A Stranger Lectures This Mom for Carrying Her Baby. Her Response is EPIC!

Are you guilty of people-watching? I know I am. A lot of us do it when we’re out in public places. It’s not hard to find yourself looking over at someone else and wondering why they’re acting the way they are.

Not too many people will actually approach someone they see and apprehend them for doing something they think is wrong. But one woman, who was shopping at Target at the same time as Kelly Dirkes, did.

The woman approached Dirkes, a mother of several special needs children, and criticized her for holding her child in a sling instead of pushing her around in a cart. She told Dirkes that coddling her infant like that would hinder her growth and independence. She said that carrying the child around all the time would spoil her.

Dirkes just smiled and walked away. The nosy woman who thought she knew exactly what another person’s child needed had no idea just how wrong she was. Instead of getting into an argument with the woman in the store, Dirkes posted an open letter to her on Facebook.

What she has to say is pretty incredible:

Dear Woman in Target –

I’ve heard it before, you know. That I ‘spoil that baby.’ You were convinced that she’d never learn to be ‘independent.’ I smiled at you, kissed her head, and continued my shopping.

If you only knew what I know.

If you only knew how she spent the first ten months of her life utterly alone inside a sterile metal crib, with nothing to comfort her other than sucking her fingers.

If you only knew what her face looked like the moment her orphanage caregiver handed her to me to cradle for the very first time — fleeting moments of serenity commingled with sheer terror.

No one had ever held her that way before, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do.

Image: Kelly Dirkes

If you only knew that she would lay in her crib after waking and never cry — because up until now, no one would respond.

If you only knew that anxiety was a standard part of her day, along with banging her head on her crib rails and rocking herself for sensory input and comfort.

If you only knew that that baby in the carrier is heartbreakingly ‘independent’ — and how we will spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years trying to override the part of her brain that screams ‘trauma’ and ‘not safe.’

If you only knew what I know.

If you only knew that that baby now whimpers when she’s put down instead of when she is picked up.

If you only knew that that baby ‘sings’ at the top of her lungs in the mornings and after her nap, because she knows that her chatter will bring someone to lift her out of her crib and change her diaper.

If you only knew that that baby rocks to sleep in her Mama’s or her Papa’s arms instead of rocking herself.

Image: Kelly Dirkes

If you only knew that that baby made everyone cry the day she reached out for comfort, totally unprompted.

If you only knew what I know.

‘Spoiling that baby’ is the most important job I will ever have, and it is a privilege. I will carry her for a little while longer — or as long as she’ll let me — because she is learning that she is safe. That she belongs. That she is loved.

If you only knew…

Since sharing her open letter, Dirkes’ post has gone viral with over 21,395 shares on Facebook.