Before you have kids, you never really appreciate just how easy simple things are, things like running errands or going out to dinner.

You don’t have to think too much about it or prepare too much for it. You just go. You don’t need a diaper bag or extra snacks or special parenting tricks to keep your kids happy. You just go.

Once you have kids, life forever changes, or it at least changes drastically while your kids are little. Kids can have meltdowns anywhere and at any time. They don’t care if their parents are embarrassed by their behavior or not. They don’t care if strangers are watching them cry and scream. They let their feelings all hang out.

If you’re a parent, and especially if you currently have small children at home, we’re pretty sure you can relate. We often consider the meltdown inside a grocery store or a store like Target or Walmart to be a parenting rite of passage.

Sure, there are plenty of tips and tricks to calm cranky children down, but sometimes literally nothing works. Sure, you can plan trips to the store around nap time and make sure your children aren’t hungry, but sometimes that doesn’t even matter.

Rebecca Patterson from Pearland, Texas, knows about meltdowns in public places all too well. Recently, she went to Target with her 2 children who are 2-years-old and 2-months-old. Yes, she certainly had her hands full.

Patterson only needed a few things at Target, so she hoped her children would stay calm and that her shopping trip would go quickly. That is not what happened.

Not one but both of Patterson’s children decided to have meltdowns during the shopping trip. Have you ever noticed that sometimes meltdowns seem to be contagious? When one child cries, the other one starts crying too.

Patterson was completely stressed out and overwhelmed trying to calm down both of her children. To make matters worse, no matter what she did, nothing helped.

Then something incredible happened. A stranger asked her if she needed help. Patterson didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything at all. She did let the stranger, a woman named Tiffany Guillory, hold her 2-year-old. She was amazed and grateful as her child calmed down in Guillory’s arms, and she decided to snap a quick picture.

Hear what Guillory has to say about her act of kindness in the video below.

Have your children ever had a meltdown in a store like Target? If you were struggling to calm down your children, how would you react if a stranger asked you if you needed help?