Grocery shopping with kids is never a vacation. It is a logistical nightmare involving snack negotiations, cart etiquette, and the constant, low-level fear of a public meltdown. But for one mom on Reddit, a routine trip to stock up on essentials turned into a core memory of humiliation for her 9-year-old son, and honestly, my inner fourth-grader is screaming in sympathy.
The narrator, a 37-year-old mom, was at the store with her son and daughter. Now, her 9-year-old son still wets the bed. This is actually pretty common, but to a 9-year-old boy, it is a state secret guarded more closely than the nuclear launch codes. They buy Goodnites—the “big kid” pull-ups—and they usually have a system: get them first, bury them deep in the cart under the cereal and apples. It is the “hide the shame” game, and we have all played a version of it.
Everything was going according to plan until they reached the checkout line, the most vulnerable place in the entire store. The mom was unloading the cart, autopilot engaged. She tossed the Goodnites onto the moving belt. Suddenly, her son panic-whispers, “no mom please stop.” His voice is worried. He is scanning the perimeter. Why? Because his friend—a classmate, a peer, a potential social executioner—is in the store with her parents.
Here is where the disconnect happens. The mom, just wanting to pay and leave, basically said “it’ll be okay” and proceeded to build a little grocery fort around the Goodnites on the moving belt. She thought she was being helpful. She thought she was being discreet. But to a terrified 9-year-old watching his secret slide toward the cashier while his friend stood nearby, she might as well have been launching a flare gun that said “I WET THE BED.”
The fallout was immediate silence. The car ride home was quiet, which any parent knows is louder than screaming. When she finally asked him what was wrong, he let her have it. He told her she was being a “jerk.” He explained that he wanted her to stop unloading so his friend wouldn’t see the evidence. He felt exposed, vulnerable, and completely ignored in his moment of panic.
Look, I get it. Moms are busy. We just want to get the groceries in the car and go home. But we have to remember that 9-year-old social hierarchies are brutal. Bedwetting at that age is a source of intense shame. When he begged her to stop, he wasn’t being difficult; he was begging for social survival. Even if the friend didn’t see anything, the risk was enough to send his anxiety through the roof.
The mom thinks she is in the clear because she “needed to get the groceries unloaded” and tried to hide the package. But sometimes, efficiency needs to take a backseat to empathy. He isn’t mad about the groceries; he is mad that his mom prioritized the conveyor belt over his desperate plea for dignity. He is not being a brat for calling her a jerk; he is just a humiliated kid who feels like his mom threw him to the wolves.
So, is she the ahole? Softly, yes. She didn’t mean to hurt him, but she dismissed his very real fear in a high-stakes moment. She owes that kid a sincere apology and maybe a promise to buy the Goodnites online from now on in an opaque, unmarked box.