Accountable Parenting
Accountability as a parent is a very important trait to possess. For a significant portion of the beginning of your kid’s life, it is basically your responsibility to ensure they don’t mess up and hurt themselves or the people around them. When they do mess up at a certain age, it’s essentially your fault for not preventing them from messing up. This is coming from someone without kids, but I do have a dog.
When my dog does something he isn’t supposed to, I can’t look at a random bystander and say, “Why did you make my dog do that?!”
People would look at me like I’m a crazy person. Unfortunately, being looked at like a crazy person doesn’t stop some parents from trying to use this tactic. As a parent, you should be the one setting an example for your kid and correcting their bad behavior, not the people around you.
Our friend, “Emily,” encountered one of these parents while staying at a hotel for a convention with her boyfriend.
Typically, hotel pools have a pretty strict “no unattended children” policy; however, this hotel didn’t seem to do a great job of enforcing it.
~
“There Goes Our Relaxation”
After a long day at the convention, Emily, her boyfriend, “Jack,” and some of their friends decided to cool off at the hotel pool. Lucky for them, the pool wasn’t crowded at all and they had no issue finding chairs.
A few minutes after arriving at the pool, they noticed a mother and three of her kids walk in. The kids looked around four, six, and eight years old. The typical age group that was amused by raising all kinds of chaos around the pool.
Initially, Emily thought, “There goes our relaxation.”
However, she noticed the pool had a sign stating that “parents must supervise their children at all times” so she figured it would be a pretty low-maintenance group despite the ages of the children. She thought wrong.
The mom sat in the pool chair on her phone without a care in the world as to what her kids were doing around the pool. Her kids were running around the pool, jumping in and splashing groups sitting on the side of the pool, and shrieking loudly like demon-spawn.
Emily, Jack, and their friend group were left looking at each other thinking, “Is this lady going to do anything about her kids?”
~
“Ma’am, Are Those Your Children?”
It turned out the lady was not going to do anything about her kids. She just continued to scroll on her phone as if her kids weren’t actively ruining the experience of everyone else at the pool.
It was so bad that one of the poolside waiters approached the “Entitled Mom” and asked, “Ma’am, are those your children?”
She let out a deep sigh and said, “Yeah, what about them?”
He responded, “Will you please control them? They are disturbing the other guests.”
Entitled Mom snapped at him, “Well, they’re kids! This is a swimming pool! What are they supposed to do?! Not play?!”
Her response immediately made the waiter realize dealing with the kids was not worth his time. He merely shook his headed, turned around, and walked off without a word.
Across the pool, Jack turned to Emily and said, “Did you see that lady just freak out on the waiter?”
Emily responded, “Yeah that lady is psychotic. Her kids are stressing me out too. I might head up to the room early and get ready for dinner. Those kids are going to give me a headache.”
She got up, dried off, grabbed her things from the chair, and started walking toward the exit.
There was a crowd of people in front of a group of the chairs near the exit so without thinking twice about it, she hopped over the corner of the pool, maybe a one-to-two foot gap, to avoid them.
As soon as she reached the gate, she heard a loud shriek from one of Entitled Mom’s kids. It sounded painful rather than one of the playful shrieks that had nearly given her a headache so she turned around to see what had happened.
~
“Look What You Did!”
Emily turned around to see one of Entitled Mom’s kids doubled over in pain on the corner of the pool she had hopped over mere seconds earlier. Confused as to what had just happened, she looked over to see Entitled Mom making a beeline for her.
As soon as she was within range, Entitled Mom shrieked, “Look what you did! Where are your parents?!”
Genuinely worried she had done something to harm the kid, Emily walked closer to Entitled Mom and asked, “What happened? If I did anything I’m so sorry!”
Entitled Mom shouted back, “Where are your parents?! He saw you try to jump across the pool! You shouldn’t be roughhousing here!”
Emily responded, “What are you talking about? My parents aren’t here. Also, I only stepped over the corner of the pool?”
Entitled Mom screamed in response, “I saw you! You were jumping across the pool! You shouldn’t be here without adult supervision! You need to leave or I’m getting security!”
Jack had seen the entire altercation play out and had just made his way over to Emily and Entitled Mom when she made her threat.
Jack responded, “I saw her. She just took a wide step over the corner of the pool. Also, she’s twenty-three so I don’t know why you keep asking where her parents are.”
Entitled Mom fired back, “She was jumping! I saw her and now my child is hurt because of her!”
At this point, a random stranger from the group by the pool entrance interjected and said, “No, she wasn’t. I was right here and she only took a step.”
