Disciplining Children: What Happened?

I consider myself a fairly tolerant person, most of the time.

However, this past July 4 I was anything but and I refuse to apologize for it.

I'm 37 years old. I can still remember the talking to I would get in the car before my mother took me into a public place. It wasn't a conversation filled with threats, but promises. If I misbehaved I knew that I would be spanked in the bathroom or when I got home. It was just that simple. Misbehaving was not an option. I even had to pick my own hickory switch if I stepped out of line. I wasn't scared of my mother, but I respected that she disciplined me when I needed it. And I understood at a very young age what was considered right and wrong behavior. My little legs popped "Dixie" more than once, let me tell you.

I am a child of the spanking era and I feel like I turned out just fine.

On the Fourth of July this year, I was having a really hard time due to the weather. Rain and storms make my arthritis and fibromyalgia hurt like the dickens. I still had errands to run though so my husband and I set off for town. Our first stop was a grocery store. I had a small list, but we like to look around for great deals while we're picking up staples for the week. It's hard to look for a great deal, however, when a child of roughly 5 years of age hits you twice with his cart and tells you "move out of my damn way." I probably could have dealt with that by walking away if his younger brother had not picked up a pack of bologna and bounced it off the side of my head. I turned and made eye contact with their mother and she quickly looked anywhere but at me, not acknowledging that I had been whacked with a package of meat byproduct. She also made no attempt to calm her boys down. They ran, skipped, poked their fingers into the meats, spit at one another and took off their shoes so that they could slide on the floor in their socks. A collective "eww" passed between the hubby and I.

I took a few Tylenol in the hopes that it would ease what was becoming a full on migraine at that point.

A couple of aisles later we met up again. The little pitcher who had hit a home run to my head was trying to pry open his Belly Washer (it's a drink with a cute character lid/straw). I assume it had not been paid for at that point. And even though I wound up wearing half of it on my nice, new beige capri pants, I didn't pay for it either. This time I spoke up and said, "What do you say when you spill something on someone, little man?"

The kid didn't like my questioning and hauled off and kicked me in the shin. If you think I'm exaggerating, I can show you the bruise. Astonishment isn't the right word for how I felt. I looked at the mother again and stepped in front of her cart when she started to walk away. "Excuse me, ma'am, but did you not see what just happened?"

She didn't answer me at first, she simply glared. Then she said, "Yeah, I saw you verbally abusing my kid."

Uh. Huh?

"I didn't ask you to give him a lesson in manners so leave him alone."

At this point the little devil blew me a raspberry that covered my feet in his spittle. The older brother, the Indy 500 King of Cart Racing told me to shut up or he'd put a can of soup down my throat. My husband, in the meantime, was calling the manager on his cell phone. The manager came and told the woman to control the Fruit of Her Looms. He'd gotten complaints from the meat department that the meat now had little holes poked in the plastic and would have to be washed, cut, and repackaged. A cashier showed up with a buggy that had seats for two children and tried to help the woman move her grocery items from one cart to the other. That was NOT happening. The mother refused.

So, we immediately went to check out and left. No coffee creamer for me. Nope.

I decided that what I needed most was to sit down for dinner and unwind.

Wrong. Thing. To. Do.

When did it become acceptable for people to allow their toddlers to just run up and down the restaurant? At one point, two children were coloring the floor instead of sitting in their seats and coloring their little mat things. There was screaming over who had the most chocolate milk, who got more chicken and who wanted to sit next to whom. Any time thunder boomed, the piercing screams went straight through my head. Are there blinders for parents I don't know about? Or do they simply think anything their little precious does is the prettiest thing ever? And we should all feel privileged to hear the exorcism in progress at their table?

I took a couple more Tylenol and wondered if I could replace my baked potato with some chocolate Xanax brownies to go.

So, we finally arrived home (at that point not even a Lithium drip could have salvaged my emotions) and as we were taking out our bags of groceries, one of our neighbors, a single father of four, approached us. He had his arm around his 7-year-old son's shoulder and said, "He has something he wants to tell you."

I braced myself. Had he killed my dog? My "mother?" Had my newly planted rose bush become a casualty of  his football? I was ready to cry, soil myself, curl into a fetal position and eat my own hair.

The little guy cleared his throat and said, "I really like birds, you know? So I saved up my allowance and bought bird seed, but our feeders were already mostly filled. I trespassed on your yard and filled up your bird feeders. I'm sorry. I know I should have asked. Please don't call the police."

At last!! Decency!!!

I swooped down and hugged him, assuring him that he could feed our birds anytime he wanted. I even showed him where we keep our storage of seed. He told me he couldn't come and feed them for a while because he was grounded for coming into our yard uninvited.

He also said his bum would be sore for a week because he got the belt for crossing the street without asking and without an adult.

Sanity partially restored, I invited him in to pick out one of our movies to watch at his house.

The moral of the story is this:

I don't care if you spank or you don't spank.

I don't care if you allow your children to throw things at you.

I don't care if your kid kicks you, hits you or spits at you.

I don't care if your child has no table manners just as long as they stay at YOUR table.

What I do care about is the disservice you are doing your child by not raising them with rules and self respect.

It's not the child's fault.

It's yours.