What do you do with inattentive moms?

If your kid has ever been teased, you know there’s nothing like seeing your child bullied to bring out your inner mama bear in all of her growling, hair-bristling glory.

At an indoor playground this week, my sister and I watched as two children bullied my 2-year-old niece. They ran around her, calling her “diaper pants” and hitting her hard on the bottom every time they ran past her. She was close to tears when my sister rescued her from the little hooligans.

The most disturbing part of this incident was that their mom was two feet away, chatting with another mom and tinkering on her phone. She could hear her children taunting my niece, but she did nothing. Even when my sister told the tormenters to play nice, the mom completely ignored the situation.

At first, I concocted a scheme wherein I would walk straight up to the mom and punch her in the ovary. I thought better of this and ended just giving her a pretty vicious stink eye. Oh, it cut deep.

I’m usually not one to get seriously upset with other moms because I have an extensive list of flaws myself. I’ve been known to ignore my children’s misbehavior when I know it will buy me a couple minutes of alone time. Like this week when I knew good and well my daughter was taking every spoon out of the drawer, licking it and then putting it back. But did I stop her? Nooo. She was happy and quiet, and so was I.

But I would never ignore behavior that hurts another person, and it infuriates me when mothers do this. My own daughter has been on the receiving end of some physical bullying while the child’s mom pretends not to notice. Really? You really don’t see your kid poking that stick into my child’s eye? OK, at least tell me you see the strangling.

Besides our carefully placed stink eye, however, I’m not sure what my sister and I should have done with this inattentive mother. In retrospect, we probably should have told the mom what was happening, but we were so angry and horrified that we just kind of stood there. Maybe she honestly did not notice her little angels had gone all “Lord of the Flies” on the tube slide.

What would you do in this situation? What should a mom do when another mom (or dad) is actively ignoring her kid’s bullying?

Erin Stewart is a regular blogger for Deseret News. From stretch marks to the latest news for moms, Stewart discusses it all while her 4-year-old daughter crams Mr. Potato Head pieces in her little sister’s nose.