Today Lucas and I spent another fun afternoon at Kidsville, also known as, my new favorite place for kids on the planet and I encountered something that I wasn't expecting and still not sure how to handle in the future: rude children and parents that do nothing about it.
Kidsville is somewhat of a free for all in that children of all ages, I would say up to 6 can run around and play with all of the toys available. The older the child, the less supervision needed, so you'll find moms and dads parked on sofas that border the facility tapping away on their smart phones. Or, you'll find moms like me chasing after their tots 'just in case', but in all honesty there isn't much Lucas could hurt himself with or on.
Or, so I thought, until today...
This one particular little girl, maybe a year older than Lucas followed us around for a while and whatever he had, she wanted and made it perfectly known by snatching it from him and knocking him down almost every time. I was right there, so luckily no one got hurt, but it definitely confused Lucas.
I was careful not to lose my cool and said things like: "that's not very nice", "okay, if she wants to play with it, let's move on to something else" and "we need to share, Lucas, let's give her a turn" all the while nonchalantly looking around for this child's parents who never made themselves known.
Eventually, the little girl moved on to something else, however, I'm still puzzled. We have been working on the sharing concept with Lucas for a while now, which I know is a bound to be difficult to understand for young minds. Where were the girl's parents and for future reference, what do you do when a parent doesn't do anything about their child's rude behavior beyond removing him from the situation? Should I have said something to management or sought the parents out and brought it to their attention?
