This will offend people. You’ve been warned.

I think part of the reason I’m as outspoken as I am is because Mama wasn’t. She lived most of her life thinking things but not saying them. She would say them to me and I would constantly say, “Why didn’t you just tell him/her that?” and she’d say, “I didn’t want to cause trouble.” She worried so much about how what she said made other people feel that she gave very little thought to how not saying anything made her feel. Mama was always so “nice”. I’m not “nice” and I know that. I don’t want to be nice. I want to be honest. I want to be fair, but it is perfectly ok with me if I’m not “nice”. I think “nice” is fake. Nobody is always nice. People that pretend they are put on a great act. Mama was the absolute best person I ever knew. She cared about people more than anyone I knew and probably will ever know, but even she was not always as “nice” as she pretended to be. There were many times when she would have loved to tell someone exactly what she thought. Every so often if you hit her at just the right (or wrong..depending on your perspective) moment she would lose it, but those moments were few and far between.



Mama taught me a lot and one of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t realize just how smart she was until after she was gone. The way she raised me is a dying art. She told me to do things and I did them. If I didn’t do them, I was in trouble….and I knew it. I don’t remember getting a lot of spankings. I don’t remember getting fussed at a lot, but I do remember knowing not to do things that would get me in trouble. I knew my boundaries because I had been taught them. Mama told me that if I ever got trouble in school that “I had not seen trouble until I walked in that house.” I never asked what that meant. I never needed to know. I never tested it. She meant what she said and I knew it. I was taught to act like an adult by being around adults. Good behavior was expected and I knew it.



I don’t think children are different now. I’m sure some personalities respond better to some discipline methods, but the fact is….if your child is going crazy in public, whatever you’re doing…it’s not working. Eventually the child that is kicking and screaming in Target is going to have to go to school. They are going to have to learn to sit in a desk for hours and work….quietly. They won’t have the option of being removed and given a chance to calm down and cool off….unless of course we give them some special accommodations to assist them with the behavioral needs. Is that really what this world has come to? Children having “their moments” are allowed to act however they want and no one is supposed to be annoyed….and if they are, they’re supposed to be the people that should leave? I don’t think so.



Public places have rules….if your child is disrupting a public place, they should be the one to leave…not everyone else. Quite frankly I don’t think they have a right to be there if their behavior is not within socially acceptable guidelines. This is one of those situations where providing for one is infringing upon the rights of the many. Just because someone can't handle their child's temper tantrum doesn't mean the entire restaurant/mall/store/movie theater should have to be subjected to it...and it certainly doesn't mean that the other patrons should be the ones that have leave.


As you can see, this is a real hot-button issue for me as I've had many a meal ruined by a child that was out of control. I started to look online to see how many restaurants actually had child policies and the result was actually surprising. Larger cities have numerous restaurants that don't allow children and still other restaurants have child free nights. One restaurant that got a great deal of attention due to their no-children under six policy has actually posted 20% gains since the policy started and reports a extremely positive response (11 to 1) to the change.

I know I'm not going to change any minds here and I'm not trying to, really. It isn't my place to tell someone how to parent their child. I just want people to understand why I feel the way I do.

If I ever have children (I don't plan to, but if I ever do) I'll raise them the same way my mother raised me. I don't care how different from me they are. It doesn't matter--to me the philosophy doesn't change. She expected a lot from me. She expected me to act civilized and controlled and respectful--and I did. I did it because I knew she expected it and I didn't want to disappoint her. I also knew that embarrassing her in public would end badly for me. I wasn't afraid of her, but I respected her. She obviously did something right.