one of my exes kids (3 year old) had an issue with watching where he was walking. we tried everything and nothing worked. one day we were at target and i had enough of reminding him to watch out for things.

we’re walking down an aisle, he’s holding onto the cart but staring at his feet. about halfway down the aisle is one of those big metal columns that support the roof. little dude is on a direct path towards it. i didn’t say a word.

he ran full steam into this thing. the “THWANG” it made as he ricocheted off of it and landed on his ass was loud. so loud a parent from the other aisle came over to see what just happened.

he’s on the floor, holding his forehead doing the peter griffin pain sound, and in just blankly staring at him. after a few seconds i calmly go “i bet you won’t do that again, will you?”

he shook his head no, said it really hurt and then stood back up. i did a quick check to make sure there weren’t any signs of real damage. the other parent was in shock and disbelief. she tried to go full karen on me. i told her to mind her own business. this was roughly 20 years ago, she wasn’t as “justified” as these new age karen’s seem to be. she shut-up and left the aisle.

from that day forward that kid made it his mission to make sure that anyone else he was with didn’t run into anything. “watch out! don’t bump into that!” and “look over there, make sure you don’t hit that!” were common phrases of his.

he never ran into anything after that. he ALWAYS watched where he was going.