One Parent’s Behavior At My Child’s Gymnastics Class Sent Me Into A Rage. Then I Realized Something.

That is, until I lost my s**t — not because of my own anxiety, but because of someone else’s.

It happened during my eldest’s gymnastics class. It’s a drop-off one, meaning parents get a blessed 45 minutes to leisurely stroll to the nearest coffee shop, doomscroll, or just stare at a wall. That was my routine until one day, my peaceful scroll was interrupted by a parent running full speed across the gym toward what I assumed was their child, for no apparent reason. Then, this parent hovered around their child, completely oblivious to the coaches and the other kids, disrupting the class.

“Is there a problem?” I found myself saying as the group moved closer to the bleachers where other parents were waiting, most glued to their phones. “Are you worried about their safety? Because the coaches know what they’re doing. They’ve got this.”

This parent seemed taken aback and muttered something about it being their child’s first drop-off class and wanting to “make sure” their kid was OK.

Bulls**t, I thought. The kid was fine. This parent was the one who wasn’t.

“Do you see that parent out there getting in the coaches’ way?” I said to anyone nearby, most of whom were barely paying attention to the class. “Yah… annoying,” they replied, chuckling a bit. But I wasn’t laughing. I was raging.

I even took a picture and texted it to a few friends, half-jokingly asking if I should publicly shame them on Facebook for being such a hovering parent. 

“I’m just so mad about it!” I told my husband later that day. “Why can’t they just sit down and enjoy the child-free time like everyone else?”

“Why are you so mad about it?” he asked. “Sure, it’s annoying, but I don’t see the point in getting so worked up.”

“Because!” I thought. “They’re ruining it for everyone!”

Later, I told my mother. She asked, “Do you think the other parents were as annoyed as you were?”

I thought back to the bleachers. No one seemed to notice much. “No,” I admitted.

“Well, that’s worth thinking about,” she said. “Umm, no,” was my initial response to that one. But I took a beat and really thought about it. Sure, this parent was kind of the worst, but they weren’t really disrupting the class or stopping the coaches from doing their job. Annoying? Yes. Rage-worthy? Maybe not.

One of my friends later texted again: “I don’t think you should put the picture on Facebook. It’s irritating as hell, but they’re not a danger to society.” 

And then it hit me. The reason I was raging.

It was because I was that parent. On the inside. But I’d learned to control it, to keep it in check. Watching this parent’s anxiety spill out so publicly made me feel exposed, like they were revealing what I was struggling to hide.

“You should have compassion for them,” another friend said. “They’re clearly suffering, and this is how they’re coping.”

My friends were right.

I tried to let the anger dissipate. Instead, I replaced it with compassion. Because, someday, there might be a moment where I can’t keep my anxiety in check, and I can only hope that, if it happens, people will have compassion for me, too. And you know, not publicly shame me either. After all, as parents, we’re just doing the best we can — and we don’t always/rarely get it right.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost in April 2025.