To think you don’t let your children behave like this in public?

[IfIHadAHeart]

Saturday afternoon, Tesco. It’s a bit manic, lots of last minute Mother’s Day shoppers plus the usual. People dragging kids round who are obviously completely bored, the parents look flustered and have my sympathy. It’s loud. No issues, I just decide to get in and out as quickly as possible.,

I get to the cereal aisle. There is what appears to be a mum, grandma and three girls under 5. The kids are building a fort out of boxes of weetabix, one of them is climbing up the shelving as if it were Everest. Lots of giggling. The weetabix castle has expanded out into the aisle, some boxes are being used as chairs. Mum and grandma completely ignoring them. Mum disappears round the corner, grandma says she needs juice. The girls start shrieking that they want to stay in their castle and so grandma says they can “as long as you don’t get in anyone’s way”.

Grandma then catches my eye. I have one of those faces that shows exactly what I was thinking, which in this instance was definitely disapproval! She asks if I have a problem, to which I reply that I’m just thankful I didn’t want to buy any weetabix. She gives me a mouthful of abuse, tells me the girls aren’t harming anyone and it’s none of my business. Off she trots to the juice aisle leaving the little darlings to carry on climbing and building.

AIBU to think this is a ridiculous way to carry on? My kids are teens now but I’d never dream of allowing them to behave like this. Not that it’s the kids fault obviously. Do people genuinely not care about other people around them?

Never happens in Waitrose

These posts are always a bit to me.

Of COURSE it's not reasonable. Do you really need to ask?

There were two children running up and down the aisles in Homebase near me on Saturday. Admittedly homebase makes me want to run around screaming but these two were awful. People were literally being forced to swerve to avoid them. Parents did absolutely nothing. But they were actually being a danger to anyone unsteady on their legs.

This reminds me of an incident at the end of my street about 20 years ago. The council had planted up a beautiful circular bed of flowers and as I walked by a little girl ran to the edge and shouted ‘ I want to walk through them’ to which the woman with her said no initially then ‘ oh go on then’ as if it were a treat to completely trash the plants! I stood there completely dumbstruck as the child stomped all through the flowers, snapping flower heads and bending stalks 😭

I've seen some very well spoken parents with their offspring behaving badly, speaking to their parents rudely but also seen the politest of children from what you would describe as a rough estate. It's not a class thing. Imo it's the current way that people are using a modern way to bring up their dcs which is giving them independence and no consequences or boundaries

I do have a guilty sense of relief from threads like these, as I really struggle with my 2 boys (6 and 4) and sometimes feel like I must be the worst mum, but I would absolutely NEVER allow them to do anything remotely like this.

At least my struggle is because I'm constantly wrangling them and to be fair they are usually quite good when out because they know I will simply leave a place if their behaviour is too mortifying.

you said what has UK become?re kids behaving badly) Does Mumsnet cover Scotland?I'm a Scots grandma. and raised this sever times. With no answer? Mumsnet seems very Anglicised- I have pointed this out.There are 4 -nations in UK. I feel an ignorance of Scots affairs- ie i posted recently to point out we have no *OFSTED here. Not sure if it was put on. Someone clearly did not know we have our own Govt/Education/ NHS/laws etc. I'd like Mumsnet to answer if it covers Scotland!

Fortunately this is not everywhere. Certainly in our village school kids will get reprimanded if they do something wrong! The village also polices a lot of the kids, low key. No one can get away with vandalism for example or bad behaviour without you hearing about it and people would not think twice about telling a child off. I like it and accept that if my child misbehaves and causes a nuisance chances are he will be told off but do know other parents would not. That seems to be the change, parents particularly precious about their offspring and thinking they can do no wrong and getting outraged if another adult reprimands them.

I think adults calling out badly behaved children was a good thing. It encouraged us to behave in public. It meant I wasn't prepared to ignore my teachers when they told me to do something, or be rude to them. I knew if I behaved badly in school, my parents would have stern words with me at home, not charge into the school in a threatening manner.

I think schools are their own worst enemy in this regard though. I think most parents (not all- I've met some who genuinely think their children are perfect angels) will accept that their child was disrespectful or misbehaving at school and as a result school has imposed a sanction and informed you about it. However, it's when schools start imposing ultra-strict rules around uniform, sending notes home to complain about a slice of chocolate cake in a lunchbox, giving children detentions for tiny and accidental infractions of rules, that the relationship starts to break down and the trust between parents and schools is lost.

I know of a 15 year old with very low school attendance who broke her back on a recent school trip due to a freak accident. A few weeks later, she fell asleep in a lesson due to being on strong painkillers, and then woke up and asked her friend what was going on. She ended up getting two detentions, both for falling asleep and for talking in class. When she had a broken back and already rarely goes to school due to anxiety. How can the parent back up that decision?