To speak to a child however they like.

People see a woman holding a baby, or a kid who’s been raised to be polite, or anyone who plainly doesn’t want to make a scene, and some part of them reads all that patience as an invitation.

As permission to do whatever they want, because they’ve decided this is a person who won’t push back.

And they’re usually right that we won’t.

That’s the part that costs us.

I have watched this happen my whole life, to my mother and to me and to nearly every woman I know, and until that flight I had never found the words for it.