Um...yes that's your kid... so do something!

Yesterday while I was out during the kids naptime (yes Joe was home) I ran to two stores. In both of these stores came the screaming tantrums of a little one.
Now I tread lightly because I will be the first to admit Iris and Blake have had a scream or two when we've been out. How I handle that though is much different than what I saw.

In the first case I was at Goodwill. It is a good size store and I was far away from the tantrum scene, yet it went on and on. I couldn't even tell if the mom kept shopping or what. It just amazed me that for a solid 10-15 minutes the parent would let this child scream bloody murder and not do a thing about it. For the first few minutes I tuned it out, but soon it became impossible to ignore. I could feel others cheering this mom on to leave the store & did I hear applause when they walked out? Maybe I'm imagining things.

The second store was TJ Maxx. This child took it to the next level as she was on the floor screaming at the top of her lungs. I couldn't see the parent nearby. Did they just walk away from the scene hoping it would stop? It didn't! I continued to browse around and this volume just grew and I honestly began to feel bad for the child because the parent didn't care enough to deal with this behavior.

It just struck me how clueless so many parents are that they are indeed the parents who are responsible to train these children and help them to behave.  Yet they cower back in fear and do NOTHING...acting as though they have no authority over these kids and try to simply appease them. It will be a scary world when these kids become adults. Will they fall on the floor as grown ups, kicking and screaming because they want their way?

There are a million resources about discipline and training & I won't get into that here, but it served as a great reminder to work each day in training my children for godliness. Not so that they won't embarass me in public or so I look like I have it together (hello pride, I believe we've met before) but that they have a heart that wants to obey and please the Lord. What a huge responsibility it is to be a parent!