The background:
Suppose you are in a restaurant and a stranger’s child comes up and takes something from your plate. You look over to the parent, or politely ask the parent to intervene, and the parent doesn’t respond. The child persists in taking the food and generally being disruptive to you.
The questions:
a) What would you do next?
b) Is it acceptable to slap the hand of the child when they next reach for the food? and, further to that, is it ever okay to physically punish someone else’s child?
Your feelings on this are really really important to me. Please weigh in.
Edited to add: This was sparked by the Dr. Phil show today, in which he had “opposing” sides to various ‘hot topics’ presented. Coffee and I talked at length about what our reactions would be in the above situation (which is purely hypothetical).
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No slapping, but I’d feel free to grab the child’s wrist and walk them back over to their parents’ table. If the child persisted, I’d talk to the manager of the restaurant and get that gawdawful family kicked out. Or, I’d get my cell phone out and call Child Services…LOUDLY. Say the child is putting their hands where people are using knives and the parents refuse to do anything about it. :)
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In a fantasy world, I would slap the parents for being such bad parents. My parents would never allow us away from the table when we were kids, so it never would’ve happened in my family. When we were little, we sat and colored or whatever, and when we got older, we sat and compared stats from our baseball/softball games.
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I wouldn’t slap the child at all. I would however move my plate or put my hands up to block the child’s access. There’d also be an extremely loud “Excuuuuuuse Me!” And I’d be expecting that family to buy me a new dinner!
At least that’s what I hope I’d do …. sometimes I’m in “don’t make a fuss” mode and then I put up with stuff … although that’s a pretty extreme situation!
I’ve had friends’ kids come over and help themselves to my food, but there’s always been that cute lil’ sly/shy look before it happens where you have that chance to smile or nod.So what would you do??
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Just go over to the parents’ table and take their plates of food from them (plus any alcoholic beverages that may be lying around, depending on your chutzpa).
Cause you know… goose and gander, and all that good stuff.
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