Disclaimer: I'm not a parent and I don't babysit. So my understanding of how to rear a child is entirely from how I was reared, what I see, and what my common sense tells me.
I went to the nearby Albertsons today. While in the checkout line, the little boy in front of me was playing with the cord they use to block off the closed aisles. I don't know his age, but he barely came up to my waist, so I'm guessing around 4-5. The cord is long, black, and stretches pretty far. His dad told him, "You be careful with that. Don't let go or you'll hit that man there."
The child continued to play with it and, inevitably, let it go and it snaked back and hit me in the groin. Luckily, the snap on it wasn't strong and it didn't hurt.
The man went ape. First he yelled at his child, "What did I tell you? You apologize to that man right now!" He kept yelling that until a crying child walked up to me and just sort of looked at me. Something came out, not sure if it was 'sorry' or just guttural sounds that could sneak out between sobs. At a loss for words, I said, "It's okay" and smiled at the poor child.
Now, I sort of assumed it was over. But the man kept going. The child was scared and didn't understand why he was being yelled at. The man said, "Are you crying now? Crying? No more crying! Do you want a spanking? Is that it? I'll leave you here if you keep crying! Do you want to live the rest of your life at Albertsons? Do ya?"
This child has already been yelled at, had to go up to a complete stranger and apologize, and now he's being threatened with abandonment? I sincerely considered stepping in and trying to diffuse the situation but a) the man didn't look anywhere near going to do anything truly physical to the child and b) he was so unhinged by his son crying that I don't think he could be diffused. So I continued to load my groceries on the conveyor belt.
When I got done checking out and walked my purchased groceries out to my car, the same man was still lecturing his child at the car a few spots down from me. The child had stopped crying and was actually listening at this point and the man had calmed down.
I am not so sure what I saw today was the best parenting strategy available. You can see that your child is scared, crying, and confused. You've made him apologize for the relatively minor bad behavior he had enacted. Why not let it go? I'm not sure threatening to spank the child and abandon him at the grocery store, and then furthering the conversation outside at the car, is the best way to get the point across to a child young enough not to understand what you are saying. Maybe if the kid were 7 or 8 years old with better reasoning skills, I could see it. But as young as this child was, he was just uncomprehending and confused.
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If the wise one, the parental unit, can predict that what the child is doing is not going to turn out well, there is a word that applies: NO. Not a lecture, a discussion, a session of pointing out cause & effect, just a simple, no, don't do that.
ReplyDeletewhy? Because I said so.
Perhaps the parent can provide a distraction, such as a toy brought from home, or a picture on a magazine, or a hug for the child, which is usually enough to break the child's mindset from what they were doing to something else--and the situation goes away.
Parents who are proactive are always so much more effective than those who can only be reactive! You weren't hurt, but the child was, and children remember the abusive parent for a really long time.
John, you are going to be a great father. Your instinct is correct: the child is too young to understand a lecture.
ReplyDeleteNow let's hope that you don't visit until my guys are out of the horrible 3 stage (terrible twos ain't nothing in comparison).
It's like I sometimes tell my wife when she decides that letting our almost-4 year old paint with water colors is a good family activity for a Saturday afternoon: if he makes a mess, it's our (I really mean "your") fault, not his. And, actually, because my son has been actively engaged in school activities since around 15 months, he does surprisingly well... for a THREE year old. But inevitably, some paint gets knocked over and makes a small mess.
ReplyDeleteMy son is quick to apologize, but we don't raise our voices or scold him. It's totally an age appropriate and predictable outcome for that activity. When we don't want to deal with messy water color spills, we don't allow that activity.
I would go so far as to call what you describe bad parenting - especially the whole abandonment thing! Utterly inappropriate, and liable to scar a kid. It seems pretty clear that the man was letting his anger take control, and wasn't, in reality, concerned with teaching his son a valuable lesson. Kids don't learn through angry, unpredictable parenting - well, they learn something from that, but it's the wrong thing. They learn through structured repetition and repeatable cause and effect scenarios. If you do X, Y will be the consequence. Tell the kid that up front, and then when he/she does X, make sure Y follows.
And of course, children are still going to disobey you sometimes, even if they know full well that Y is going to happen. It's in their nature to challenge and question things. Parents need to realize that it's normal, going to happen, and is actually a healthy part of a child developing his/her ability to think independently. It's nothing to lose your cool over. Certainly nothing to threaten a zombie-like existence roaming the aisles of Albertson’s for all eternity.
Had my son been the kid holding the rope, I would have taken the responsibility for apologizing to John for myself, and told my son, okay, no more rope, and offered some other more suitable distraction. End scene.
I agree entirely with the person above me.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's an overreaction on my part, but when I see things like this I've been known to watch in the parking lot to see the license plate of the parent and then when I get home make a quick call to family services. IMHO, things like this can do lasting damage to a child in so many ways. Perhaps a call might help this parent manage better and give them more appropriate coping tools for dealing with their child in an age appropriate manner.
I'm of the mind that what goes on behind closed doors is far more scary than what happens in public so I usually can't tear my mind from the idea that although the child has already been humiliated in public, there might be something much worse waiting at home. That's incredibly frightening to me.
I'm also of the mind that if nobody speaks up for these kids then who can they ever trust? And can they ever expect anyone to help them or stand up for them? If all it takes is a quick phone call so that their parent/guardian can get some help to cope... I'll take that 2 minutes of my day.