Child Disobedience:I Ain’t Havin It!!

Are your children Bebe's Kids?

 In the society we live in today, everyone has a baby. There is no surprise in seeing a twelve year old little girl or a fifty year old woman strolling through Target with a child on their hip yelling, “Mommy”. In my opinion there seems to be a correlation between our society’s standards for having children and the production of more of what I would like to call Bebe’s Kids. In the movie Bebe’s Kids a man named Robin wanted to take this girl out on a date, so he decided that he would take her and her son to an amusement park called Fun World. When he came to the house and picked her up she had her son and she also had three of her friend’s children. The three other children were Bebe’s Kids. They were terrible children going around terrorizing everything and everyone they came in contact with. They were so bad that people knew their reputation for bad behavior. As soon as someone said, “Bebe’s kids” people went running. This animated film may seem a little over exaggerated to you, but the reality is that this type of behavior has gone from a rare occurrence to the typical behavior of children today. Some kids become so disobedient that people don’t want to be around them. It becomes a sad situation when a mother has a child that is so disobedient that when she enters a store the employees pray for her and her children to check out at a different register because they don’t want to deal her children’s manic behavior.

Changes from Generation to Generation

It seems like from generation to generation kids are becoming more disobedient. When my mother was a child there was a chance that children would end up laying in a hospital bed for a day or two for getting out of line with their parents. As a result in those days being disobedient was nearly unheard of. A few generations have passed since that era and now children have become more disobedient than ever. Children are being defiant of their parents at an early age now. I’m pretty sure you have gone through the toy section at Wal-Mart or Target and heard the back and forth yes and no’s between parents and their three year old child or even better you have probably seen children telling the parents what needs to happen and either the parents listen or the child falls out enraged with the parents and embarrasses them to the point that they never want to show their faces in public again.

It seems that child disobedience is becoming an increasingly popular topic amongst parents of children from one through fifteen years of age. It has always been common for teenagers to act out and defy their parents but it seems that children from the ages of one through five years old in America are beginning to show signs of disobedience before they even reach puberty. Child disobedience is bad behavior that children display against the will of their parents. Kids are going to be kids, but there is a point when kids being kids crosses the line.

How the Parents are affected 

When a child has disobedience problems it can have an affect on many people that are around them especially the parents. The way a child acts in public sometimes can give people the impression that a parent does not know how to discipline their child or even control their life. I am sure you have probably walked past a mother in a store before trying her hardest to get her child to sit down and no matter what she does her child kicks and screams at the top of his or her lungs as if the   mother was abusing him or her. People all stop and stare in amazement and other people even begin to whisper and talk about the mothers parenting skills. The way the child is behaving can be a huge embarrassment to the mother and can judge what time she shops or if she ever decides to shop at a particular store again. Just image if that mother was walking past someone she was planning to have an interview with the next day. It’s pretty likely that she may not be  hired because the interviewer would probably think to themselves, how could that mother be able to handle a position as a manager if she can’t even handle her five year old child’s behavior.

How Other Children are Affected

 Not only can child disobedience affect the parents of the child, it can also affect other children around them. No one has the best children in the world but some do have fairly disciplined children. When you drop a child who is disciplined into a childcare center that has a couple of children that are do not obey the rules you begin to see a change in your child. My son has always been a very quiet and well behaved kid, but I got so busy with school I had to put my children in daycare and everything changed. My son has this kid in his class that likes to bite, hit, scratch, and even spit on the other kids. Well of course as my son began to stay in there longer I began to see him spit and hit, which is something he was not doing before. I believe that it may have just been his way of defending himself from that kid but then it began to spill over in our home life and he began to hit his sister and spit at her. I guess you can say in the case of child disobedience, one bad apple can spoil the bunch.

A Change Needs to be Made

Although child disobedience can be an embarrassment to parents and can influence other children, it can also influence the child with the bad behavior. Behavior problems usually start as a child and get carried over into adult hood if there is nothing done to change it.  According to Mike Rush of the , On June 9, 2011 a five year old little girl from Kansas City drowned her eighteen month old cousin in the tub because he wouldn’t stop crying. This seems rather extreme but the simple fact is that this child could likely grow up to be a murder. We see it all the time. It sounds extreme but usually those kids that were horrible when they were children are killing and stealing ten years later and will never be able to hold a successful job if they don’t ever change there behavior.  This is such a violent act for a child who is such a young age. Some people may say that this type of thing doesn’t happen everyday, but it happened.

