It takes a parent

Responsibility. It is a simple word really, but why does it seem that nobody wants to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions?

My wife, one of my kids and I were having a nice dinner at a somewhat upscale Italian restaurant the other night. There were two table near us with screaming kids aged 2 - 4 that the parents just let scream. I mean SCREAM. In fact, one set of parents laughed at their kid each time she screamed, they were encouraging bad behavior. And don't think for a moment that I have a problem with the kid. The issue is the parent who does not or will not accept the responsibility they took on to mold a good citizen of the world when they decided it was a good idea to reproduce. Being a parent is hard, it is not for the weak of heart, but if you raise your children well, the reward is huge.

If you let your young kid misbehave and use bad manners etc, what you end up with is an older kid / young adult who is incapable of discerning when they are using poor manners and judgment. the example of this was at the next table - college age boy, hat on backward, elbows on the table shoveling food in his mouth while his parents sat across from him and watched... If I did that as a young man my parents would have corrected me at once, for that matter - they still would.

I think back to Hillary Clinton's book "It Takes a Village." I wish. If it took a village, I would have told the young kids to stop their screaming and then taken action to achieve that objective without further delay. same thing goes for hat on (backwards) at the table boy. Show some class - remember when we had class?