Parenting in Public

For this assignment, I chose to go observe parents and their children at the mall and at Toys-R-Us. I have noticed people’s choice of parenting techniques in public throughout the years but it was interesting to specifically go out in public to observe such cases.

Parents seem to have different parenting mottos for dealing with issues in public. Some go overboard, some concede to their children’s demands, and some ignore their children’s behavior. For the ones that go overboard and yell at the children or jerk them out of the store by their arm, they seem to do so out of embarrassment. They are very concerned that people are looking at them and judging them for their lack of control over their child or children.

Parent’s that give in to their children’s demands might also do so out of embarrassment, but they obviously do not care about demonstrating ideal parenting skills. They want to nip the situation in the bud before it gets too out of control. I observed one common incident at Toys-R-Us where a child demanded a toy from the shelf and the mother refused. The child proceeded to throw a tantrum and the mother immediately gave in to the child and handed them the toy. Unfortunately, I have seen this many times and I believe that it is not the right way to handle the situation. Since the parent has handled the situation this way in the past they most likely continue to have this problem often.

Another method that I have also seen frequently is parent’s ignoring their children’s bad behavior. In the food court at the mall, I noticed a pair of children running around the table area playing with a ball. They got in the way of other people’s walking paths and chased after their ball under people’s table. By most standards, this is impolite, yet the parents chose to ignore their children’s rude behavior.

It is hard to tell whether or not someone acts differently in public than they do in private because one cannot observe them in