A dear friend, who is one of the most organized and disciplined people that I know, mentioned that while she finds this blog interesting, she has never encountered any of these problems with other parents.
I thought about that for a moment and realized that it made sense for two reasons:
1. Her children have relatively calm temperaments and probably did not invite controversy into her life.
2. She was so on top of her children’s behavior that she had undoubtably already corrected it before an outside observer would even have time to criticize.
For a more visual example, our children met up at a public place and were running in circles around a display together. Being the occasional lazy parent, I noticed the behavior, realized it was not ideal, but rationalized that since they weren’t hurting anyone and blowing off steam it was fine for the moment. I also noted that if my more organized friend was allowing it, it was probably not too offensive. Within seconds of the thought crossing my mind, my friend had already stopped her child and told him not to run. Man, she is on it.
While I immensely admire my friend, I will be the first to admit that I do not always have the energy to redirect every behavior, especially with my more active child. I feel immensely guilty about this. So, I rationalize like crazy and look for external validation to reinforce that occasional laziness is okay. Like my parent coach friend who tells me that you only have to be the perfect parent 51% of the time. Or the book “The Difficult Child” that encourages parents to only respond to truly unacceptable behavior, noting that “excessive attention, even if it’s negative is such a powerful ‘reward’ to a child that it actually reinforces the undesirable behavior.”
But still, my mind tip toes back to the fear… if I am not controlling my child in public, am I a bad parent? A lazy parent? Worse still, a parent who is permanently ruining her child by not constantly upholding society’s standards that they sit still, keep quiet and put others needs (quiet, stillness, kindness) before their own. I don’t know the answer to this question, although I’m sure I could make strong arguments for each side.
In short, I wonder if as parents we have a social responsibility to ensure that our children behave in the presence of others (i.e. in restaurants, stores, on airplanes, at school, on play dates, etc.)? If our children are not behaving, is it our fault and do others have a right (or as some may assume, a duty) to let us know that our behavior is subpar?
I would really love your thoughts on this!
2 Comments
I’m not entirely sure the expectations put onto our children by society are truly fair. My son is (in my eyes) this wonderfully behaved little person who is sweet and compassionate. But he hasn’t figured out how to modulate his voice, and he also haven’t figured out that maybe he shouldn’t verbalize every single thought that comes into his head. So he’s annoying to others at times, and I don’t always remove him as fast as I maybe should because I really do believe he should be able to be present, much to the chagrin of others.
I think there is too much control expected to be exerted over children. They are, after all, children. They are loud and rambunctious, they have rough social skills, they love to run and play. And when it’s really important I sit down and have a talk with my son, discuss how his actions affect others, and he gets it. I think because I don’t exercise my parental authority that often, when I do I get listened to (most of the time, tired kiddo means nothing is going in those ears). But I guarantee that many people in public have directed evil thoughts my direction about my seemingly laissez fair parenting approach.
Ultimately, who matters? The judgement of people we don’t know or the well-being of our children? Personally I will weather the glares.
As members of society, we drive on roads that are paid for by our tax dollars. We pay taxes to support schools whether we have children of our own or not. If we are outside the privacy of our own home, we are in the presences of others in society. Some of these people are folks that might disturb us. They might be rude in some fashion. They might smell horrible. They might be talking on their cell phone in a loud voice about something too personal. They might cut you off or steal your parking spot…However, that is the price of admission for being a member of society. You get to drive on the roads and go to the supermarket in exchange for the occasional annoyance (and the joy that others can bring too).
The same holds true for the newest members of our society. As their custodians, we are granted the honor of teaching these little people how to be compassionate and intelligent additions to the world. It is our job to focus on them, right? I can’t do that if I am worried about how people around me are feeling constantly.
Of course, as a parent, it is my job to take Scarlet or Zelda away if they are disrupting people around them. However, if someone has a low threshold for kids and expects me to keep them tied up and silent, they obviously don’t know what is the very best for a child’s development. And… they should stay home if they don’t want to deal with children in public.
Kids need some freedom. Running around a pole or concrete area isn’t categorized as out of bounds for me. If people don’t like it, they can go away.
As you know, I have weathered some pretty gnarly glares from strangers about what I consider to be innocent behavior from my kids. I have to concentrate more on parenting my kids at that moment, conserving my energy for what really matters.
If Scarlet is doing something uncool, I might sit with her and point to the people around us who are not happy and explain that they don’t like what she is doing. That makes sense to do. However, I use my own judgement about what is okay. And I don’t think about whether those people agree to disagree with how I am handling it.