           Why your child may be disobedient

  In this day and age parents are a lot younger. A lot of parents are what my grandmother would call “Children raising children.” Some parents leave their children alone to raise themselves and a lot of parents don’t know how to control their own behavior. Children watch what their parents do and they mimic every action. Psychologists Shaffer and Cook say, “Most child psychologists recognize that parental behavior may constitute an influential antecedent to child noncompliance” (qtd in Kalb and Loeber).  A lot of my family members use profane words and sometimes their children use those same words and all they do is laugh at them instead of correcting them. Parents are the source of discipline for a child. My mom always says, “Children need correction, God corrects us when we are out of line and we are supposed to do the same thing with our children.”
There are several factors that affect the way children behave. Whether we like to say it or not, Kids will be kids. Kalb and Loeber say, “Manifestations of noncompliance vary greatly as a function of a child's age… (642)” I talk to a lot of parents and if our children are the same age they seem to be doing the exact same things. When children a year old they are learning to speak and when they learn the word no they use it often. They say no to anything even if they mean yes. When children become two they get into the terrible two stages. There was a pattern that lead people began to call children at two year old terrible. When children are between the ages of three and five they seem to calm down a little more but from time to time they still get parents a hard time.

It is Time For a Change

 There is going to have to be a changed made if parents want for their Bebe Kids to be little angels. There has been an increasing number of young children killing people, joining gangs and just being right out rude to people. This is not the way our society should be. I mean we don’t want our kids to be robots. We want then to keep an identity but we don’t want our name to be out on the streets for having the worst kids on the planet. The next thing you know your name could be in that blank. _______’s Kids will be said and the people will flee the scene because you didn’t do something to change your child’s disobedient behavior. As for me, “I Aint Havin it.”
                                                                                                          Spanking

A solution to child disobedience could be to spank children when they are displaying disobedient behavior. The Bible says it simply, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth himchasteneth him betimes. (Proverbs 13:24)” For hundreds of years parents have been practicing the art taming children with a belt. It sounds like such a great idea and so many people have seen great results from spanking their children, but as I previously stated children mimic the behaviors of their parents. If a child is getting spanked that may lead them to believe that hitting people is okay to do. Another problem with spanking your child is the possible jail time you may receive. Child Protective Services has made it virtually impossible for people to spank their kids. I don’t know about anyone else but I am a little nervous about laying a finger on my children in a public place. I would probably be hailed off to jail for child abuse and my children would end up in some foster home with a crazy cat lady that is missing all of her teeth. From the 1960’s to the 1990’s teachers were able to spank children in class and parents disciplined their children the way they felt was appropriate. Spanking worked back then but in the society we live in today it is not even worth going to jail over although some people still do it.
Non-Corporal Punishment

Parents who don’t believe in spanking their children tend to count to three about thirty times in a row before Little Johnnie finally decides that he should come over to where they are. After the grueling process of count downs the parents proceed to take his toys and Little Johnnie is then sent to time out. This sort of scene happens on a routine basis. A lot of parents find that they would rather use non-corporal punishment to discipline their children regardless if it works or not. My daughter actually has this three year old boy in her class at daycare and he is too much for his parents and the daycare teachers to handle. They yell his name as he hurls large objects across the room at the other children who are waiting patiently for the next instructions from their teacher. The teachers tell him to go sit in quiet time and he goes and sits down for a second and then he gets up and takes off running again and he is back throwing more toys. It is insane the amount of time the teachers have to put into trying to get this child to behave and no matter how many times they say, “Go to quiet time” or “I’m going to take toys from you”, he still behaves in an irrational manner.     

                                                                                        The Best Solution

        The best solution for helping your child to become obedient is simple. Give your child a good example to follow and let them know that you are the authority figure. When kids learn to read, write, and even talk they don’t just learn it from doing it. If we speak proper English our children will do the same thing. If we sing our favorite song everyday, children are bound to start singing that same song if they are around while we are singing it. Our children are watching our every move. This also goes for the way that we treat and discipline our children. If we show them how to be obedient and how to talk to people the right way they will tend to do the same thing. My daughter is three years old and the people at the daycare love her to pieces. They also comment on how well behaved my children are and how sweet they are. At home I say please and thank you to my children and I cheer them on when they do a good job. If I ask them to do something I do what is suggested in a self help parenting book What to Say or do if Your Child, which is to “Do the task with them, not for them.” (Anonymous 6). Parents should never take no for an answer. In order to show a child that you are the authority figure, the tasks that you ask your children to do must be completed. Parents must be persistent and stand firm on what they have told their children. Helping out with a task and doing the minimum can encourage the children to do the right thing and it also will help children to respect you more for being willing to help out with the task. Some people may not agree on with help their children and setting a good example. There are some people who live by the rules “Do as I say and not as I do.” Every solution is not going to work for every child because all children are different from one another, but it is worth it to give it a try.

We Need Some Peace

We all want to live in a peaceful society, but in order to do so we have to stop this cycle of child disobedience. I think America would love to see the day when we are not hearing about little babies being left alone to have a chance to kill one another or children killing their parents. It’s sad that parents some parents never learn to be good parents because they never had a good example to follow. Maybe one day people will start using the going rule and treat their kids the way the wanted to be treated when they were kids. We have to stop child disobedience and you can be the first to do so by just giving your child a great example of how to live life in a friendly, peaceful and orderly manner.  President Obama reminds us that, “The years before a child reaches kindergarten are among the most critical in his or her life to influence learning”. Start teaching your children how to behave today before it is too late.