The Failing of Parents

How hard is it to be even remotely strict with your child? Sitting here in B& N reading a book on the story of Revelations, getting into it because it’s friggin’ interesting and enlightening, this mom (not a milf mind you) sits her son down at the table next to me and walks to the counter of the café. This boy, who is on the verge of being fat, just a cupcake away, is sitting here reading a comic. I instantly feel alright with him for this fact because I love comics. Then it begins. The mother tells him to close his eyes because she has a surprise for him…a fuckin’ cupcake! She tries to be funny and says it’s a bean sprout donut and she laughs. She tells him that they aren’t going to Tae kwon Do today for whatever reason. As this child is against the wall, the next bit is hard to picture and I missed the actual event, but he somehow drops the cupcake that is almost finished. She starts lecturing him that he never listens all the while he is ignoring her. I look up and see him pick up the palm-sized piece of chocolate cupcake off the floor, blow on it, and shove it whole into his mouth. Then he tries to wipe the chocolate off of the wall. I still can’t figure out the physics of what happened because the thing landed behind him on his left side which is the side of the wall. So he’s smearing the chocolate on the wall with his napkin with a cup of water in his mouth, because setting it down would have been an effort. His mother tells him to take the cup out of his mouth and give it to her. He doesn’t listen and tilts his up to drain some of it. She continues to tell him no and then he just pounds it down (at least it was water). She then continues to tell him that he never listens and he is trying to talk over her telling her to get him another cupcake. By now my mouth is just open and I can’t stop watching this. She says no to the second cupcake (which didn’t go to waste) and he begins to counter her argument with “I do listen”. Other people’s children make me hate children. What is that kid going to be like in a few years? On their way out she says he is going to Tae Kwon Do. How is that a punishment? I want to tell her to inform his TKD teacher that he is failing in his job to teach respect and discipline. I wanted to tell her that she is failing as a parent by letting this annoying little shit get away with his attitude and behavior. I understand that it’s hard to raise a child. I respect the ones who do it well, but what am I supposed to feel about the ones that haven’t figured out that catering to spoiled children is possibly the wrong choice?