HOW TO
DEAL WITH
DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR IN PUBLIC:
DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIOR IN PUBLIC:
PROBLEMMrs. Jovi and her three kids, Owen, Luke and Michael, were at the grocery store one Saturday afternoon when the kids started acting up again. Owen and Luke ran around the store playing tag and Michael put every item he saw into the cart. Mrs. Jovi tried to ignore them, but they were behaving very badly. Michael pulled a bottle off the shelf and it broke. Mrs. Jovi apologized to a store clerk and offered to pay for the item, but this wasn’t the e
nd of it. A
crackling voice over the
intercom asked for the parents of Owen and Luke to come to the front
desk. The two had been playing chase in the pharmacy and knocked over
one of the shelves. Mrs. Jovi was embarrassed and tried to apologize
but the store manager was annoyed. He asked her to not bring the
children to the store again and she left having only paid for the
broken jar.DISCUSSION
As parents, we want to prepare our children to act properly when in social settings. The most important factor in preparing our children is our own behavior: we, the parents, should act properly in public settings to encourage them to do so.
It is common for children to be “good” at home and “bad” outside. This is commonly the case in families where there is much control at home and where parents rule by force and fear. Children “go wild” where they feel they have greater freedom and where parents are less likely to lose their tempers. Permissive parenting also results in disruptive children.
SOLUTION
1) Solicit the help of your children in shopping trips and errands. Plan shopping and treats as a family and find a role for all.
2) When children are quiet and listening, they should be told the kind of behavior expected of them and the logical consequences should they misbehave. If they are loud and fight at the movie theatre (before or during the movie), or if they throw tantrums at a fast food restaurant, the family will immediately go home.
3) In particular, they need to understand that the family does not disrupt other people when in public and that disrupting others results in losing the privilege to be out in public.
4) Families should role-play situations where behavior problems may occur, such as eating properly at a restaurant.
5) Parents can also “take time for training” by testing outside behaviors in situations where failure would not lead to inconvenience for the parents or others. They may agree ahead of time that if the children misbehave at a restaurant, that the family will simply get up, ask for the food to be boxed as take-out and return home.
Eating out should be pleasurable and a privilege for family members, not an entitlement or something forced on the children. If the children do not enjoy eating in restaurants, you can leave them home with a babysitter, or find settings, such as the beach or park, where they DO want to eat.
(Discussion and Solution information from Painter & Corsini, 1975)