Disciplining children

@jen_jen wrote:

When I brought up the subject of discipline I wasn’t thinking of hitting children, it was verbal discipline that I had in mind.

If I get a chance tomorrow I’ll type up the event that led to me asking the question. It wasn’t actually the behaviour of the child that was the issue for me, it was the behaviour of the adults.

It took me a while, I still find it quite disturbing, but here’s what happened.

Scene 1:
An elderly lady on a mobility scooter, going quite slowly (slower than I walk) up an aisle of a shop. Two children are running along an aisle that crosses this aisle, laughing and playing. One of the children runs out in front of the mobility scooter and the woman brakes sharply. Startled, she shouts at the little girl “Don’t run, walk!” The little girl looks scared and runs off in the opposite direction, and the woman starts moving again, visibly shaken and muttering to herself “I could have hit her.”

Scene 2, several minutes later:
There’s raised voices. A well dressed, well spoken woman in her late 30s is raising her voice at the elderly woman in the mobility scooter. “How DARE you tell my daughter off. No one tells my daughter off except me. She’s a 5 year old child and she’s in floods of tears. I hope you’re proud of yourself!” The elderly woman begains to explain what happened and the woman starts shouting at her “I don’t want to hear it, you made her cry, she’s sobbing. You’re nothing but a miserable old bag who thinks she owns the place. You’re as ugly on the inside as your are on the outside. Who on earth do you think you are to shout at a child and make them cry….” The shouting and verbal abuse goes on for several minutes, a crowd has gathered to watch and the elderly woman is surrounded. She tries to hold her ground but is shouted down and ends up telling the woman to f*** off and drives her scooter through the crowd which makes way for her, tutting.

Scene 3:
The elderly woman gone, everyone stands around as the woman preens and crows to the crowd about how wronged her and her child are, that the woman was old enough to know better, her poor child is sobbing her heart out and her father has had to take her out of the store. Everyone is agreeing with her, poor child, they really shouldn’t allow mobility scooters in the town centre, they’re a hazard, have you seen how quickly they whizz around on them? Shocking.
I ask whether the woman is now going to tell her child not to run around the store. The man standing next to me asks what I mean, the mother glowers at me. I simply say that I saw the whole thing from start to finish and there are two sides to every story. The mother says “my daughter is upset”; I say “your daughter was running around the store and you weren’t around to make sure she was safe.” A standoff, she stands there glowering, I look back at her and she looks down her nose at me, sniffs and walks away.

Scene 4:
A security guard comes up to the elderly woman and tells her that her behaviour is unacceptable and she must leave the store immediately. Meanwhile the mother is being given sympathy and a box of chocolates by the manager of the store.