Campers don’t know what to do with their kids.

There’s a few things that I wanted to post about, because it seems like people are having … issues with their children. It’s not that the kids are badly behaved, it’s that the parents don’t seem to know what to do with them.

I mean, look at example number one here.

The other day (actually, it was about a week ago) we had a brother come in with his two sisters. There was one girl who was the eldest, then the brother and then a little one who could walk but was being pushed around in a stroller by the older sister (who was about six).

Before I even get into what happened, look at what’s wrong with this picture.

A six year old should not be in charge of her younger brother and sister. There was no parent to be found and the trio was ’shopping’. 

So, they bring alllll this stuff up to the counter. I mean, at least forty dollars worth of merchandise. Which is fine. I don’t have a problem with kids shopping or buying things, but then the girl opens her purse to reveal she has a total of about fifty-seven cents. I don’t expect children (especially young ones) to really have a great grasp on how much things are worth, but they had absolutely no concept of money whatsoever. She kept asking me how much more she would need and how much she had. 

While I don’t mind doing that, there should be a parent there to help their child out. They should not have been in the store on their own and god knows where they came from! I have no idea what their site number was, but they could have very well been camping at the other end of the park. The campground is a safe place, but you never know what could happen. I’m not saying people should watch their children like hawks and give them no freedom, but really now, have some common sense.

On another note, walking your child like they are a dog is really not acceptable. I kind of understand the leash things, where they have a string on their wrist and you have one on yours, so you don’t lose your kid, but a full out harness is really not cool. Especially when you take the leash part and honestly walk them like they’re your pet. The kid had no room to step more than a foot away from her mom, which is really not cool for a little kid. 

Then the son simply asks if they could get a chocolate bar. He wasn’t whining or complaining, and the mom snaps at him. She starts screaming at the kid saying how he just ate so he can’t get anything now. O_O Okay, so maybe he was super annoying this morning at the campsite or something, but screaming at them in a store makes you look like the insane one.

Although I have to admit, on the plus side this year we haven’t had half as many lost or abandoned children as we normally do. Not that anyone ‘abandons’ their child in the sense that they totally leave them here, but last year (for example) we had a toddler out wandering around the pool on her own. 

The parents? They were back at the campsite. Like what the hell!? What if that poor little girl fell in the pool? Yeah, there was a lifeguard, but that’s not the point. You can’t leave your toddler unsupervised at the swimming pool! (Or anywhere else for that matter).

We get a lot of good parents at the campground but we get a lot of bad parents as well. Maybe not ‘bad parents’ but a large display of bad parenting skills.