Parenting: ; Defending Children's Bad Behavior Is the Norm

Summary

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Q. The mother of two small children writes that when she takes them to indoor play areas she often finds herself dealing with parents who not only do nothing about their children's obvious misbehavior, but also defend it. On one such occasion, a small boy was climbing to the top of a two-story spiral sliding board and releasing a toy metal truck, which would come careening down the slide and shoot out the end like a projectile. After it became obvious that the child wasn't going to stop, she picked up the truck and asked him to stop, at which point she was confronted by an irate father who demanded the truck back and told her if she did not like his child's behavior, she should take her children home.

She asks, "What is going on when a parent defends his or her child's right to behave anti-socially, and is this becoming the norm?"

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Extract

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Parenting: ; Defending Children's Bad Behavior Is the Norm

A. According to teachers, it has already become the norm. Fifty years ago, if a teacher called a parent to report a child's misbehavior, the parent accepted t...

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