Are parents mean to their kids on purpose? Do they think, "I'm just going to do this little thing to torture them, like they torture me every time they puke under the bed or break my china?"
I ask because 1. I don't have kids and 2. Sometimes it sure SEEMS like parents like to be mean to their kids without actually looking like they're being mean.
Yes, once again this weekend we had a mean, mean mom come in with her children. There were 3 of them raging from around 4ish to 8 ish. The oldest one was able to comprehend the "we'er here just to look, but not buy anything," phrase mom kept saying over and over, when she wasn't on her cell phone discussing plans for later that evening. The other two didn't quite get it.
The young boy kept grabbing the most expensive hard cover Star Wars books, that were almost half his size, and run off with them. When his mom would instruct him to put it back, he'd try to jam it onto a shelf where it didn't fit. This made me cringe because the books are slip-covered and I just KNEW he was slowly destroying the slip-covers on these books.
The youngest of the kids was a girl, who very badly wanted a Barbie cinemanga she'd found. Mom kept telling her to put it back, but she kept saying "no" and running off with it. The mom would catch her and take it away, putting it back on the shelf. The girl would cry and scream, and then pick up the Barbie book again while mom was asking the oldest child of the group to "please keep an eye on your little brother."
Again and again she kept repeating how they weren't going to buy something, and I could feel my blood preasure going up a little bit more every time. My teeth were clenched, my shoulders too. I wanted to just say, "Then GET OUT!" but I held it in.
Finally mom ripped the Barbie book out of the girl's hands again and dragged the three children out of the store, kicking and screaming. As they were going through this departure drama another customer came in. Once the mom and screaming kids left, we kind of joked with the customer about how parents torture their kids by bringing them into a cool place like a comic book store with the stipulation that they can't buy anything. The customer said she probably takes them to pet stores too, and won't let them touch the kittens either.
WHY go into a store if you're not buying something? Maybe she was just stalling for time or something, I don't know. But I usually don't go into a store without at least having the intention of buying something. Sometimes the store doesn't end up having what I went there for, so I leave empty handed, but I don't just go in without at least considering that I might buy something if they have what I want or something else I like. Would you go into a restaurant, ask for a table, and then announce to your hungry family that you're not there to eat? No one can order any food - just look at the menu and smell everyone else's food as it goes by! WHY would someone bring young children into a store like this, or a toy store or other store filled with eye-candy for kids, let them manhandle it, and then force them out empty handed? Either she wanted to torture herself, or she enjoys torturing her kids.
2 comments:
I can't WAIT to do that to my daughter!
It's refreshing hearing this coming from a woman. Every time my wife says, "Lets go look at....(insert item here" I say, were just looking, right? And she gets mad at me, saying, "Didn't I say we were just looking!!" Yeah, right. The reason I ask, is because every time she says, "Lets go look" we end up buying, although she will never admit this.
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