Well that was interesting…
As I’ve said a number of times on this blog: You never know what’s going to get people’s dander up. Apparently disciplining other people’s children is one of those things…
I found the reaction to this post pretty interesting. Let’s leave aside, for a moment, that I was being both hyperbolic and (at least a little) sarcastic in the post.* What was intriguing was the ferocity with which people think their children have a right to lower the quality of life for everyone within earshot and that no one else has a right to reprimand a misbehaving monster when the attendant parent fails to do so.
It reminded me of a piece on Slate a while back … I can’t find a link, but the thrust of it was that children ignore the admonitions of their friends’ parents because they have been taught that the only people who have a right to criticize their behavior are their own parents. The author was discussing her own qualms about correcting a child who was misbehaving quite egregiously — what right does she have to impart her (and general society’s) values on someone else’s kid?
To which I kind of wanted to shout “All the right in the world!” Look: I get that sometimes kids are a handful. But if you don’t correct their terrible behavior quickly and firmly it’ll just go on. We’ve become far too permissive as a society about this sort of thing. Once again, I’m reminded of this video:
The fact that you’ve learned to tune out your brat’s incredible capacity for noisy whining doesn’t give you the right to subject the rest of us to his earsplitting caterwauling because you think ignoring it will make it stop (and, let’s be honest, you just don’t care anymore). So, again, I don’t actually endorse what this guy did. But anyone who says he hasn’t wanted to do what he did at some point in their life is a liar.
*For the record: I do not endorse slapping random children in the face, even when they really, really deserve it.