Where is Nanny 911 when you need them??

Wes is 3 months away from turning 3. He’s becoming more and more verbal everyday. We carry on conversations, which is totally awesome. Along with his verbal skills has come a feeling of independence. At times he wants to do things all alone and gets quite frustrated/angry when I try and help or when he thinks that I am interfering. When I ask him to do something and he disobeys or doesn’t listen, I say something to the effect of “Wesley, I said put the books back on the shelf”, to reiterate what I asked him to do. I have decided that those were a bad choice of words.

Yesterday, Wes and I were in a waiting room. There was a toy table in the middle of the room and Wes immediately went and played with a group of children. No problem there. The lady at the counter called me up to fill out some paper work. I was there for about 5 minutes and Wes played very nicely with the other kids. When I was finished and went back to my seat near the toy table, Wes got angry. I’m not sure if he thought I was going to make him leave or he just wanted that independence and didn’t want me right there near him – but he looked at me and said “Mamma, go away”. Ok, I get that. It was slightly embarrassing, but ok…

The other moms near me looked at me. The looks were mostly sympathetic. I smiled at them and looked down at a magazine I was reading. I didn’t want to get up and move away from Wes because 1) I wanted to make sure he was being nice to the other kids and 2) I didn’t want to it to look like my 2 year old barked orders at me, and I obeyed. Well, Wes wasn’t pleased that I didn’t “go away”, so he looked at me, frowned and yelled “I SAID, GO AWAY MAMA!!!”. Over and over and over. I was really regretting using the words “I said” to him. At home, I can ignore these tantrums, but in public I have no idea what to do. I got a little panicky. I picked him up and walked over to a corner and firmly told him that it wasn’t nice to yell at his mom. He got angrier by the second and continued to yell and cry. Everyone in the entire room was looking at me. I felt like a crappy parent who couldn’t control my child. It all continued until we were called back to our appointment. By then, I was sweaty and he had snot all over his face.

This isn’t the first time he’s acted like this in public, but it was by far the worst. I dread going into a public place and having a scene like this again. Spanking him just seems to make things worse and honestly, I hate doing it in public. I could have tried time-out but there’s no way he would have just sat there, it would be more screaming and crying. Any advise, PLEASE???