Someone once said, "Nothing bad ever happens to a writer; everything is copy one day." A bit crass? Maybe, but the fact is, the not-so-great events in my life usually do show up in my writing -- from the serious literary essays about losing my father, to lighter pieces about the foibles of everyday life.
Today on Babble, one of those annoying everyday moments shows up in an essay of mine. Spurred by a school-yard incident -- in which I committed the apparent sin of speaking to another kid in a not-so-friendly voice -- I address the differences between publicly correcting someone else's child in the 1970s (when I was a kid), and today, when parents seem to regard other parents as, well, the enemy.
Click here to read the piece: Are Moms Allowed to Discipline Another’s Child? Past generations did; why can’t we?
8 comments:
loved the piece! and it's how i discovered you and this blog. thanks or it. regards from a n. jerseyite on maternity leave, surfing the web and typing w/ one hand...apologies)
I read your piece this morning and it resonated with a recent episode. So I blogged about both this morning (http://kelloucqenvoyage.viabloga.com/news/other-people-s-kids). How did everything get so complicated?
Loved it!
Great piece. Man is there so much more to be said. This seems to be a real issue with our generation of mothers, so much so that I refrain from ever disciplining another child. Even if that child is behaving terribly.
Wonderful piece. When my children were young, 20 years ago, I would at times discipline other children for bad behavior, but I could get away with it because i was a cop, and all the kids new it. If I told them they did something wrong, the last person they told was their own parents probably. Now, I would think twice before disciplining a child ever, not only is the wrath of their parents likely not worth it to me, but talk about embarrassing the child, their angry parents embarrass them much more than I would have with the original discipline. I'd rather not bring that on a child. I try to perfect the "look". You know, the mom look that tells a child they are misbehaving and have been caught, without saying a word.
Great piece, Lisa. Congrats!
So glad you posted this link or I wouldn't have seen it. What a fine essay and what a moment. Hopefully Scotty learned the right lesson from the experience and didn't learn from his mother's example.
Thanks, everyone, for the kind words about my words!
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