Supernanny Rules

Parents - Do you know where your children are?

by Gayla on February 7th, 2007

Are you one of those parents who observes ill behaved children who run pure evil out of sight from their parents and does nothing?

As much as I’ve tried to be one of those parents, I just can’t.

My husband swears I’m going to get arrested for intervening one of these days.  I’m of the belief that it really registers with kids, when a complete stranger points out just how obnoxious they are.

I’d like to explain the scenario and have you - random parents - tell me - Am I Wrong?

• Would you appreciate an occasional stranger speaking up or would you prefer everyone just ignore your kid and go on about their business?

My most recent intervention took place this last weekend.  My family was participating in a poultry show.  Kids were running everywhere while the parents hung out drinking hot chocolate in the warm break room.

A high school girl who obviously took both her showing and her schooling very serious took advantage of a little down time to get some homework done.  When she was summoned to tend to her birds, she set her books aside.  Obviously there were adults (my husband and I) close by, so she didn’t think anything of leaving her books for a few minutes.

Next there were three kids, between the ages of 6 to 14 that came near the heaters and proceeded to act like obnoxious little fools.  The oldest of the three was a boy who was holding his bird.  A small bantam, not much bigger then my own hand.  In the process of showing off, the boy started to run the isle ways acting as though he were throwing the bird like a football - never actually releasing the bird.  He stumbled a few times causing me to gasp thinking the poor bird must be so frightened.
Next, the youngest of the three tried to counter the show-off-ed-ness and picked up the unclaimed books that were laying close by.  One was obviously a school library book that the young girl decided to smash into bird droppings.  This action stirred a complete uproar of laughter between the three.

That’s when I just couldn’t take it any longer - I walked over to the three kids told them they were “acting like flaming brats and to give me the books and I’d return them to the rightful owner.”
Once I returned the books to the owner, I returned to my post and proceeded to keep a watchful (but evil looking) eye on the children until finally someone from the show admin came and forced the children to return to their parents.

Now, I had thought about letting the little monsters tear up the book and then taking the girl, the book and the brats to the parents so they could make restitution for the book - but knowing that most likely the parents would turn this on the teen girl - I decided to step in and take action to save the poor girl the trouble.

Do some parents realize what their children are capable of doing when they are out of sight?

Regardless, would you mind settling this little discussion my husband and I are having?