Nobody wants to be around badly behaved people and especially badly behaved kids because of course it can get exhausting and grating on the nerves.
However, we have parents telling us that raising kids isn’t easy so we cannot judge parenting skills especially if you are not parents yourself but here is where I disagree because raising responsible, compassionate instead of entitled ones is one of the most important parenting skills, difficult yes but it MUST be done.
I witnessed an incident that reinforced my belief that a lot of parents are enabling bad behavior of kids thereby enabling badly behaved adults.
I was at the American Embassy for an interview, now if you have ever being at the American Embassy in Accra in recent times, you would see how unfriendly and totally undignified applicants are subjected to.
There was a young mother with two boys under six (6) years, they looked preppy and privileged. At the embassy, elderly people, persons with disability and parents with kids under 2yrs are given priority so an elderly man who clearly had a malfunctioning eye was wheeled to our side , now picture this, this is the American Embassy where everyone is tensed up so the place is deadly quiet except the whirring of the machines and then the tiny voice of this 4yr old boy exclaims : “mummy look at the man’s eye” and went ahead to laugh!
This old man was not deaf and this boy said this right when this man had gotten infront of us, trust me dear reader this was uncomfortable and embarrassing. But you know what was more embarrassing? All the mother did was smile and proceeded to give this child water! (I bet it would have been biscuits if that was allowed inside) lmao She was actually rewarding bad behavior without even a blink!
I really wanted to mind my business and put it down to she was embarrassed herself so the smile was just to cover it, I really wanted to but eh bad behavior without any sort of apology to the offended person kills me and I can never unlook such bad behavior so I went up to her, bent down to her eye level and drew her attention to the embarrassing gaffe by her son and whether she could implore him to apologize to ‘GrandPa’ and further use this as a teaching moment on how not to body shame anyone .
Her reply truly shocked me ! She said that oh it wasn’t a big deal and that her son could be forgiven because he was just a child so doesn’t understand these things. A child ? he was about 4yrs! If he could see a malfunctioning and point it out, then he definitely knew what was wrong and right and needed to be corrected immediately but here we were with the mother being a chief enabler by teaching that child it was ok to be behave in such a horrible manner and get away with it. Sad.
We have heard and learnt that children are like sponges, they absorb and soak from their environment especially what they see their parents do so imagine what such a child is learning.
That it’s ok to be rude or say cringe things and get away with it?
Or am I the overthinking here and did I do too much by drawing the mom’s attention? At what age do you think children must be held accountable?
As a non parent, can we have a say in parents parenting skills ?
What are your thoughts guys ?
Please share in the comments sectionIs Accountability in Children Valid?
