Only if you’re doing it for their own good.
I use fat kids for target practice. I never miss.
You shoot the fat kids, or you lob the fat kids at targets?
Too heavy to lob. I shoot them. For their own good.
You can come lick it off my ass. (I kid, I kid!;))
I’m not saying that the spoiled little rich kid scenario is unlikely. I’ve personally witnessed the spoiled little rich kid stealing everybody’s stuff scenario. These are the kids that daddy gets into Harvard then become staunch libertarians because “They worked hard for their money and so should everyone else.”
I have also known very unspoiled rich kids though. I still say that you can’t really tell what is going on here from a single bad incident that you’ve read about in a short story on a message board. When to give up on the child and take him home is still a judgement call. The grandmother may have had bad judgement, but it isn’t nearly as bad as they person that offered him five bucks. That’s when I would have left, and I would have had a few choice words with that person after getting my child in the car seat.
If the grandmother was really hopeful that the situation would be resolved, she may have stayed too long. It’s not unusual for parents to look at their own childs behavior (or possibly their own childhood) through rose colored glasses. I’m just not ready to get my pitchfork on this.
I just know that one day my daughter is going to have a catastrophic blowout in a public place and some childless wonder is going to start a thread about how horrible this parent at the mall must be. I’ve already experienced the dirty looks for bringing my baby on a 12 hour flight. Sorry guys, that’s where our family is and you can’t drive to New Zealand. Sometimes parents just don’t have any control over things.
Presumably you’d march her out to the car instead of humoring her for a couple of hours, though, which is my issue here. Kids will do whatever they have learned they can get away with–it’s the parents’ fault, not that of the kid in question.
Isn’t that why we have kennels?
It’s a judgment call though. If the grandmother was really motivated to “make it work”, I can forgive her overstaying the welcome. Nobody is a perfect parent, and sometimes kids are just plain little shits through no fault of the parents at all. Kids really do have their own personalities long before you can do anything about it.
Yes, my first plan of action is to remove my daughter from the disrupted area. That’s assuming I’ve paid for my goods, in which case I may have to stand in line with a howling baby praying to god she doesn’t grab everything on the shelf. I can’t very well take her out to the car and leave her.
Yeah, but in this particular instance, it doesn’t seem that anybody really tried to control the kid, outside of repeatedly saying “don’t do that” or trying to humor him. That, to me, is poor parenting (or poor supervisory-adult-ing, in grandma’s case, assuming she’s not the kid’s guardian). You can’t always control the kid’s attitude or behavior, but you can control your response to it.
As long as we’re being consistent, yes.