Don’t diss the kid. Kids only learn not to do things like that by being corrected. When she was corrected, she quickly put her legs down and didn’t give any lip. I don’t think you can expect more from a 6 year old.
The mother, on the other hand …
I once heard somebody holler “I see London, I see Asscrackistan!” God, did I laugh.
Am I the only one who is sick of people equating “private” with “shameful?”
Yanking up one’s clothing to show one’s underpants would be rude, or at least, impolite, in this case. It has nothing to do with being shameful-just making one’s host uncomfortable.
It’s not about being ashamed and dirty.
However, so long as the child is a child and acts like a child is wont to do (and that behaviour will continue, based on the mother’s obvious unwillingness to teach her otherwise) it puts Shakes in danger of being accused of all kinds of idiocy when he requests the child behave like a civilised creature in his home.
I wasn’t actually “dissing” the child, I have said the same thing to one of my friends in the past. She had a step-daughter who had never been taught how to behave properly. The step-daughter would not listen to any adult and put my son in danger with her behaviour at my house. I told my friend that as much as I love her, until the child lived with her long enough to learn how to behave properly, she (the child) was not welcome at my house. My friend understood – it is a matter of learning not a “diss.”
In all honesty, I am more worried about Shakes in this story than the kid or the mother. It is far too easy for some psycho to take her own underlying baggage and project inappropriateness onto the man than to accept that she was lacking in the area of actually being a parent and teaching her child how to behave in public. The kid could be the greatest, sweetest kid in the world, but if Shakes has to choose between being uncomfortable in his own home because the kid doesn’t have any sense of propriety or not allowing the kid in his home – I’d recommend the latter to the former. Just my opinion, ya know?
What? By throwing yourself on the mercy of the court as an orphan?
I remember things like this from my childhood as well. Not to take this thread too far off topic, but I think in a lot of ways this is a sign that we’re losing our sense of community as a people.
When I was growing up, my neighbors were all seen as being part of some genuine “community” or small society, my parents were a part of it and so were most of the rest of the neighbors. If we went on vacation, it wasn’t even asked “hey, can you keep an eye on our house for us?” It was understood. Not only is that not the case now, but most people in modern America would be outraged if their neighbors checked in on their house for them while they were off on vacation, unless they had specifically asked them to do so.
I lived about a two minute walk from my grandparents, and their neighbors on both sides had keys to their house, and would always get their mail and newspapers for them when they were out of town. My grandparents did the same for them.
It wasn’t considered rude to ask a neighbor, “Hey, I need to run out for a minute, could you keep an eye on my kids?” Sure, sometimes the neighbor might be busy or be getting ready to leave themselves, but otherwise, it was just considered part of being a neighbor.
I’m not saying that society was better or worse back then, but I do think it was better in some ways, worse in others. I know it was different.
I’m not sure why the concept has developed that it is inappropriate to ever comment on the behavior of someone else’s progeny. In my childhood, if another parent had to do that it would be a great embarrassment to my parents, I would be punished much more than if my parents had discovered my transgression themselves. (Now, I’m not saying cranky people that bitched unreasonably about other people’s children didn’t exist back then, my parents handled them by more or less ignoring them. My parents didn’t seem to have a lot of trouble distinguishing between them and the other adults who were giving genuine input.)
I think a big part of the “I’m the only one who gets a word in about my kids” developed because the idea of living in a community has eroded so much. When I was growing up, kids were not kept on some ultra-short leash. So by necessity, a lot of times parents only found out the trouble their kids were in because other parents or teachers told them. Now parents keep their kids closeted away or only let them out for “organized playdates”, I think it develops a sense of “I have sole responsibility over these children, and only I know anything about them so only I have a valid opinion on them.”
A kid who does not listen to adults is a good candidate for banning. Even a kid who does something dangerous is. And I agree with you that it might be a good idea not to invite a nutso mother back. But little kids are still learning privacy, and I’d hate to have them get too hung up about it. That why I thought SHAKES reaction was so good, nice and low key.
Which means, the issue would NOT have come up to begin with. In your case, correction by a third party would be uncalled for because it already happened by you. In this case, though, there was correctable conduct happening and the responsible person was doing nothing about it.
No, SHAKES, you are NOT a creep. Just someone who momentarily lost track of the thin-skinned universe we now inhabit.
My concern would be that the problem could get worse. What if the mother mentions the incident to someone else and the rumor mill gets going?
I wouldn’t want to be around this woman, period. There’s no reasoning with unreasonable people and I wouldn’t risk any further problems.
This is exactly what I was thinking.