Saturday, February 6, 2010

And the Award for Worst Parent Goes to. . .

Generally speaking I try to be positive in my blog. I want my readers to have a happy, fun experience, but tonight I'm going to have a little rant, so bear with me.

I was in the store tonight just wandering around, when I happened to witness an interaction between these two ladies and their children. I'm not sure how long they'd been in the store, but it was immediately apparent that the children were bored. Two of them were playing chase around the clothes racks, another one was whining at his mother and kept asking when they got to go home.

I have nieces and nephews, and I've witnessed for myself what happens when you take them any kind of shopping but clothes shopping in particular. I didn't think it was anything out of the ordinary that the kids were behaving this way, and I wasn't appalled by their behavior. I was frustrated with the way their parents handled the situation.

It looked like the mother didn't want to bother with her whining child (I know whining children are hard to deal with but she kind of brought it on herself by taking her kids shopping in the first place) because she refused to answer anything related to when they'd be going home. She was harsh in everything she said and also kept telling him to get lost. When the little girl decided to try to entertain her brother (the whining child) by chasing him around, the mom got mad and again told the kids to get lost. They were begging to go to the toys (also a typical child request) and the mom refused to even acknowledge the request. The other lady kept saying "freakin'" every other word and then swore in front of the child, telling him/her (I can't remember which) not to remember that word because it was bad.

Through all of this, the two ladies continued to talk, refusing to do anything to deal with their bored children. Before I moved to a different section, I heard the mothers fairly shooing their children away, so they could continue shopping in peace and then acting like they'd taken care of the problem.

I am well aware that I am not a parent so I don't fully understand what it's like. And I know that taking children shopping can be a trying experience, to say the least. I also know that I'm too idealistic and don't have to deal with whiny children on a daily basis, so that influences what I think and feel.

But with everything going on with my niece, I have started looking at children and parenting in a different light. I couldn't help thinking how sorry these women would be if something happened to their children because they had pushed them away. I also couldn't help thinking these women should appreciate the time with their children because you never know when you could lose them. And if you're going to be a parent, you have to deal with all the annoying things your children will do because, well, they're children, which means they sometimes just do annoying things.

Okay, I'm stepping away from the soap box . . .

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