My new jobs requires me to see a lot of babies pretty much every day of the week. There are babies with round cheeks, toddlers, kiddos with their first teeth falling out, all the way up to people about my age and older. And in the short week and a half that I’ve been working, I’ve come to realize something: Some babies are more well-behaved than others. Now, you would think, “But they’re just babies. They can't know any better than to scream or cry when they’re upset, right?” Well, some do. Some calm down when asked. Others don’t. There was one kid in particular who would cry every time his mom took something away from him just so that he could get it back. This tiny ball of energy and stress knew that if he threw a fit, he could get his way. And, frankly, I find that to be unacceptable.

As a kid, I remember being quite shy and quiet, with a tendency not to speak up when I wanted something. My grandparents had to instill in me the fact that if I wanted something, I had to ask for it. And sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t. And sometimes I still do that now. But my parents taught me that throwing a fit usually wasn’t the best way to get anything other than a spanking. Now while I don’t agree with parents hitting their children, I also do not believe in this current wave of parenting where parents will let children do whatever they want. Another example is a child I saw running back and forth in the mall without any regard for anyone else walking around at that time, myself and my mom included. His parents were not five feet away, watching him do this. It was clearly annoying to the people around them, but I can already hear the response of “kids will be kids!”

Kids should be able to play, but they should also know when and where it is not appropriate to go wild. Malls are not playgrounds. Offices are not playgrounds. These are places where the child can get hurt, and where the parents will also likely sue the owner of the business because it was “unsafe” for their yelling, running child to be yelling and running around. The biggest subject I always talked about with my potential future partners was how we would raise a child together, because I’ve always wanted to be a mom. We always agreed that we would teach them manners and respect, and that they’d never be one of those screaming mall brats.

But the truth is we didn’t know. We wouldn’t know until we tried to teach them something and then got glares from other parents or just people in general because we supposedly didn’t teach them right. Teaching kids manners should be something that is fairly simple, especially with such a small and impressionable child. So I have some words out there for the parents who let their children run wild: Your child will continue to do whatever they want, to the point where they may end up in trouble because they do not understand the difference between what is appropriate at times and what is not.

Please teach your children manners. This has been a PSA.

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