Featured: Disciplining Other People's Kids: Yes or No?

If you are in some way responsible for them, as in they are in your care, then yes, you need to discipline them the way you would your kids. But if they are visiting with their parents and doing things in your house that are annoying you, then there is nothing much you can do without offending the parents. Some people don't take it well & you will need to take that into consideration.

if the child is in your care...of course you discipline the child(within reason) any child should be aware of YOUR family rules and abide by them(eg no hitting, no yelling  and so on)...if it is not a child in your care then I say no you do not discipline them UNLESS they are/or going to hurt themselves or someone else!

I've been in that situation before, I was at the playground and an older boy (about 3-4 years old) purposly hit and pushed my 2 year old daughter right in front of his dad who said NOTHING. The first time it happened I didn't really knew he hit her, the second time it was obvious and I was just in shock that this sorry excuse of a man said nothing. the Third time they were both on top of the stairs for the slide (a good 7-8 feet up, she could have gotten seriously hurt if she fell) My inner momma grizzley came out and I yelled and threatened to defend my daughter in any way that I could. I didn't care about any parents feelings or the boys feelings. I didn't care if the boy was told not to listen to other adults, It was my job to protect my daughter. The guy still didn't say a thing to his kid about it.

I wouldnt have went an told them to settle down, maybe tell the person in charge.. and they could have said something.

In another situation, if I was on a bus with Adelyn and she was a little older, and could understand, If some kids beside us were swearing up a storm, I would say "Could you please stop using that language? There are younger children on this bus"

If they did not stop, I would talk to the bus driver.

I'm not one for disipling someone's kids, but if mine is involved, or some kid is being a bad influence, I will say something.

Oh good gracious, you really told them to settle down? Kids are people and deserve respect too, if you had come to me and told me to do anything I would have been shocked and offended. Just because they are kids does not mean it is okay to rudely order them. I am not surprised they ignored you. Maybe the reaction would have been different had you explained the sleeping child and asked. People are generally nice, even kids.

In the situation you described, you still have no right to discipline other people's kids. If they are breaking the law or some rule, inform the correct person. If they are just kids being kids, it is none of your business even if you do not approve.  At the most, you can ask them to be considerate, same as you would an adult.

I was wondering what about situations with unruley teens or preteens where there is no adult over them. How would you react if you found out an adult had to tell your tween to stettle down? The problem I have with parents getting upset about other adults scolding their children is when the kids are old enough to be out without them they won't listen to them. Case in point we were on the train and there were some very loud teens making a rucus in the car behind us. They woke up my son. So went up there and told them they need to settle down and that they are disturbing other passengers. They laughed at me. I was taught to respect adults (and was also taught how to behave in public). Even as a wild teen I would never have laughed at an adult telling me I needed to quiet down. After I sat back down they got louder. I can't help but wonder did their parents tell them that they only had to listen to certain adults?

No way, no how. Unless the child's physical safety is in question, or they are putting my child's physical safety in question, not my business. Even then, the most I will do is restrain them from running out in traffic or from hurting my own until the parent appears.

Anyone who touches my kids or even speaks harshly to them, assuming they're not putting themselves or others in the way of grievous injury, is going to hear about it and I will chew them up and spit them out.

My family. Not yours. My place to teach my children. Not yours.

I have no control over anyone else's child(ren) and as far as I see it, it is not my responsibility to discipline them. All that I can do is raise my children to be able to respond in a mature and gentle manner.

When it comes to kids in the store I generally just help them back to their parents if they are under 5. If they are older I tell them they should go back to their mom because she might forget them.

It all depends on the situation.

For example, one of our neighbours she has like 5 kids ad babysits a million, theres always a new kid, and they never behave properly. They play on our yard, play with my neices toys, ttheyre destructive, swear, kiss (theyre all like 6yrs-9yrs) The mother doesnt watch them - ever.. so when my neices or my daughter is outside and theyre saying bad things or doing bad things near one of our kids, we speak up.

For example, the one day the little boy had a huge metal bowl and was trying to hit the other 2 kids, I went up to him and took the pole away.

The mother doesnt care at all.. when asked what her 6yr old was for hallowen "a sexy punk" ...really?

I wouldt disipline someones kids in walmart or something.. not my problem.. but it is my problem if it involves our kids/property.

However, if i saw a child doing something unsafe i would stop them.

Not my theory. People have very few instincts. Behavior is learned. Compassion is innate. People are social.

