by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: August 25, 2008   Last Updated: September 28, 2008

Recently in a hotel lobby I was looking through one of those tourist brochures looking for something to do. A four-year-old girl came up to me and started bossing me around, saying "No, No!" Probably she had been told not to touch the pamphlets - not by her own parents, however, because her parents had little interest in what was going on. After trying for to get my attention, she disregarded her own prohibition and shoved pamphlets in my hands. I was polite and talked to her about the pamphlets for a minute, but eventually went back to browsing. This caused her to eventually PINCH me!

I told her, "we don't pinch people," thinking, where are this girl's parents? But then a weak voice from not very far away said "Come here, honey." The girl's dad had been there the whole time! And from the sound of his reaction to my having to censure her myself, it didn't seem particularly unusual for her to have accosted a stranger. He certainly didn't seem to think an apology to me was in order.

I would like to think that if this were my kid that I wouldn't have allowed any of this. But I don't really know that that's fair, exactly, because my kids have for whatever reason come to me amazingly mild mannered. We have practically had to teach them to stand up for themselves to their peers and bossy teachers, much less not hit other kids (or adults!).

Case in point, a few years ago my very polite and timid son had picture day at school, and his teacher told him to go sit down because she thought he had forgotten the check in his school picture order. He was so averse to confronting his teacher with the explanation that he wasn't able to get any retakes, leaving that school year undocumented.

To be clear, when I praise my children, I try very hard to not be one of those parents who looks at my kids through rose-colored glasses. I don't put pictures of them all over the known universe because I am under some sad notion that they are actually cuter than your average little rug rat. I know they aren't. It is hard to tell whether the parents that think their kids can do no wrong are actually aware that they CAN, so I am very careful not to come across like one of THOSE PARENTS.

However I did it I don't regularly deal with aggressive, bullying children on a regular basis. Thank goodness for it due to my ability to handle stress, they don't even yell or scream very much. Their mild natures have made me very sensitive to how other children behave. I notice it a bit more when my kid gets

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