Saw a lady hit her son today...

[Deja Q]

He was running around all over the place; she first was cool but it didn't take long for her to explode.

If children are always children, what makes them more hyper these days? Video games? Lots of blinking lights and keyboard-like devices to touch? Eating too much junk food?

[tjdee]

1. They're not too hyper, adults get too easily frustrated/angry.

We really should train parents. All of it is hit and miss, and learned from parents of parents, which isn't always good. Hitting a kid shows lack of patience/alternative ideas/creativity--but it works quick (at first, and when the kid is really young).

[Deja Q]

15. If we in schools don't teach our kids how to use money & the consequences

of, how can we tell adults how to live in our increasingly fast paced nuttersville of a "society"?

[tjdee]

17. Totally agree with that. No teaching of how to balance a check book,

no talking about how to have a savings plan...

[liontamer]

22. my school actually did teach that. n/t

[bluestateguy]

2. My parents saw a woman shake her baby in the grocery store

My mother had a real cow and used several four letter words at the woman, yet I told my parents that the better thing to do would have been to call the police.

[wtmusic]

5. good advice

that kid is going to end up in a coma.

[BikeWriter]

8. Babies die from that every day.

[Mutley]

3. No need to hit the kid.

Kids will be kids and it's up to the parents to teach them how they're supposed to act.

[wtmusic]

4. I don't believe they're more "hyper"

and it's never necessary to hit a kid. Never.

[Heidi]

6. Maybe a better questions would be . . .

-- What makes parents flip out more quickly and violently?

-- What makes kids act out so rabidly in public places?

-- What makes we (the audience in these public places) react passionately to these situations?

It's the culture, folks.

[Midlodemocrat]

10. Honest to God, my three kids never acted out in public.

We always tried to maintain a calm household with hardly any yelling, etc. They are six years apart, but they never once had a temper tantrum or a fit in public.

I think parents are just so much more stressed out these days. The economy sucks, jobs are hard to come by. Just way too much stress.

I know my mom didn't feel 1/2 the stress that I do. I used to ride my bike all over town when I was a kid. I would never let any of mine do that.

[Heidi]

16. We didn't act out, either.

But neither of our parents were struggling to make a living. None of us kids were battling for our parents' attention. And we weren't surrounded by a bunch of grocery-store vigilantes would would report our parents to DHS for sending us to the car if we acted up.

Times have changed, for kids, parents and spectators, I guess. :shrug: Like I said, I think it's the culture.

[WeRQ4U]

7. I saw a lady wind up and smoke her little cowboy son the other day too.

He was crying about something he didn't get at the store and he wouldn't stop. Then his cowgirl mom just let him have one on the ass. Didn't really bother me because had I whined about something like that when I was younger, I would have received the same.

[seemunkee]

9. They never have the chance to be kids and run around wild

Kids need time to PLAY not organized sports, just play, be wild, run, use their imaginations. Parents are so busy for a variety of reasons and kids get dragged around with them and don't have any kid down time. Being dragged around a mall/store sucks as a kid.

[LeftyMom]

11. There are a lot of factors there

One that I think gets overlooked a lot is diet. Back when my parents were kids or even when my sister and I were growing up, we ate relatively healthy diets with the occasional candy or soda as a treat. Kids today eat a lot more junk, and I think that they have to burn all that excess energy off somehow. A can of pepsi makes me feel jittery, even cafffine free has too much sugar and makes me feel weird, how is a kid half my size going to feel with the same amount of stimulants in thier system?

Another factor is parents. Back when my Dad was a kid, parents tended to have more experience dealing with kids, because they had larger families and mothers were generally at home with the kids. Experienced parents can sometimes catch these tantrums forming and head them off at the pass. Parents with only a few kids they spend only a few waking hours with each day don't get the on-the-job practice to catch that sort of thing. (Really, I'm not intereted in the at-home vs. working-out-of-the-home parenting debate, this is just my observation.) When the tantrums do happen, more experienced parents are sometimes better able to calmly diffuse them, where relatively inexpereinced parents tend to get worked up and keep the kid on edge.

I think you have a point about lights, too. I can't take my kid to Safeway, but he's okay at the food coop and it takes a relatively long trip to Costco to set him on edge. The loud piped-in music and the bright flourescent lighting of some stores set certain kids on edge. Unfortunately, mine is one of them. Goody.

Honestly, I don't think video games are a big factor, except that some kids play them for hours and don't get enough physical activity as a result.

[Enraged_Ape]

13. Diet and lack of physical activity are, IMHO, the most to blame

Wasn't it in "Super-Size Me" that they had the case study of a high school that switched to a healthy lunch diet, then all the kids' grades improved and there were fewer discipline problems?

