Disciplining Other People’s Children
Writer comment: For some reason this and some other posts of mine showed up without the ability to comment so I am reposting them in case someone wants to.
My local mornng radio show hosts were on break last week and so they broadcast some best of episodes. One involved them discussing the issue of children and family.
One of the hosts had gone to Washington DC and was relating his experience touring the various sites. One place that he went was Arlington National Cemetery and he discussed an incident that happened to him while touring the site.
As you walk along the grounds of Arlington, there are a series of black posts with chains in between them which separate the walkway from the graves. As he and his family were walking down the path there was another family ahead, one mom and her two sons. One of the boys, aged about 12 was running along and flipping the chains so they swung around and clanked. Mom was doing nothing to stop him.
So our intrepid host stepped in. He walked up to the child and in his firmest stern dad voice said “Son… do not do that”.
The boy looked at him, then at his mom, who said nothing, and then he stopped.
Now I think even our most fervent ‘keep your nose out of my business’ advocates would agree that this was an appropriate thing to do. We are talking about a very sacred site and I don’t think anyone would consider the boy’s behavior proper, nor do I think the man’s reaction was over the top. He didn’t make a fuss, he didn’t touch the child, he simply told him to stop behavior everyone would agree is wrong.
But this led to a broader discussion of how far you should be able to go in that area.
Obviously physical contact with another child is out of bounds.
In addition, if the child is doing something wrong, but relatively innocuous (say making a mess at his table in McDonalds) then even speaking up is probably improper.
But where do you draw the line ?
All of us have experienced situations where a child is going well beyond ‘being a kid’ and is disrupting the enjoyment we and/or our families get out of an event. At one time the parent would have stopped the child or a quiet word to the parent would have been enough. But today there is the battle of the PC’s as to how far we can go.
So what do you think ?
4 Responses to “Disciplining Other People’s Children”
That’s the thing. Does the offensive action stop? If it doesn’t, what do you do then? Stand there with egg on your face? And is it better to talk to the child or the parent? Maybe it depends on the age of the child.
I’ve always been amazed at my school teacher sister-in-law, who probably weighs under 100 lbs sopping wet, walking up the bleachers to a group of rowdy teenagers at a graduation ceremony in the school gym and asking/telling them they were ruining the ceremony with their actions. True, she was used to dealing with rowdy teenagers and they stopped – but I’m still amazed at how she had the courage to do it.
It’s fairly simple you don’t get to discipline others children at all. To me at least that infers some sort of punishment and that is out of bounds. We also don’t get to comment to kids if they are not breaking any rules. Now I will say that there are unspoken rules about religious services, grave yards, that count as rules. Load talking at restaurants, chaotic behavior, and general annoyance doesn’t count. In those cases you should just complain to management about them not having or enforcing rules. You don’t yell at the person who has more than 8 items in the express lane, you complain to management instead. We can however make statements about behavior or actions others take when they do cross the line and that should include children. Letting people know that we find actions wrong or improper often leads to people reassessing their actions. If not direct complaints to the appropriate parties (caretaker, business employee, etc) will bring action even if the behavior doesn’t. They often see bad behavior and are uncertain where to draw the line. Complaints help them and make intervention much easier for them to justify
We shouldn’t discipline other people’s children…but the parents….well, that is a different story.
worst case … call the cops
In general, I’m pretty tolerant of kids being kids — noise, rowdiness, etc. I like kids. But if something goes beyond standard kids-being-kids stuff, I’ll totally tell a kid to knock it off, or ask a parent to control his or her kid.