I was shopping in a fabric store and kept hearing a woman in another aisle yelling at a kid. Saying stuff like "Stop running! Come back here! Put that down! Get over here!" The woman sounded so pissed but the kid was being totally silent, not talking back or laughing or yelling or anything. This struck me as odd because I grew up with a lot of younger children in my family and usually when kids act up like that in a store, they're a bit noisy and will argue with the parent when they're reprimanded. It just sounded like she was yelling at nobody.

Well I ended up getting behind them in line. It was an older woman, with a little girl who clearly had Down's syndrome. The little girl wasn't doing anything besides standing there quietly but the woman kept finding reasons to yell at her for dumb harmless things like glancing around and asking questions. At one point the girl quietly asked if they were going to a different store and the woman snapped, "No. We are going home. I cannot stand to be in another store with you."

We left out of the same mall entrance and the woman continued yelling at the girl in the angriest, most derisive tone I've ever heard someone use to talk to a child. The whole time, the kid barely said a thing. Then the girl tried to ask her something else that I couldn't hear and the woman got in her face and mocked the way she talked (she seemed to have some speech impairments, which I think is typical for people with Down's syndrome). The little girl tried to say something else and when she was mid-sentence, the woman swung her arm down and smacked the little girl really hard on the butt. The child whimpered "Ow," and started to sniffle softly as the woman continued to fuss at her for whatever the hell she was doing that was apparently so terrible. The entire time the kid just seemed so quiet and defeated.

I wish I could tell you that I went and gave that woman a piece of my mind but honestly I was so shocked and upset I didn't know what to do. I was fighting back tears on the way home just thinking about it. My girlfriend had abusive parents and she told me that even if I had spoken up, the woman probably wouldn't have cared and may have just taken it out on the girl later. That made me feel slightly better but not much. I just can't believe she was being so hard to this kid, who couldn't have been older than 8 and just seemed to be a normal, curious kid. She wasn't even acting rowdy or running around. And then to get in her face and mock her speech impediments. It just made me sick.