A mom is going viral as she shares how she shut down an entitled man accosting her daughter in a checkout line. She’s giving her child — only six years old — what so many girls and women in past generations haven’t had: the right to control access to their bodies.
In this case, the stranger didn’t even stop when the child refused to respond, showing the same persistence that women and girls of every age are so familiar with. Even her mom wasn’t sure how to react, but then it all snapped into place.
Standing In Line
One thing girls have been taught for generations is that when men speak to us, we are to respond politely and appreciatively. As this mom, Liz Kindred, points out, this can be especially emphasized in certain subcultures, including the U.S. South and some religious traditions.
Generations of women have been unsure how to speak up when attention gradually edges its way from the inexplicably uncomfortable (and how do you speak up when you can’t quite put into words what’s making you uneasy?) to the clearly overstepping. Then there’s always the fear of how he might respond if you do tell him to leave you alone.
We’ve been taught to toe a fine line, and sometimes that puts women in danger.
The Checkout Lane
In this story, Liz and her 6-year-old daughter were waiting to make their purchases when the older man in front of them decided he needed a child’s attention.
He turned around to offer a compliment, telling the little girl, “My goodness, you sure are pretty.”
At this point, there’s just a compliment. Sure, there’s lots of discussion in the public sphere about why we should be focusing on complimenting little girls on what they do and who they are instead of how they look, but he hasn’t said anything awful or extreme.
However, the child does what was deemed “bashful” when I was a kid and turns to hide her face in her mother’s leg. She’s not interested in speaking to him—and aren’t we still teaching kids they shouldn’t speak to strangers, anyway?
Viva La Persistence
In fact, at this point, if the man was capable of taking “no” for an answer (hint: it doesn’t have to be the word “no” to be a clear rejection of attention) it would be over. He could maybe make a polite comment to the mother, and turn back around and wait his turn in line. But no, he doesn’t do that.
The stranger, Liz tells us, persists. He repeats his demand for a response.
“You sure are pretty,” he reiterates. “Look at those blue eyes.”
Liz can feel her daughter’s grip tighten, and she attempts to end the interaction with a minimal response sound, a little acknowledgment of the man’s commentary without an invitation to continue, but he’s not having it.
He wanted the little girl to respond to him, and he was irritated. He began griping that her mother must not have taught her any manners.
Mama Bear Steps In
This is the point where Liz isn’t taking it anymore. She speaks up and firmly.
In a later video, she’ll tell us a little about how much that goes against her Southern Christian upbringing. She’s expected to be polite and nice. Right now, though, she’s just protecting her child.
She says, “If you assume that I didn’t teach my six-year-old daughter to say thank you to a grown consenting man when he compliments her appearance, then you would be correct.”
Watch in her own words below.
Just Trying To Be Nice
While most of the responses to Liz’s video are super supportive, many people also weigh in to tell her what they think she should have done, which is to insist that she be nice and comply with a stranger’s demands for her small child’s attention.
“What’s wrong with saying thank you?” one asks.
“I think he was just trying to be nice,” another adds.
Yet another informs the mom that it’s hard to break “old habits” of giving compliments, which they seem to conflate with “practice[ing] manners.”
Liz isn’t having it, though. She tells multiple people, “I wasn’t really grateful for that comment, though.”
The Follow-Up
Then she shuts down all the complaints and insistence with another TikTok, addressing some crucial facts.
These include that her small child doesn’t owe a grown man a thank-you for an unwanted and uninvited compliment and that she isn’t obligated to sacrifice her comfort for a stranger.
She also shares her own experience, one that many women will identify with, in which a work supervisor harassed her. She explained that crossing those boundaries doesn’t start with explicit bad behavior. It begins with an uncomfortable feeling, then comments and compliments, and progresses from there.
Teaching Our Kids To Hold Boundaries
Other moms have chimed in to describe how they’re teaching their kids to set boundaries so they don’t feel pressured to accept attention from strangers.
One commenter says her mother taught her to say, ““I am not supposed to talk to strangers, you could be a kidnapper.”
Another describes her son being ordered by an older woman to “be nice,” apparently as code for “Give me attention.” The child replied, “I not nice.”
Similarly, one mom describes her 4-year-old daughter telling a man, “I am NOT your sweetheart!”
Yet another says that her little girl has somehow learned the phrase, “Miss me with that.”
Being The Boundary
The parents in the comments offer some great ways for the adult to speak up, too.
If she wants to balance that ingrained tendency for politeness and setting a boundary, she could, one suggestion, say, “She doesn’t speak to strangers, but thank you.”
Another suggests a bolder, “Do you spend a lot of time talking to children you don’t know?”
One even proposes embarrassing the invader with a statement like, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any change.”
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