I went to my local library today and I took Mia over to the kid play area. There was a wide variety of ages playing, and Mia was one of the younger kids at 22 months old. There was a group of 3 Momees talking and they had the older children around 6 years old playing in the area as well. These kids were not behaving well at all. They were jumping off of the wooden pretend kitchen and book shelves they were hanging on wall art. You name it they were throwing it (books, toys, etc. ) Now all of these Momees see that their kids are acting bad and are not saying anything. Mia has the Twinkle toe shoes that light up and one little girl kept stomping on her feet to try and get them to light up. I walked over to tell the little girl nicely that the shoes light up on their own and not to do that because you are going to hurt her. I sit back down and the mom is watching her daughter too and the little girl stomps on Mia’s foot as hard as possible. I look at the mom and she looks away. I said to the mom, your daughter keeps on stomping on my daughters foot. She calls her 6 year old daughter over and says to her, ” did you step on that little girls foot?” the 6 year old replies, “no!” the mom looks at me and says she said she did not stomp on your daughters foot, and tells her to go play. I was shocked I know she saw it and she is not correcting her child’s bad behavior. Not even 2 minutes later she pushed a little boy over who was younger than Mia and it wasn’t till that little boy was crying did she yell at her child. After 20 minutes of playing I took Mia to the quiet book area to play. I did not feel the moms were doing a good job of handling their kids. I did not want to get into any arguments and removed Mia and I from the situation.
What would you of done in this situation? Did I handle it correctly?
I would have went to a librarian for sure. I have to do that down here bc there are always rambunctious kids (older ones of course) in the younger child section always causing trouble. Sorry you went thru that today and I hope Mia is ok :(….(if it wasn’t a library, I probably would have told the mother off lmao)
i agree with you stacey 🙂
Thank you so much Stacey : ) I should of gotten a librarian but I am hoping this was a fluke but because it was a library I did not want to make a scenes so I removed us from the situation. I should of told someone though. Thank you
omg,i see this all the time,at parties and drs offices,its ridic,i have a very big mouth when it comes to my children,this same thing happened at the neuro surgeon office last week and i told the mother to control your kid,cause the kid jumped on brayden and threw a book at his head,i lost it,and of course they didnt speak english,but i would of told the librarian,because that is not acceptable,i dont care who you are or where you are from you shall have respect and cooth,and manners and apparently half of society doesnt have this these days and it disgusts me to no end!!!
I don’t understand why parents do not say something to their kids. I try to correct Mia’s behavior I may have to repeat myself till I turn blue but I definitely would never ever let her hurt another child
OMG!!!!!! that’s just horrible!!! i’ve heard these kind of stories before and let’s just say that these moms are lucky it’s not me!!!! I would have said it nicely to the child and then i would have yelled not only at the child at the mother for not watching her child. holy crap what the hell is wrong with parents and they wonder why kids these days are so out of control. it’s because there are no limits and boundaries!!!!! i’m so sorry this happened to you. you did the right thing. my husband has literally had to drag me out of parks and playgrounds because i nearly started a fight!!!!! i have no patience for this kind of crap!!!!! hugs mama!!!!
It’s not always easy to bite your tongue. But, I know I have to for Mia. Mike always tells me to just bite my tongue even though he knows I want to snap. Thank you Renee : )
I have a problem not biting my tongue!!! lol you are a better woman than me!!!! 🙂
You are a good mama : ) defending your kids
Vanessa on facebook replied:
“Let me just say you are a better person then me. I was at the park on monday and this kid had to be eight. First he tried to step on my daughter hands on purpose then he proceeded to jump in her face and scare her. At this point I’m livid. one, where are your parents. Two why is your grown behind bullying my three year old. So i went over to him and told him to stop bothering my daughter. Then asked him where his parents were, He pointed over to them then hid. I walked over to his parents and said is that your kid. they said yes. Then I said look I don’t know why your kid thinks its okay to pick on kids younger then him by trying to step on their feet and scaring them. But if he bothers my daughter again Im coming back to you and Im gonna handle YOU since you clearly didn’t teach your child correctly. They looked at me in shock then said sorry and called their kid over. I dont understand why people think that they don’t have to watch their children when in a public place.”
I replied by saying:
“Now Vanessa you are one strong mama xoxoxox I envy that spunk : ) “
I am a childrens librarian at a public library and if this was happening in my library I would 100% want a situation like this to to be reported. The libray is a place for children of all ages to have fun and want to come back. However there is often some rotten parents (I would not say children because they are still testing thier boundaries and mistakes are bound to happen but I parent needs to teach them right from wrong). As a librarian I would not directly approach the parent because that can be percieved as confrontational and that I am taking sides. Instead I would observe the children at play and then inform the parent when thier child misbehaves and explain that this behavior will not be tolerated in the library. This is only a temporary fix but hopefully after constant reminders the parent and child will either leave and never come back or get the hint. I know some librarians feel that this it is not thier responsibility but how can we have a welcoming library if these issues are not addressed.
Lori thank you so much… and next time I definetly will : ) and that would be the greatest approach for you to do
This type of parental lazy parenting is reprehensible. Not only is it disrespectful to other patrons of the library, but it is also doing the child a great disservice by not only allowing bad behavior, but by affirming it! “My kid said she didn’t do it, so she didn’t.” This child apparently has boundary issues that have long been ignored by her mother, which are only going to get worse as she gets older. She will end up being one of those kids who is reprimanded for bullying, or worse, arrested for being caught on tape beating up some other girl at school. Some people should think twice before they decide to become parents, because they don’t seem to take this huge responsibility very seriously at all!
I absolutely would have reported this behavior to the librarian. There should be a sign up in the play area that states that persistent bad behavior will not be tolerated, and all offenders will be asked to leave. There apparently is a need for it.
Liisa this is so well written and true I really should of made someone aware. And you are completely right when it comes to her parenting it is so unfortunate.