We’ve all heard it. Our kid is screaming on a plane, tantruming in a store, melting down in a restaurant and some annoyed bystander asks us, “Can’t you control your child?”
In a word, no. At least, not at this particular moment. Sure, we can try to guide, model, coach and cajole, discipline, punish. Sometimes these efforts work — it could be our excellent parenting skills or just good luck. Nonetheless, when a child misbehaves in public, the parenting police seem to assume that the parents are self-involved, lazy, disrespectful or just don’t care if their children misbehave in public.
I may be naively optimistic, but I seriously doubt that any parent on the planet would intentionally choose to have their child misbehave, especially in front of an audience. I wonder if these annoyed bystanders were able to reframe their judgment into a question – not condemning the other parent for being checked out, but instead wondering why the other party wasn’t doing more to control their child – they would find some interesting answers.
It could be that the other parent doesn’t know what to do, is paralyzed from the embarrassment of this public display of bad behavior or is just plain exhausted from what might have been an intense day/week or month with this child. If they looked at it from that perspective, I wonder if they would still be willing to charge in with harsh judgment or instead offer more compassion.
I don’t know the answer, but I often wonder how to improve these situations. Any suggestions on how you handle it either as the observer or the poor parent under the microscope?
One Comment
this is a really hard one. i guess if you can, just pick them up and remove them from situation. if that is not possible forget all the rules and go for bribery. you have to do what you have to do to get through.