Thank you for writing this article! I know how this feels - you try to treat other kids the way you treat your own, but it's ineffective. A little, polite, "You can see the baby next time" would have stopped your own kids immediately in their tracks, but falls on deaf ears on someone else's kid. So frustrating! And it's easy to say, well, it's your house, you make the rules, put your foot down, but where do you start? How do I get a visiting child, who is at our house only for a few hours at a time, to behave in the manner I expect? I've spent years shaping and molding my child's behavior into the appropriate behavior I expect. How do I condense years of conversations we've had with our children about appropriate behavior into a few brief minutes? We use a a time-out chair for discipline in our house. Am I to start from square one with another child, teaching them how we use the time-out chair - this is where it is, what sort of behaviors constitute a time-out, etc., etc.? And if my children don't voluntarily go to the time-out chair, I pick them up and put them there. Could I do that with someone else's child? And even if I did do all of this, I know I would end up feeling resentful that I have to parent someone else's child. How hard is it to say to your child, "A rule in life is to show respect. One way to show respect is to follow the instructions of so-and-so's Mommy when you are visiting their house." This is what we have done with all of our behavior expectations. We talk about it, then we praise the respectful behavior, and time-out the disrespectful. Years of doing this has produced great results. Are the parents of the Evies of the world just not doing this? Do they give up too easily? My kids are well behaved in public (note: yes, at home they can be terrors!) not because of some sort of "natural" bias toward good behavior, but because we've put A LOT of time and effort into developing those behaviors in our children. Yes, I'm sure it's hard work parenting the Evies of the world, but, guess what? It's hard work for everyone. Next time you see a well behaved child in public, know that the good behavior is not there "magically"; there has been years of conversations and consequences for that child to get to that point.
I like the comments of MomOfTeen. It's good to get some perspective - I don't need to set up playdates for my young children. That can wait until they can do it themselves. If I want a playdate, I should set that up for myself - without the kids!
