I truly do not understand the answers that say “never reprimand someone else’s child.” I think, if you are being affected by someone’s offspring and they are right there and doing nothing about it, you are perfectly within your rights to say something. His mom saw him, and had a chance to intervene, but probably decided not to since she was on the phone. At that moment, she abdicated the parental responsibility to you.
In this specific situation, I would have taken both of his hands in mine, made eye contact with him, and said to him, “Those do not belong to you, please keep your hands to yourself.”
A small child getting this response might just go find his mom, in which case, problem solved, or might keep doing the same thing, in which case, the action should be repeated.
I would never stand by and let someone’s kid behave in a way (that affected me) that I was not OK with.
I have told kids who were not mine to pick up their litter when they threw it and missed, told kids who were bullying others to stand down, and told kids who had their hands all over things in the stores where I worked to keep their hands off the merchandise.
I think people’s hesitance to “other mother” kids is one of the reasons some of the badly behaved ones think they rule the world. In the end, kids want and need someone to care about how they behave, even when their parents are not around. Kids who do not learn how to behave in public and with other people as kids grow into adults who are shunned, anti-social, or not fun to be around.
Read other related questions on Quora:
- Should parents scold the child if the child insults someone else in front of them?
- Have you ever lost your temper at someone else's child?
- How do you respond to someone who reprimands you for not "controlling" your child?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2fKAAWp
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