Anyway, I didn't want to get into my whole parenting philosophy. My whole point was in answer to the original question and your post and others is an example of why I do not discipline  other children and why I don't want anyone else to discipline mine. My style of parenting is not the same as yours. Mine works for me and for my child.

the only flaw in your theory amandolynn is that human beings (children esp) operate on instinct, many of them long since considered soically unacceptable, and many of them stronger than the social consequence.

i maybe wrong, but i am going to go out on a limb here and say your kid is 4 or under. why? because that is the time before you get to the pont where the behavior might be more satisfying than the consequence, esp if you rely on society and peers to provide the consequences. consider this: your average 2 yo is JUST starting to realize that other people feel things too, whether that be emotions or pain. most will take another 2 years to develop real empathy. add to that the strong instinct to put ones own needs and wants first and it's easy to see why parental intervention is ocassionally needed even if no one is in physical danger.

my 9 yo neice is a JERK! my 7 yo niece is a JERK! both little jerks are really popular in school. why? not because parents force the other kids to play with them, but b/c your theory that kids won't play with jerks is, i'm sorry to say, wrong. unfortunately there are kids who are kind and polite who are ostrascized daily, and kids who behave in a socially unacceptable manner that have many friends.

as kids get older, they also start to make connections that you may not have intended. my daughter will be 6 soon, and we've had a policy that as long as she was behaving herself and doing well in school then there was no feasable reason she should not get toys she asked for. her mind turned that into : "i get whatever i want, so i should be able to do what ever i want too!" it was easy for us to see the difference, but she didnt, and believe me this is not a child w/out rules and expectations.

simillarly, kids who've been told "you dont always have to listen to adults" will eventually take that to a place you didnt intend. you can't leave it up to a child who has not been alive long enough to be aware of all the nuances of a request to decide if that request is reasonable or acceptable according to your standards. they simply do not have the life expereince and wont gain it by trying to figure out it.  what constitues "reasonable" and "acceptable" to you may be obvious,  to a young child it's a complex idea that is sure to be simplified "i dont want to so i dont have to." at some point. if safety is your concern it is easy to give your child a general idea of what sorts of things adults shouldnt be doing. 

thinking "my child doesnt have to share if she doesnt want to" and "she shouldnt have to play with other kids if she doesnt want to" seems reasonable at first, until as the kid gets older you start to see some of the consequences. this might take longer for some kids, some kids are just too kind and have too strong a desire to please so it may never be an issue, but for the majority of children, these stratigies will eventually lead to negative behavior.

sharing isnt just about sharing. it's about patience, generosity, being considerate and showing a child that they are not better than the other kids. it's about cultivating that empathy that they aren't born with.

making them play together isnt just about that. it's about tolernace and cooperation and again, empathy.

sure, you can model these behaviors for your child and try to get around sharing and inclusion, but human instincts are strong, and eventually the desire to satisfy ones own wants over rides the modled behavior, a situation seriously exaserbated if a kid has been told they dont always have to share and they dont always have to include others. you may have very good reasons for not requiring your child to share, but kids dont pick up on those subtlties. all they heard was "you dont have to share".

i will conceed that there are people who have children with disabilities or have disabilities themselves that can make it harder.

 aside from that, i maintain my position. i tried to avoid saying "if it's THAT hard, you're doing it wrong." but you're example is a perfect illustration of that. if a person finds parenting truly difficult, there is a problem (whatever it may be) that need to be addressed. it is not the rearing of the child that is difficult, but something is making it so.

there is a pervassive and disturbing miscinception in our society that the day to day care of children is not just difficult, but in fact SO incredibly hard that all parents are generally thought of as being on the very verge of a nervous break down at all times.

algebra may not come naturally to everyone, but we expect that everyone be able to do simple addition, and if they cant then we say "hey, there's a problem." parenting is like that.

 at it's core parenting is nothing more than basic needs reasonable disicipline love = happy, healthy kid. it is a simple equation.

Teachers, managers, lifeguards, the owner of a home are all in authority. She has to follow reasonable rules from them. She does not have to obey them completely. Her body is her own as are her social choices. I think it is extremely dangerous to teach children that they have to obey all adults even if they know the adult.

As far as learning from peers and environments, it works really well. If a child learns to obey, they will follow rules but if they come across a situation that has not been previously covered, they may not know how to behave or if there is no person observing to make sure the rules are being followed, they may ignore the rules. If a child learns to evaluate a place and situation to determine the correct behavior through natural and social consequences, they know how to behave, they don't need as many rules. Being considerate of others comes naturally because it is expected everywhere from day one because people are considerate to them and others in front of them. It is all they know because that is the example they have at home.

It is not something you can just decide when a child is 5. That would end up really messy. If a child has been raised from day one with peer/social learning and natural consequences, the learning is in little bits. Running in stores never came up. She already knew that you don't run indoors in places with hard floors.  Acting up in restarants also never came up, she already knew that we sit in chairs while we eat so that we don't bother others. It was not perfect, sometimes she needed to be reminded not to disturb others but it was easy because she understood why she had to behave and that is she didn't we would leave and we would be unhappy.

