H>DA 278; 3 CFIBWJPS
Should You Discipline
Other People’s Kids?
Someone else’s child is being rude or acting out. Is it okay to butt in—or
should you back off? We’ll help you make the call.
Y our 4-year-old daughter is filling a bucket in the playground sandbox when a boy suddenly grabs it away.
You stand up and glance around, searching for his
parents. No one seems to notice. Then you hear a scream. The
boy has pelted your daughter in the face with a fistful of sand,
and now she’s sobbing. You want to snap at the boy and tell
him to stop. But he’s not your kid. What do you do?
If you’ve ever been faced with the prospect of disciplining
someone else’s child, you know just how tricky it is to pull it off.
You don’t want to offend the kid’s parents. But when his behavior is dangerous or harmful to another child, you can’t simply ignore it either. “It’s not intruding on another parent’s turf
when you’re protecting your own child,” says Michele Borba,
Ed.D., a Parents advisor and author of No More Misbehavin’:
