“Their Free Childcare”: Store Employee Finds A Genius Way To Make Parents Control Their Kids

Parenting is a tough job, there is no denying that. However, some parents have a sort of “free range” mentality, where they are content to allow their kids to do whatever they want, regardless of other’s comfort, or, worse, the child’s own safety. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way that, actually, children can’t just treat any environment as a playground.

A netizen shared their plot to keep a mom’s wild pack of children from running around a hardware store. We reached out to the person who made the post and will update the article when they get back to us.

“Parenting styles” is one of those loaded topics where it’s quite easy to spark an argument. After all, on the one hand, people should be allowed to raise their children the way they see fit. On the other hand, some folks' parenting style is, basically, a lack of parenting at all. Some adults are just lazy, while others simply do not know how to handle a kid.

Experts list "appeasement" parenting as one of the more dysfunctional styles out there, as it essentially enables the kids to do whatever they want and throw tantrums to blackmail their parents into giving in. Some might argue that it’s “healthy” for a child to be free to make their own choices and mistakes, but the middle of a store full of breakable and, more importantly, sharp objects isn’t it.

It is probably a stretch to ascribe this woman’s actions to some sort of “parenting plan” as she just seems lazy and entitled. After all, just unleashing four kids to charge around a store seems more like a “lack of a plan” than a real strategy. As the person who shared the story noted, it’s very possible that this mom was perfectly willing to outsource her parenting duties to random workers.

That speaks to a reasonable degree of entitlement, since “picking up after yourself” is normal social behavior. There are some nuances, for example a crying baby, while annoying, isn’t necessarily the fault of the parent, it’s just the main way babies let the world know that they aren’t happy with something. Children who can run, however, do need to be managed.

However, there is a reasonable chance that this mom has decided that "managing" her own kids is really just a bridge too far. She might even be one of those “it takes a village” folks who sees the wider world as sharing her responsibility to parent her own children. Her offspring running isn’t just annoying, remember, they are putting themselves at risk and are potentially moments away from destroying property.

In this regard, the person who posted the story ultimately had the right idea. Directly confronting the woman was a trap, she would simply complain, yell, perhaps even summon a manager. The better option was to use a bit of guile. There, of course, was a chance that this mom is so negligent that even broken glass wouldn’t make her intervene, thankful, that was not the case here.

All's well that ends well, nothing was broken, the kids are ok and, if we are being optimistic, the mother might think twice next time there is a situation like this. At the very least, this worker didn’t have to deal with cleaning up a mess or worse, because four kids charging around a store like cannonballs is a recipe for disaster.