Entitled Mom shrieked, “Well, she shouldn’t be here without supervision!”
Her kid had been sitting on the side of the pool watching this altercation play out with his hand over his mouth. As soon as Entitled Mom finished her sentence, her kid moved his hand to reveal he had chipped his tooth on the side of the pool.
~
“Then I’m Calling Security!”
Entitled Mom let out a gasp and quickly returned her attention to Emily, “Now look, you chipped his tooth!”
Of course, this freaked out her kid who immediately began wailing about his chipped tooth.
Completely fed up with Entitled Mom, Emily retorted, “I’m an adult. I have just as much of a right to be here as anyone else. I didn’t do anything to your child and I’m not responsible for anything he does while you’re sitting over there scrolling on your phone oblivious to what your kids are doing.”
Entitled Mom looked like she had been slapped across the face. She turned beet red and shouted, “Don’t you speak to me that way! If you’re really an adult then show me your ID!”
Jack stepped in and responded, “She’s not going to show you her ID, you psycho. Go check on your kid!”
Entitled Mom retorted, “Then I’m calling security!”
Not long after, one of the security officers showed up at the pool. Before he was even completely inside the gate, Entitled Mom was there shouting at him.
She shrieked, “You need to throw that girl out! She’s here unsupervised and setting a bad example for my kids! She chipped my kid’s tooth!”
Another stranger from the group near the pool entrance interjected, “She didn’t chip your kid’s tooth, lady! You’ve been over there unbothered while your kids have been running around the pool like little gremlins!”
Jack doubled down on her comment, “It’s true. My girlfriend was actually trying to leave because this lady’s kids were terrorizing the pool then before she knew it, she was being berated by this crazy lady!”
The security guard turned to Emily and asked, “Is this true?”
Emily responded, “Absolutely. Also, she keeps asking where my parents are which is really weird. Honestly, I don’t even care at this point. I just want to go back up to the room.”
Entitled Mom shouted, “Good! You’re setting a bad example for my kids! Get out of here!”
The security guard turned to Entitled Mom and said, “Why don’t you go ahead and grab your things too, ma’am? Clearly, you haven’t been following pool rules,” and gestured toward the “parents must supervise their children at all times” sign.
Entitled Mom got in his face and shouted, “I want to speak to your manager! Right! Now!”
Unbothered, the security guard responded, “In the lobby, ma’am. Don’t forget your kids.”
Entitled Mom stormed over to her chair, grabbed her things, and stomped out of the pool with her kids running to keep up with her.
Upon the sight of Entitled Mom and her kids leaving, Emily decided to give the pool another chance. It turned out to be a lot more enjoyable without unsupervised kids wreaking havoc all over the place.
Ironically, Jack and Emily saw Entitled Mom in the lobby later that night when they were cooling off with a drink at the hotel bar. It appeared she was waiting to speak to the manager, who had likely gotten wind of what happened out at the pool and chose to spend the rest of the day completely avoiding the front desk.
Jack seized the opportunity and shouted, “Don’t worry they checked her ID,’ while gesturing toward Emily.
Emily nearly spit out her drink laughing and they were met with nothing but a glare from Entitled Mom.
~
Thoughts From The Author
Although it’s not even remotely feasible for all hotels to do this, I’m a firm believer all hotels need separate pools designated for kids and adults. Kids and even a pretty significant group of adults, near any body of water, behave like complete heathens. The only difference is most adults at a hotel pool tend to behave like heavens a lot quieter, so they wouldn’t disturb my poolside reading. Kids, on the other hand, have to run, scream, splash, and generally be as loud as possible around a swimming pool.
This story would have never happened if this hotel made the decision between either having zero pools or a separate pool for kids and adults. The kid’s pool would be full of people like Entitled Mom not paying attention to their kids, and who are they going to blame when their kids inevitably hurt themselves? Each other? Either way, it wouldn’t be our problem!
I completely respect how Emily, Jack, the random bystanders, and basically anyone not named Entitled Mom handled this situation. First and foremost, I can completely identify with the waiter realizing he was dealing with a crazy person and deciding that was someone else’s problem. I think more people need to come to the “I don’t get paid enough to deal with this so I’m going to ignore it” conclusion when dealing with entitled people.
Any parent who has it in them to not watch their kids to the extent they are bothering everyone in the vicinity of them then blame someone for their kid’s bad decision making needs to be publicly shamed and that’s exactly what happened in this story. Everyone took their turn shutting down Entitled Mom and it was a delight to read. Maybe she will do a better job of supervising her kids from now on. Probably not.
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