Parents aren't teaching their toddlers to stay out of the way

Tonight at a grocery store I'm walking in front of the registers towards Customer Service. Suddenly some brat starts running right beside me even though there is enough aisle room for 10 people to be walking in either direction without getting in each other's ways. I ignore kids in public and I'm not a big fan of free range brats in a grocery store anyways. I'm also fighting a mild case of food poisoning and just need to get in and get back out as quickly as possible in case it worsens. Then brat starts trying to step in front of me to get to its mother, apparently. I tell it to "stop that" and it finally stops with the running. I don't stop or slow down. Brat has to wait.

When I was a little kid I had to stay glued to my parent and held one of their hands until I was around 4. If I somehow strayed my parents didn't care if I got ran over, they considered it a lesson learned. Maybe that is why I find the "brats are so precious even though they are mostly idiots" BS so hard to swallow.

I can't tell you the number of times I've left a brat crying after I've accidentally crushed their toes because they were wandering around not by their handler and without notice that the people who are twice their height don't walk around with their heads down and thus don't have them in their line of sight.

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This is what i'm most afraid of, stepping on smb's brat. When at the grocery store, i'm very focused on the products and don't look around me, sometimes i happen to bump into people and apologize. But god forbid to step on a kid, you might get verbally harassed or even beaten by their parents. Some of them are really violent around here.

But then it's ok when brats slam those kiddie shopping carts into your legs...because you know they are just kids.

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But then it's ok when brats slam those kiddie shopping carts into your legs...because you know they are just kids

That's what I've had to deal with lately. I have two broken toes right now and an injured ankle. There isn't much you can do for the toes except tape them to the other toes.

I have been wearing open toed shoes so they don't pinch my toes, but now I wear a boot when I go out in public. I can't tell you how many times I've almost been stomped by some free-wheeling, free range brat. I can't afford to have my toes stomped and re-broken.

Similarly I was with my mom not long ago in a doctor's office. My mom is quite fragile and uses a walker. There was a free-range brat, ping-ponging around the waiting room. He looked to be around 6 and he had an older sister who was watching him. I guess Moo was in with the doctor. He kept getting closer and closer to running into my mom and I stopped him and said, firmly, "You need to do that somewhere else--you are about to run into her legs and I'm not going to let you do that." The poor girl looked embarrassed and they went to the other, less populated side of the waiting room. It hardly phased boy-brat.

Children are selfish and self-centered by nature. Most parents these days are doing a really shitty job of teaching them how to conduct themselves in public. I remember being raised with a never-ending litany of simple commands such as:

"Watch where you are going."
"Keep your hands to yourself."
" Sit down and be quiet."

My mom didn't have to say these things much because she backed up her threats: if we misbehaved, we were out of there.

But parents these days don't really try to curtail their little apes. They are too busy trying to be their BFFs or something.

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bell_flower
Children are selfish and self-centered by nature. Most parents these days are doing a really shitty job of teaching them how to conduct themselves in public. I remember being raised with a never-ending litany of simple commands such as:

"Watch where you are going."
"Keep your hands to yourself."
" Sit down and be quiet."

My mom didn't have to say these things much because she backed up her threats: if we misbehaved, we were out of there.

But parents these days don't really try to curtail their little apes. They are too busy trying to be their BFFs or something.

Trying to be their BFFs, and over-explaining and over-processing EVERYTHING. All the simple commands you mention are short and to the point. Often that's just what a kid needs. Parents today seem to want to converse and explain and counsel when a simple, calm correction works fine.

Today at the store I kept trying to get around a wandering kid (age five maybe), who was obliviously drifting around the aisle while I was trying to get through. If I moved one way, I'd get about two feet before the kid twirled back into my path. I was 0.5 seconds from saying something directly to the kid when I heard what I guess was its mom saying "Oh Brayden sweetie, come stand over here by Mom, that's not safe..." and I went on picking out my stuff from the shelves, but I swear she talked to/at/with the kid for about three minutes. I heard stuff like "it's not your space, it's everyone's" and "we stay safe in the store, right?" and she must have been quizzing the kid on grocery store rules because I heard it answer. I left the aisle thinking "Jesus, maybe the prolonged process-y counseling is what's making the kid so drifty and spacey! He doesn't have the energy to dig through your flowery language to find the point! Just give him directions like "wait by me" and the reason "watch when you're going, you're in that person's way". Maybe have him apologize if needed. Problem solved, lesson taught.