Tuesday, January 02, 2007

A Lesson In Parenting

Today at work, we were talking about parents and children out in public places (in addition to the whistler at Target yesterday, I encountered a kid at Ikea whining for 20 minutes straight, "I wanna go to Oberweis...I wanna go to Oberweis...I wanna go to Oberweis." And let me tell you, "Oberweis" sounds kind of whiny even just when spoken normally, so from a whiny kid, it's even worse).

My boss mentioned an incident in the grocery store years ago with her daughter that I mention here so I'll remember it when I have children. She always does her grocery shopping with a list and rarely ventures away from that list, and on this trip, they were cruising past the dairy case when her daughter piped up and asked, "do you think maybe sometime you can put chocolate milk on your list?"

She could have explained to her daughter that you are in fact allowed to pick up whatever you want at the store and don't have to write it down before going to be able to buy it. And she might have been tempted to, because it was probably pretty cute. But instead she just nodded and said, "yes, I suppose I could" and kept going.

Smart move. I'll bet that kid never made a scene in the middle of Ikea.

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