Children who learn from peers can be more socially adept.  If a child does not want to play with them, they know why. When parents involve themselves too much in play, kids may not learn why they should play nice.  If a child is being a little jerk and the other children exlude him, parents will correct the jerk and force the kid to be allowed to play. There were no consequences for the jerk other than to be told to be nice and then the other kids were punished by having to play with the little jerk. They all learn that it is ok to be a jerk but not ok to leave a kid out and there is no real evaluation of the behavior, they are just told what to do and they obey.

If my child is left out of a game, I ask her why she thinks that is and we talk about it and what she thinks would be a better way to play if she wants to be included. I do not intervene in play unless someone is going to get hurt physically or is being verbally bullied.  She is not made to share or play with anyone and she is friendly and generous. Her main fault in play is that she is bossy.  She also knows that it is perfectly within her rights to exclude jerks and not to let them play with her things. We do talk a lot about behavior and why she likes to play with certain people and why she does not like to play with others so that she is thinking about those sorts of things.

Because I am trying to allow her to learn naturally, I watch my child very closely. I do allow her to fall but I do not allow her to jump off of cliffs. People have trouble understanding the point of natural consequences. I feel it makes for safer children. If a child is allowed to run and jump and learned the consequences of falling on a small scale, they are more cautious overall.

An example, my child had no fear of water.  She would jump in a pool without thinking even though she did not know how to swim. We had to stop her several times from jumping in random fountains or pools when we were out. Water is her favorite thing. We let her jump in once about a year ago. It was cold, it was wet and she got water in her nose. It scared her and she has never tried to jump in since. I still am extremely careful with her but she is safer than she was before.  Fear is tied into memory and learning. It is why panicked cramming works. A small fear can prevent big tragedies because it sets in a child's mind that a certain behavior is dangerous.

It does not work for all kids.  Some kids have 0 fear or do not pay attention to  social cues. It works really well for my child. She is cautions and learns through observation naturally so that kind of parenting is a good fit for her personality.

Honestly, the only times I have ever said anything to a child I wasn't responsible for was when I saw that they were possibly putting my child or someone else's child in danger.

Example: My husband and I took our daughter to the park down the block from our house. It's a small park but accomodates the children well. This particular time, though, there was a group of  women who had brought their kids (ages 1-10ish) and were letting the kids run around and play while they (the mom's) sat on the swings yacking away. They were too busy talking about the Royal Wedding to pay attention to their kids. The 1 year old climbed up like 4 steps and was teetering on the edge of a probably 3 foot platform and was about to fall so I ran and grabbed her and put her on the ground. I guess her mom didn't like that because she came running over asking why I was messing with her child. I told her the baby was about to fall off the edge and her response was "then she would've learned her lesson" WHAT!?!? I wanted to slap her but I just rolled my eyes and walked back to where my daughter was playing. Then, one of the older kids, probably 7/8, goes barreling past my daughter (3) and shoves her into the railing of the bridge where she hit her head and fell. I immediately yelled at him to stop and turn around and to apologize to my daughter and to watch where he was going and be careful. He responded with "You're not my mother. You can't tell me what to do." I then walked over to the moms, asked whose kid it was and then told her what happened and asked if she would please say something to him. She drags herself off of the swing, goes over and says "(kids name), go say sorry because that lady said so". On top of all of that, one of the women swinging had a baby in her lap and DROPPED IT ON THE GROUND then laughed it off!! UGH!!!! Some people just should not be parents!! If that were my child they would have been apologizing and we'd be going home after that. It really irks me when parents just let their kids run around doing whatever they please. That's what's wrong with half the kids in our country anymore, their parents don't discipline.

Other than if it's putting someone in danger, I typically don't say anything to anyone, but just mutter under my breath. I know kids have their tantrums, kids have bad days, but still...

The only other time I mess with a kid is if I see they've made a break for it and the parents are chasing after them, I will usually help the parents by grabbing the kid before they can get past me and most appreciate that. I had to do that at Publix yesterday lol

I also want to say that if you give it you should also take it. The biggest thing I get is I let my son run around the train station when we have a long wait (upwards of 20 min). The bricks near the rails are bumpy and he knows to stay off the bumpy bricks (BTW bad situation for natural consequences since the natural consequence for getting too close to the rail is death). A lot poeple are concerned but I just inform them he knows how to play safe and say thank you. I've never had strangers repremand a behavior that I myself have no problem with.

Gaamy  I would have to digress that what comes naturally to you does not come naturally to other people. Its easy to you because its natural. Its the same as if my husband (who was doing alegra at 6) said that trig was easy and anyone can do it. To him it is but to me its alien. I have found parenting to be much easier now that I am on the right medication for my depression but before I got help I was swamped and totally lost. I'd have panic attacks nearly every day from the stress of being a mom. Not saying its that difficult for every parent but for some people it doesn't come naturally. 

I would address their parent when possible. If they're disrespecting/hurting my child, myself or our property then I would speak up right away.