You were dealing with some 3D chess problem there, especially with kids on both ends... I am a dad, and I don't even know how I would have handled that on my own even without my kid around. I know it sucks, but you can't beat yourself too much on this one

Having your partner around sure helps. We had a crazy racist Karen situation once in a parade in our neighborhood, where this woman questioned whether we belonged in that particular spot since she had been "reserving" it by putting her stuff all over the place for hours. She heard my wife's accent and started berating her about "where's she from?" (We are both immigrants but she's more obvious in terms of accent). I had our kid on my shoulders, so I just made a calmly toned comment of "we live on this exact street" and directed my kid's attention away from the racism and towards the fun parade, while my wife proceeded to call her shit out. The woman had two kids there and didn't give a fuck, proceeded to go on racist rant against my wife (who very well stood her ground) while her own kids were crying their hearts out in fear over the confrontation. End result was all the adults had a shitty time, but at least all my kid remembers is a cool parade....

And for anyone from New Orleans feeling like this sounds familiar, yeah, it was Mardi Gras, and some fancy lady from the Garden District thought we should have not had the audacity to try to get too close to St Charles for our kid to see the Muses parade