“I hate you!” A three year old boy screams at his mother. She rolls her eyes and looks at me.

“Kids. What can you do?” Her husband is sitting at the table texting on his smart phone. Their daughter is running around the restaurant playing with silverware. Neither of the parents tries to control the wondering little girl or the screaming toddler.
These people were allowed to have kids? They were letting their children do anything and everything.

“Sit down.” The father finally says something to the little girl, who laughs and runs to the door. He sits at the table, sighs, and turns back to his cell phone.
Seriously? When where kids given the power in a family? I remember when I listened to my parents, and if I didn’t like the way things were – too bad. I learned to respect my parents. I was expected to behave a certain way. I was expected to act mature and was told, more than once, to “use restaurant manners.”

What happened to obedient kids? Or rather, what happened to proper parenting? Some parents might not realize just how pathetic their parenting is, or maybe they are scared of facing a lawsuit for punishing their children. As ridiculous as it sounds, parents are actually facing lawsuits for punishing their children. One such case, thankfully, was dismissed by the judge. “. . .kids who sued their mother for $50,000 in damages . . .for emotional distress.” Unfortunately, cases against punishing parents go to court all the time.

The problem isn’t parents being afraid of a lawsuit; the problem is kids thinking its okay to file the lawsuit in the first place. Parents are scared of their kids! Why? Because the world is enabling kids to win these ridiculous lawsuits. It all goes back to bad parenting. Bad parenting creates these brats. Bad parenting creates the people who think these brats are correct, and bad parenting creates bad future parents.

So what do we do? According to a study conducted on the effects of different types of parenting styles, there is one style that seemed to produce the best behaved kids. “Authoritative parenting styles tend to result in children who are happy, capable and successful.” Kids aren’t products; we can’t treat them all the same, but we must find something that works!

The four styles studied were Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive and Uninvolved parenting. The first two have a similarity; both establish rules that are expected to be followed. The difference is that the authoritarian parents treat their home like a dictatorship; the kids aren’t given a choice, they are expected to do things and behave a certain way without an explanation. The Authoritative parents treat their home more like a democracy, the children are still expected to do certain things and behave a certain way; but they are an explanation as to why and the parents listen to their opinions.

Which is great, both the parents and the kids are heard even if the parents still have the final say, as they should.

The other two styles of parenting are Permissive; which means the kids can do whatever whenever, and Uninvolved; the parents really could care less about their children’s behavior. Both of these styles seem to breed really horrible little people.

Unless we are to consider making it illegal for stupid people to have kids, which isn’t a bad idea, then we should consider letting them in the secret on how to raise their kids. It really is unfortunate that this hasn’t been done sooner, but it’s better late than never.

So parents, please teach your kids some discipline and respect because the rest of the world is really tired of watching the little brats run you around like they own you.