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 ?