Cry Babies

The other day I was working at my second job, my role that particular day was as a ticket taker. What did I do you may be wondering? I took tickets, it went something like this “Hello, do you have your ticket?” they would then give me their ticket and get their food. So I was pretty stationary, not a whole lot of movement involved. At the table directly in front of me there was a family with a little girl who was probably three and a half. This little girl was pretty on it, had her parent wrapped around her little finger. As I’m watching the interaction between parents and child I see that the little girl refuses to eat anything but cookies, the parents attempted to make her eat real food, but when it looks like little girl is about to really throw down a tantrum they drop it and little girl starts running about. During this little scamper around the table said little girl trips and falls and starts to cry, the parents can only think of one way to comfort this little girl and that’s with a cookie. Talk about positive reinforcement for a negative action! This little girl took one look at the cookie and all the tears were gone. Now I’m no super nanny, but I’m pretty sure that they handled that really badly. I think the true problem lies in the fact that the parents probably don’t usually take care of the child, she probably has a nanny and this was said nanny’s vacation. Anyway, any of you out there with kids, don’t reward crying with cookies, you will turn you kid into a cry baby and nobody likes a cry baby. Instead from the start when your kid falls, clap and say “oh, wow! What a big boy/girl” then they learn that it’s okay to fall down and they don’t cry for cookies. Just a thought.