To the woman who humiliated my wife and mother of my two children at Santa Rita Park:

Yes, my 2- year-old is fiery, passionate and bull-headed. While I wouldn’t change that about him, we are trying to have him channel that passion in more constructive means other than screaming and hitting. But to tell my wife, “Get him out of here. He is disrupting everyone else’s experience at the park,” is demeaning and inflammatory.

We have been trying various ways to calm him down and get him to express his emotion. While we don’t believe in corporal punishment, we have been utilizing timeouts as a way to get him to calm down.

Having you come over to where he is having his time out away from others and say these things not only affects his self-confidence and self-worth, it also makes parents think that they aren’t doing a good job at parenting. We have tried multiple approaches and are still working on it.

At the end of the day, you don’t know the story behind a family, and to make judgments upon what you think you know is ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself for not only saying something like that to another adult, but also to a child who is very impressionable.

If you don’t have something to positively contribute, please don’t say anything at all, and above all else, just be kind.

Warm regards.

David James Woodruff

Durango