Step up and Be a Parent!

I've struggled for a while about the whole trend of people who punish their kids 'nicely'. And by that, I am meaning people who... well for lack of a better way of describing it, let me give some examples. I have witnessed some child doing something naughty. The kid is three, but they are hitting another kid. Nothing out of the ordinary, typical behavior of a 3 year old who is learning right? So, the parent goes over and to get the kid to stop, goes over to the kid and simply removes them from the situation. That. is. it. Or, another time when I witnessed another kid being destructive to some property and the parent going over to the kid and just suggested that they find something else to do. It is something I see more and more. In a parents attempt to 'parent' they just get the kid to stop. Not very often do you actually see a parent actually tell the kid that what they are doing is wrong. You don't hear the parent actually say "No, that is not acceptable behavior."

I've also heard it said on numerous occassions parents say that if they just ignore their child's naughty behavior, the situation ends sooner because if they try and stop it, it turns into a tantrum and having to haul the kid off to their room or do time out, or yada, yada, yada. So seriously? You aren't going to tell your kid that what they are doing is wrong because it just means more work for you? Uh, OK, if we just ignore the guy who is stealing from a bank because it is so much 'work' to hunt them down, arrest them and go through a trial, it's OK because the situation is just going to end... Same difference...

And it doesn't just stop with our kids either. When you see someone else doing something wrong or harming someone else, do you just sit and ignore it, or do you say something? When you overhear someone saying something mean or degrading to someone else, do you stand up for the other person? More and more I don't think we do. I think that we just let them happen because it is too much work for us and we don't want to get involved. And shame on us. There was an incident a while back where I saw a kid doing something that I knew was not going to turn out well, and I didn't do anything (mostly because I knew the kids parent was seeing the same thing that I saw and I assumed they were going to do something about it) and I didn't stop the situation and someone got hurt pretty badly too. While I know that the situation wasn't my fault and such, but I can't help but feel a little guilty that I didn't do anything. I didn't step up and be the parent, but I hope to never say that again. I'm just sayin'.