This morning I took my daughter to her “pre” dress rehearsal and group pictures for Ballet. There were several classes there, and a LOT of parents and siblings.
Surprisingly, despite the 30+ people in a small space, the room was pretty quiet.
Up near the classroom windows, sharing a chair was a little girl, probably 8 or 9 and a 2-3 year old little boy. They were not distracting anyone but you could see they were kinda “poking and proding” to get more space on the chair. What siblings wouldn’t, right?
“Bobby” and “Jane” (fictitious names) were not making ANY noise. This silent fight was really NO BIG DEAL.
Until the Mom decided it was. For the next 5 minutes the Mom, sitting 5 feet away yelled at her son to go get another chair every 30 seconds. He didn’t respond. About 3 minutes into her rants he got off the chair and just stood next to his sister looking through the window, instead of fighting over the chair (or getting another chair as his mother wanted) he decided to just stand. And ignored his Mom (I wish I could have ignored her but that was all you could really hear in the lobby).
More trouble ensued as he was ignoring Mom. More yelling. The mom sitting next to me even commented, asking what her problem was as the son was standing there doing nothing but watching through the glass.
“Bobby come here now”, “Don’t ignore me Bobby”, “You are about to get in big trouble Bobby”, “Come here RIGHT NOW”.
My first thought was, “this woman is putting on a show”.
Poor little “Bobby” was pulled away from the window to the other side of the lobby to sit and be scolded for doing “not listening”.
I REALLY try to not be judgmental (in fact, I have a blog post half written on that EXACT subject…). Obviously I am not in her house everyday, don’t know how “Bobby” acts. I do have a 5 year old son myself and know how frustrating they can be.
Don’t get me wrong, I have yelled at my kids, do yell at my kids, get frustrated and all that too. Just like every parent out there. But not in a crowded lobby of parents and kids. I am not going to put on a display to show that “I am going to make my kid listen to me”.
Public discipline, whether corporal or verbal is such a touchy thing — most parents from 20 years ago will clearly state they don’t think discipline is used enough. Then you have those now who don’t feel you should at all. As long as you are not going overboard with child abuse I am not going to judge either way. But PLEASE, do it privately. There is no need to put on a show for other parents. We all know that 2-5 year olds (and older!) can be hellacious, ignore you, test every last bit of your patience.
I guess my point is… grow up and don’t be a child about it yourself.
How do you discipline your kids in public?
Obviously this mother does this a lot! Why would I make that assumption, because of the way her son responded. He knew she wasn’t going to follow through or he would have listened. He knew she was just playing the part. The sad part is that goodness knows what she does at home, either by going too far or by not doing anything at all. It really makes me sad and angry that parents don’t know how to behave in public and then they wonder why their kids can’t behave!