Allow me to set this little scene for you:
Scarlette is three years old. She is normally very well behaved in public but on the rare occasion that she is not, let me just tell you, she is NOT. It’s like she’s just decided that if she’s going to be naughty, she’s just going to go all in and give it all she’s got.
Go big or go home, that’s what we say around here.
A couple of months ago she was being incredibly disobedient in the middle of a store and so after several warnings I told her that she could not get a cookie and that resulted in a meltdown of epic proportions. I’ve heard the store employees still refer to it as “The Tantrum of 2013.”
When I got home, I found a message in my facebook folder from a sweet blog reader who asked if we had been at that particular store that morning. She said that she had recognized us at the store but was too nervous to approach us and say hello.
I thought back to how I was carrying Scarlette kicking and screaming through the bakery department and was all I CAN NOT EVEN IMAGINE WHY.
I wrote her back and asked if she was put off by the fact that I looked like a walking scene from The Exorcist.
(She said no but I think the lady doth protest too much)
The other day we had another issue at the store.
The thing is, Scarlette does not quite understand the correlation between poor behavior and consequence unless the consequence happens right away. For example, if she misbehaves in public, telling her that she will lose a privilege at home doesn’t help. At home I can tell her that she will lose her screen time but when we are out somewhere that doesn’t seem to make a difference.
After repeated warnings about her behavior she hit me, which is an automatic time-out in our house. Only we weren’t in our house. We were in the middle of Target because we needed milk and cheap wrapping paper.
I didn’t want to embarrass her by putting her in time out in front of a bunch of people so in what I thought was a BRILLIANT parenting move, I walked over to the fitting rooms so that she could do a time out in private. The fitting room lady smiled nicely at me as I quietly explained that I didn’t actually have anything to try on, we just needed a moment to do some thinking and I figured this was a great solution to my problem: Scarlette would get an immediate consequence but I wouldn’t be shaming her in public.
Only what happened was, when I sat her down on the fitting room bench she started screaming “NOOO!! NO MOMMY! PWEASE! PWEASE NOOOOOO!!!!” and sobbing hysterically.
So then I threw the fitting room door open so that people could see that I was not beating my child in the fitting rooms.
Y’all do you know what she normally does in time-out? She spins in circles and then sweetly says “I weady to fink about my actions now Mommy!”
She has never in her short little life started screaming like that until, you know, I had the bright idea to do a time out in the middle of a store fitting room.
So maybe SHE wasn’t embarrassed but I TOTALLY WAS.
(On the other hand, at least she didn’t tell anyone that her mommy wasn’t wearing any underwear on this trip.)
And I know some people say to just leave the store but we live out in the country y’all. Do you know how long it even takes me to get to Target? Too long to let a tantrum stand between me and a half a gallon of almond milk, that’s what I’m saying.
So seriously, what has worked for you? Should I just stick to taking away screen time and know that one day she will make the correlation? Never go to Target again? Or is there a better way to handle public tantrums?
Also: look at this sweet baby angel child. I know y’all don’t believe she ever misbehaves 😉
(She is saying “Good thinking, Bob!” and yes, she IS referring to herself as “Bob”)