And I rarely ever see children playing outside anymore. When I was a kid, every other house had kids in front of it playing catch, pogo-sticking, skateboarding, playing tag, touch football...whatever. This was prior to the Atari 2600, and I haven't seen it like that since.

[cally]

12. We expect kids today to behave much more often

When I was a kid, I spent most days playing outside with very little adult supervision. Even as a toddler, I played in my backyard with neighborhood kids. If my Mom had to go grocery shopping or to the doctor, she would just drop us off at a neighbors. I occasionally went to the store with her but it was rare. Now kids are in structured activities most of their lives. They are expected to spend a long day at daycare or school and then behave in a grocery store for another hour. They are expected to sit quietly in a doctor's office waiting for their sibling or parent to be seen. Kids just can't be themselves and just play and be loud.

[specimenfred1984]

14. My Mother Used To Smack My Bottom

It was only when she'd asked me several times to stop doing whatever. I quickly realized that I had been asking for it and just stopped the behavior.

But the problem is when you see someone else do it, you really don't know the context.

Unless the kid was really being abused, I wouldn't have tried to intervene.

[AngryAmish]

18. My Mom would smack me in the mouth BEFORE we got in there store

Just in case I thought of acting up.

[youspeakmylanguage]

19. It's television advertising...

Kids are bombarded with so much frantic advertising that they go nuts when they go in a store. Their magic window to the world told them that without 6 different kinds of marshmallow-infused processed crap they call cereal, then they are somehow missing out on magical lands of animated leprechauns.

I read an article about a family that restricted television completely and only allowed their daughter to watch pre-selected videos. One of the videos had a commercial that slipped past them and their daughter had an emotional breakdown in a grocery store when they refused to buy whatever junk the commercial was peddling.

Thank dog I'm remaining childless.

[hfojvt]

20. I saw a repeat

back in 1981 this kid was climbing on the back of a sofa. Suddenly he slipped and went "splat!" on the floor. The mother, who was watching TV, turns around and just says "Yeah!" really loud (as in "yeah, I told you not to play there and look what happened"). The kid was apparently too scared to cry, because he did not make a sound.

Just last Saturday, this toddler was toddling through the lobby. We always put tables across the stairwell to keep parties from going down into the basement, which closes much earlier. This girl was trying to keep from going in the same direction as her mother. She grabs the plastic table as she is toddling by and "wham!" it falls on top of her. The mother starts yelling at the kid to stop dragging her feet and stop grabbing at things. Again, this child which had to have been hurt and startled, does not make a sound.

Alot of parents that I see are not very nice to their kids. One of my favorites was this mother with five or six kids in my bookstore. All of her kids, but one are using my store like it is a library. That bothers me, but not her. She gets upset at the one kid who is running around making some noise. Maybe she thought she was at the library. Noise is okay in a bookstore, reading new books for free, is not - the opposite of a library, but to her, because the one kid "could not behave" they all had to go home. I should have given that kid a present or something.

[xmas74]

21. I do admit that I've lost it a couple of times.

I've yelled at my kid a couple of times at the store. When you are feeling rushed and trying to figure out what you can possibly make for dinner for the rest of the week on $15 (check was shorted, utility prices have gone up, gas prices have gone up, rent once again has gone up) it stresses you out. And then your kid has a tantrum because the newest cereal out there (costing at least $5) is a "gotta have" item or candy (or substitute item) and you have explained repeatedly why you cannot afford to have it but they just don't understand. And the tantrum happens in the checkout lane while you are trying to count out loose change (half of the grocery money is loose change). And some asshat is right behind you muttering dirty comments at you w/ words like "welfare" and "wh*re" and "poor white trash". And the clerk is giving you a nasty look. And the kid sees other kids using the same tactic and getting what they want. And...there are just too many "ands" that I can add to this.
You feel awful about it afterward but you just keep going on w/ life. There is nothing else you can do. And don't say leave the kid at home-I'm a single parent. Or leave the kid at the babysitter when the babysitter charges time and a half w/ a penalty tacked on for anything over 40 hours.
There are days that it's just too hard. Sometimes I can't take it and the one person I am doing everything for is the one who seems the most ungrateful for it. I know that's not the case but sometimes it seems like it.
Days like that are the ones where you just want to go home, cry into your pillow and wonder if you were selfish for deciding to raise your own flesh and blood in the first place. Those days make me feel like the most awful mother in the world. I look over at the well to-do parents in the grocery store who can buy their children treats and make their children wonderful meals. Their children are dressed in name brand clothing. Their children have every advantage. And I wonder if I have punished her for doing nothing but being born. Those are the nights that I sit up and wonder if I should have given her up for adoption just so that she might have had the chance to get the best of everything.
And then I cry and I realize that I do not deserve this wonderful child. There have been times where I have wondered if she would be better off w/o me still in the picture.