Mom Of Disabled 3-Year-Old Cries After Man Tries To Give Her $20 Because ‘God Told Him To’ — ‘We Don’t Need Your Money’
He was trying to be kind, but the gesture was not appropriate.
Brocreative | Shutterstock Everyone struggles with challenges in their lives. Some of those challenges are more visible than others. Still, that doesn’t negate the fact that everyone has something.
One man didn’t quite understand this concept and offended a mother in the process.
A mom shared the disheartening interaction she had with a stranger after he saw her disabled daughter.
TikTok content creator Taylor Collier said she is the mother of a three-year-old little girl with spina bifida. Because of this, she uses a walker.
While out at a coffee shop, the pair encountered a man who thought he was doing something nice but really just made life harder for her as a mom.
“As we were leaving, she is using her walker to get out, and there’s a guy outside, and he’s washing windows,” Collier explained. “And he says, ‘Oh, hey, how old is she?’”
She said that she answered his question and continued walking towards her car, assuming the conversation was over. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
“He says, ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what’s wrong with her?’” she recounted. “So, I said, ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with her, but she has spina bifida,’” she recalled. “And he just, like, puts his head down and then turns around and walks away.”
The stranger felt compelled to offer the little girl a 'Christmas Gift' out of misplaced pity.
Collier called it “the weirdest interaction I’ve ever had in my entire life.” After this bizarre experience, she put her daughter in the car and prepared to do the same with her walker, except the man wasn’t done talking to them.
“He comes walking over to me, and he said, ‘Can I give her a Christmas gift?’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, man.’”
Collier continued, “So I said, ‘She’s fine, she has a lot of Christmas presents … We’re really fine. Like, she’s okay.’”
But the window washer was having none of this.
“He goes, ‘I know, but God told me to,’” she revealed as she began to cry. “God didn’t tell you to do that. That’s your internalized ableism telling you to do that because you think there’s something wrong with her.”
“So, he pulls out 20 bucks and tries to give it to me,” she stated. “And I’m like, ‘Dude, what is 20 bucks gonna do?’”
Collier said, “We have money, she has insurance, she has Medicaid, like we don’t have mounting medical bills, like, we’re so lucky for that. We don’t need $20.”
The mom explained that the man’s 'gift' only served to help him, not her daughter.
“It’s just so frustrating because, like, that didn’t do anything but make him feel better,” she said.
Collier said the man was insistent, and it was “kind of becoming a scene,” so she finally just took the money.
“We don’t need your sympathy,” she said. “Sometimes I want it because sometimes I get really mad about how, like, unfair life is, but isn’t everybody’s life unfair?”
To illustrate how strange the gift was, Collier asked viewers if they would give $20 to someone with glasses.
“I’m just so thankful that my daughter … is … young enough that she doesn’t realize and, like, know what was just happening,” she concluded. “Because, um, how do I explain to her that man feels sorry for you, so he gave you $20?”
Just like this mom said, what the man felt was actually ableism.
Giving someone $20 in and of itself is a nice gesture, and we can only assume that the window washer had the best of intentions. However, it was misplaced in this situation.
According to the American Psychological Association, ableism is not just “prejudice and discrimination” but also “a patronizing desire to ‘cure’ their disability and make them ‘normal.’”
While this man likely didn’t realize it, he was displaying a form of ableism by offering a random disabled child money, just like Collier said.
As she pointed out, if you want to be kind, a simple wave or “hello” is much preferred.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.