Full contact parenting......

It is hard for me to understand, but easy for me to believe, that some parents have completely lost control of their children.  Or, as an old friend of mine would say, it seems to me the inmates really are running the asylum.

Like most women my entertainment tends to include a lot of shopping and eating out.   I’ve decided no matter where you are, from Walmart to Saks, from McDonalds to an expensive bistro, it’s not a shopping trip or a meal till there’s a screaming child. 

I’ve been out of the parenting bullseye for a good many years, but I am not speaking from a lapse of memory when I say that my kids never behaved like some I’ve seen in public places lately.   And if and when they did act up I removed them from the scene of the crime…..with no hesitation.

Over the last few weeks I have been an unwilling audience to a couple of conversations between teen age girls and their mothers.   One I heard from the aisle next to mine because it got so loud.  An apologetic sounding mother was asking her daughter what she had done with the six hundred dollars she had borrowed.  The girl, just fifteen, insisted it was none of mom’s business.    The woman continued to beg her daughter for an answer.  After several minutes of being pressured the girl literally screamed, “You really wanna know where the money went?  I got an abortion….now are you satisfied you dumb $#&%”   This pair stayed glued to the spot as they shrieked additional personal details about their lives, but I fled the store, mortified for both of them. 

The second encounter took place in a dressing room beside mine some days later.  Mother and daughter were debating about how much material is required for something to qualify as a bathing suit.   I never saw the daughter, but from the sound of her (unpleasant and disrespectful) voice I’d say it was a twelve year old and her Mom.  Their exchange sounded something like this:    Mom:  “That is entirely too small.  You might as well be naked!”    Daughter:  “You don’t care about the suit!   You’re just jealous because you’re a fat old cow!”    I finished dressing as the argument escalated into more insults and the daughter’s exclamation, “I hate you.  You are just too stupid to know anything.”   Mom and I exited our rooms at the same time.  She carried an armload of expensive bathing suits and looked as if this was standard operating procedure, shaking her head and saying, “Kids!”   What I wanted to say to her( but did not) was:  “You would be able to hold the winter Olympics in Hell before I bought a bathing suit for that little monster."

A few months back my husband and I went into a local restaurant for dinner.  We were seated with a family of four in the booth behind us.  This family group consisted of two adults, a teenage boy, and a young boy of three or four.    The boy kept kicking him heels into the booth, being loud and just generally obnoxious.  Eventually his displeasure with everything served to him grew to a scream.   The father kept calmly and repeatedly telling him “You’re not going to ruin my meal.”   It did not seem to occur to him that the ear splitting shrieks were ruining meals for everyone else in the place.   He continued to eat and the boy grew louder and more hysterical, finally reaching a brain piercing crescendo.

We asked to be moved to the other side of the restaurant, but it made no difference because you could hear this child for a full city block.   The family members continued to eat and ignore him.  The waitress tried to placate him with crackers, and eventually the restaurant manager went to the table with a balloon and a cookie.    The screams continued, and then alternated with gagging noises.  The teenager had enough sense to be embarrassed and begged his parents to leave; they refused and  did nothing, apparently assuming the manager was visiting every table with treats.   Every eye in the place was on this booth.

Eventually they either finished their food or decided the restaurant full of hostages had suffered enough. They got up to leave with the screaming child, who then threw himself on the floor.   Dad scooped him up and paid the bill with the flailing boy gripped under one arm.   As they all started out the door the entire restaurant broke out in applause, and a collective sigh of relief went up as the door closed behind them.  Personally I was just hoping they wouldn’t decide to return for an encore.

It is easy to jump to the conclusion that these three children I speak of are the offspring of rude and incompetent parents.  I’m not so sure that is true.  Our society has deteriorated with the enforcement of being “politically correct” and the fear that has been instilled in parents about what constitutes child abuse.   The old adage “children should be seen and not heard” has given way to the belief that you and everyone in close proximity must put up with the whims and temper tantrums of a child.   The age of “time out” is alive and well as some parents live in fear of their own children.  

Don’t get me wrong, I do not advocate wantonly beating children.  I do, however, believe there is a time and a place to make a stand and take control.   If your kids have figured out embarrassing you in public will help them get their way, you are dead meat.  If you allow your child to terrorize an entire establishment with their behavior, you’re not teaching them a thing. 

Although I’ve thought from time to time that I was born in the wrong age, I’ve come to realize the good Lord knew what he was doing when he allowed me to raise my children in the seventies and eighties.   I know there is a very good chance I’d be sending my children birthday and Christmas wishes from my jail cell if I were raising kids today.

        I’m happy to listen to the conversations and think, “Oh…better thee than me!”    Life is Good.