Moms, have you heard other Moms say this to their children? It seems like you hear it all the time! At the grocery store, theme parks, movie theatres, anywhere you go that you encounter other Moms and their children you can experience at some point in your trip at least one Mom saying to their child "What are you thinking?" or "What makes you think you can behave that way?"
These situations are epidemic in our society today. It is a shame and so many in this day and time are hesitant to say a word to another parent about their children. Overall no one wants to offend anyone else or hurt any feelings. I completely agree with that! However, there is also a much larger ratio of younger parents that suffer from little guidance and most hesitate to ask or do not feel the need to. In generations past daughters looked to their Mothers to help them learn all of the basic necessities of raising their own children. Traditional roles have changed so rapidly and so drastically that sometimes parenting as a skill gets lost along the way side. "Raise a child up in the way that he shall go." For the most part a direct quote from the Bible, is often not very well understood or consistently adhered to. With research and good sound information it is easy to learn. Many experts have stated for years consistency is the biggest part of successful parenting. That phrase, "raise a child up in the way that he shall go", is stating just that.
Some experts believe, and have performed studies to support, that the most important, "formative" time for a child is from ages 0 to 6 years. In other words, the ground work you lay when your child is tiny and truly "doesn't know any better", will set the stage for the type of person that child will become. This may seem like a large and overwhelming task when truthfully it is no more difficult than living the virtues you hope to instill in your child. Good sound common sense can be a very effective guide in doing just that. This basic guideline carries over across the board in many aspects of life. If you knock on a bedroom or bathroom door anytime you approach one, your toddler will mimick what they see you do and it will become habit. In the Southern region of the United States, you will hear people state, "what a polite young man/woman!" More often than not, these polite young people have learned their good manners, respect for older people, from the adults they are surrounded by. The culture of the South dictates that people reply to one another when asked something with a direct, "yes ma'am/sir", and children follow the example without argument or even much thought about it. Along that same line of thinking, if a toddler "picks up" a profanity, in most cases purely by accident, they heard it and repeated it and everyone around when they repeat it chuckles it has now become a source of gaining attention. Two different parents can have very different results from this one event. If it continues to be a source of humor and the child is given the impression that this is cute and funny they will continue to use the profane word or phrase and the setting in which they use it will not have any signifigance. If the exact same situation occurs and an adult that the child looks up to or patterns behavior after expresses that this is not nice and has a tone of voice and facial expression to match the admonishment, it will be curtailed quickly.
In short, if you allow a child to think that something is acceptable while they are "little and do not know any better", at what point will the child realize it is not acceptable? And this is the key point, in most cases the child believes what they are doing is okay because until they reached a particular age, or in certain company it has always been acceptable. In order for your 10, 11, 12 year old child to know it is rude to shove themselves in front of other visitors at theme parks, or at exhibits they need YOU, their parent, their guide in life, to have already started teaching them when they were a toddler, "we have to wait our turn, honey, just like everyone else. I know you are excited, Mommy is too, but so are those people who got in line before we did." It really is a very easy task but one that has to begin early.
