The tree, the apple, and the distance it falls

I have always been quite vocal about errant children in public places and the lack of discipline by parents. Last week I literally came head to head with a mother over the unruly behaviour of her six year old in a supermarket. 

The fact that the child was knocking over carefully  packed items from the shelves while trying to manoeuvre the massive grocery trolley was something I was willing to overlook, but when he ploughed the said trolley really roughly into the back of my heels was when I saw red. It ripped the skin off and left me bleeding in the middle of the aisle. 

Of course I threw the biggest fit... And wait for it the mother was completely unapologetic for her child’s deplorable behaviour. In fact, a shelf holding hot cross buns was his next target. The items came crashing down and she didn’t even to stop to acknowledge the scene. I’m pretty sure she thought somebody else would pick these items up for her. And she continued to let this child wreak havoc in the store. 

As it stands, children are allowed to run rampant in shopping centres and supermarkets and I want to know why it is that parents think it’s a life lesson to allow their children who can barely walk, to steer a trolley, for example. 

For me life lessons that we teach children are: 

•    You should speak when spoken to
•    You should earn an allowance not expect one; like doing chores for the benefit of your household because it makes your home clean
•    You should try and read everyday
•    You should respect your elders, and hopefully you’ll get respect in return... And so on. 

So a three year old does not need to learn how to push a trolley, irrespective of how much the child screams to be allowed to do it. Much the same as people who are terrible drivers should not be allowed to drive SUVs, especially in areas of really small parking spaces. 

The fact is, this kind of behaviour takes place all the time. For example, there’s currently a brouhaha going down in Westville in the Sunnybray Park area where there’s a guy who has children that he takes down to the park to ride their off-road motorbikes in the park, and they make a lot of noise. 

Residents have been complaining and someone from their community policing forum has identified the man and has come out saying it’s an infringement of the bylaws and will not be tolerated. They asked: what happens if the child loses control and rides over another child in the park? 

The community say they really should be riding these bikes at an off-road motorbike track. But the father has reacted very aggressively, apparently. And this is a prime example of a father who’s put aside all the valuable life lessons and is teaching his children to buck the system, and screw the law and will complain the loudest when he gets attacked and burgled. 

The fact is: it all starts with the bylaws. It’s similar to the broken window theory. The rot starts there. If you don’t enforce he bylaws then everything deteriorates to hell and this is exactly the future this man is mapping out for his young children. 

It’s the same as allowing your children to stand in the back seat of your car between the two front seats and bounce up and down while you drive. Or if you allow to child to stick half their body out the car window to wave at their friends. It’s curbing the behaviour at these simple little things that will go a long way in teaching the child how to grow into a decent adult. 

The fact is people don’t control their children in public. And why should I have to deal with this? I understand that kids will be kids, but you can’t be playing catch in aisle while knocking over an entire shelf of hot cross buns with no pause for consequence. Who’s going to pick that up? And of course you and I are going to have to buy those damaged buns. I do believe that the powers that be in the supermarkets should make the kids pick up all those buns they’ve dropped and put them in the parents shopping trolley and make them pay for it. Hit them where it hurts – the purse! 

There was another incident recently – in Hillcrest this time – where the father had parked his massive car over two parking spaces and someone took a picture of it and posted it on social media saying it was unacceptable. And the story goes that the drivers child told his father that he parks really badly and the father’s response was that it was fine because that way he wouldn’t get his car scratched. And this is the lesson the child takes away from this and think it’s acceptable behaviour.

I really think parents are way too lax with their children these days. I read an interesting article the other day that speaks to this very subject. It all has to do with this inter-generational cycle we go through. So if you look at thirty to forty year old who have children now, they are the children of the baby boomers who in turn are the children of the austerity era. This was and era of depression, economic difficulties and so on, and so they grew up not having much; always living under a financial strain and when they became parents, their reaction was to be excessive and they were just giving their children whatever they wanted. They didn’t want them to have the lives they had. 

Now those children having grown up in a world where they just got whatever they wanted are now becoming parents, and they don’t seem to know any better. And in this world the social fabric is starting to disintegrate because of the nature of the world they live in; Generation Y, 21st century, interconnected. A study I read recently said that teenagers of this era spend almost thirty one hours a week on the Internet. That’s the equivalent of a working week for the French! 

So what does the future look like? Does it mean having this pervasive upbringing where it’s okay to bark: “give my child whatever he wants”? And this current generation we have now are molly-coddling their children; protecting them from all kinds of things. They protect them from failure and disappointment and perpetuate the thought that the world is a really scary place. 

And what we do is prop our children up all the time. The reality is: this doesn’t give them skills; they don’t play outside, they don’t fall down, they don’t graze their knees. They grow up weak and feeble and not able to deal with challenges and adversity. And most importantly, they grow up not learning consequence.   

Do you believe in the inter-generational cycle when it comes to parenting? You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.