Teach Your Children Well

Last night we went to a public place to watch a public event. Upon arriving we set up our family's little area, laying out blankets, setting up a food table, setting up camp chairs, etc. Making a little space for ourselves amongst all the other people who were making spaces for themselves. To our left was, what appeared to be, a large family reunion type group with many, many children ranging in age from new born to older teens.

As we were setting up the children from this large group kept walking through our family space. I don't mean sort of through the edges, I mean THROUGH it. over our blankets, moving our chairs out of their way, through our eating area, etc. We weren't in the path, in fact, not four feet away from our space was a large sidewalk - at least 4 - 6 feet wide - plenty of space.

My kids got annoyed by this before I did (which, these days is pretty tough to do since EVERYTHING annoys me). My kids would come up and say, "mom, isn't it rude that they're walking through our stuff?" We then all sat down to eat and these other kids continued to walk through our meal time. We started asking them, to please go around. At NO point did the parents try to correct their children and tell them its rude to walk through our stuff and over our blankets.

Finally, my 14 year old took matters into her own hands. She went to the car, got out the duct tape and taped off a space - a sort of wall if you will - to prevent the kids from walking through. As she did this, the parents next to us gave us weird looks as if we were mildly crazy - perhaps, but only being driven crazy by your children who have, obviously been taught no manners.

Guess, what? the tape didn't work, the kids would then go UNDER the tape - instead of side stepping a few feet to go on the sidewalk - and walk through our area, over our blankets where we're eating and relaxing, etc. So, at one point a child stopped, looked at Stasia and Stasia said "go around" he looked at her again, and walked right across the blanket. Nate and I both said "can you go around?" And at this point the mother of the child jumped all over us telling us what horrible people we are and to not talk to her children, EVER! "How can you even come out of the house?" She shouts at me when I tell her we've asked her children for hours to go around and not walk on our stuff. "I don't get why it's such a big deal" She shouts. Things got out of hand and I was about to jump up and slap the woman if Nate hadn't calmed me down (don't mess with the pregnant woman)

She doesn't think it's a big deal that her children have absolutely no respect for people or things around them? That, as a result of her children's bad behavior and lack of respect for others, we had to barricade ourselves into a small space in an attempt to keep children (and mind you, the children who were walking through were NOT The little ones - they were anywhere from 7 - 10 and should have known better).

Now I'm left wondering about parenting - I freely admit that I'm a strict parent. My children have certain expectations about manners and decency, especially when in public. But at what point have parents stopped telling their children "no"? At what point have parents stopped teaching their children how to be polite? At what point have parents stopped teaching their children to respect people and to respect others' things? At what point have parents decided that their children are infallible and stopped disciplining them?

I then found this article last night. http://www.babble.com/mom/work-family/parenting-style-controlling-parents-child-discipline/ And it appears that this, indeed, was not an anomaly, but, rather the trend in child rearing. And a trend that, I for one, find appalling.

However, I do try to teach my kids to accept their own responsibility in events and to examine how their actions led to the break down in communication or whatever so, I must do the same. Should I have mentioned something to the parents before hand? Yes, perhaps I should have. Should I have asked the parents to ask their children to not walk through our stuff? Yup, I failed in that arena as well. But, on the other had, it was going on for TWO HOURS and the parents were oblivious to their childrens behavior and that frustrates me even more than the poor behavior of the children - how can the children learn when the parents don't seem to care?