jacksonville that I remember feeling a little too confident about my parenting ability.

Rookie mistake.

My 2-year-old son sat quietly next to me with a coloring book and chocolate milk as I checked my email and caught up on the morning news. They say parenting gets easier as kids get older, and for once (after nearly three years of a whole lotta hard), I started to believe them.

I still can’t figure out what triggered my son’s raging, I’m-legitimately-a-crazy-person meltdown that came moments later as crayons were sent flying across the row of chairs and he took off running. But what followed was a loud, frantic and ultimately uncontrollable tantrum I was unprepared to handle.

So I did what I normally do in those situations. I kept my head down and refused to make eye contact while weaving through a crowd of strangers before inevitably scooping up my son against his will and attempting to force him to sit in one place. He kicked. He screamed. He slapped me in the face. Nothing I could say or do, no level of discipline or attempt to control the situation, worked.

I’ve grown used to navigating these seemingly impossible moments alone, which arguably has helped…