WWYD? Mean kids
Pesky
member
Yesterday we went to get the kids haircut and had to wait as we were early for our appointments. It was a kids' place so they had a little waiting area with a train table, lego table and chalk board. Both of mine immediately went to the train table. There were only a few trains there to start but 2 boys, probably around 7-8 and 5-6 (brothers) had them all. DD asked "may I have a train please?" and the boys told her no. DD repeated herself and DH finally intervened and told the boys that they had plenty of trains and could surely spare one. The older one smirked and say "no we can't." DH looked at the kid and said "this is enough -- give them a train." Eventually after a bit more back and forth, the boys abandoned the train table altogether. No idea where the parents were but certainly not in that little area.
The thing is that I was not going to intervene and was about to tell DD that sometimes there are mean people who don't share and let her choose between continuing to ask for the train in the hopes they would be nice or choosing another thing to do. Loudly, naturally, so the boys and hopefully their parents would hear. I tend to think DH interfered a little much but while it was unlikely to cause an issue with DD, DS probably would have gotten upset.
In a situation like that, WWYD? TIA!
DD -- 5YO
DS -- 3YO
Re: WWYD? Mean kids
I look at experiences like that as a teaching opportunity.
I probably would have told my kids something like this "the right thing to do is to share since the train table is here for everyone", and left it at that.
I would expect that behavior from a 2 yr old, NOT from kids that age! Where the hell were the parents?
Big - 1 year old
Bigger - 6 years old
Biggest - 13 years old
I don't know...adults going back and forth with any kid isn't a good idea, your kids or not. If your husband was bothered, maybe talking to the parents would have been a good idea. That way they could see that their children have an issue that needed addressing and it would show your children when kids don't behave, to find an adult. I'm visual and imagining your husband arguing with kids...
To be honest, if one of my kids asked for a toy that another didn't want to share, my kids would have looked for another toy, then eventually, the kid that didn't want to share would leave the toy and my kid would have played with it.
In my 24 years of parenting, I rarely intervened when my kids had a dispute. I believe it helped them to settle things themselves without running to find me every two seconds one of them didn't do something the other liked. I didn't even make them share their toys. I believe that someone has the right to or not to share something. But they understood, if they didn't share, and the same thing happened to them, and it would, they learned how they made other people feel. Today they'd give the shirt off their backs.
We all love our kids and anything not nice, we want to protect them from it. But we can't and we shouldn't. It's like bacteria. Some of it's good for us and makes us stronger. We have to let our kids go through some things as hard as it may be to watch at times.
Since your husband was talking with these kids and no one seemed alarmed by that (a strange man talking to my kids would certainly get MY attention!), I suspect these brats get away with murder since their parents apparently do nothing when they're acting up. They're not used to being challenged.
So I side with your DH. Brats need to be told by someone that they're being brats. I probably wouldn't have been so polite, either! Or said something like, "Aren't you kind of big for such baby toys?" Nice and passive-aggressive!
I agree with a bit of what everyone has said. I don't usually step in to fight my kids battles, but I will step in if someone is going to get hurt or act very inappropriately. I probably would have told the boys that the toys were there for everyone to share, but if they still refused to share, I would have had the kids wait patiently until either we were called for the haircut or the boys abandoned the toys. And explained loud enough for the boys and my kids to hear about proper manners and treating people kindly.
This!