While waiting in the airport this morning, I had the most enjoyable conversation with a mother and her two daughters, ages nine and twelve. She told me how they had just returned form Florida a week ago, and how that flight had been plagued with toddler-aged children who cried, screamed and were generally disruptive the whole five-hour flight.
Ugh! Been there. Experienced that.
Being a mother herself, the woman fully understood that there are times when children are just generally cranky. That wouldn’t have upset her. But what got her was that the children were either ignored or their parents had indulged their bad behavior during the entire flight.
The woman’s two daughters chimed in that it was terrible how those parents failed to actually do anything about their out-of-control kids, instead, opting to make everyone else suffer. The fact that these two young girls recognized the error of those parents’ ways greatly impressed me. I like to see new generations of conscientious children who have been parented well.
Gives me hope.
The woman, her daughters and I went on to discuss how irksome it is that many parents of today’s young children fail to take an active role in parenting their own children. On planes, they slip on their headphones and ignore them. In restaurants, they allow them to run around, instead of having them sit at the table. In stores, they are allowed to scream, throw tantrums and disrupt others while their parents, bent on serving their own needs, ignore them. And then there are the parents who take their kids to stores that contain toy aisles and drop them off there, while going off to shop in other parts of the store.
What the heck?!
This is a trend I see occurring more and more, and I can’t help but wonder when it became acceptable for parents to have children and then not take care of them or show the slightest interest in teaching them proper ways of self-conduct. Does it not pass through these parents’ minds that if they don’t teach their children, then no one will?
The mother, her daughters and I talked about how it’s easier to put in the early effort necessary to “condition” one’s children as to how to behave than to have to deal with hellions that have not the slightest idea how to conduct themselves and, as such, end up being singled out as black dots on society. Do the parents who are lax in taking responsibility for their children not care that they are setting them up for a life of failure?
I ended my conversation with the mother by complimenting her daughters on how nice it was to witness a next generation of well-mannered conscientious young ladies who will no doubt pass those same good traits onto their own children someday.
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