To do
just what this man did.
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. -- Police say a 61-year-old man annoyed with a crying 2-year-old girl at a Walmart slapped the child several times after warning the toddler's mother to keep her quiet.
A police report says after the stranger hit the girl at least four times, he said: "See, I told you I would shut her up."
Roger Stephens of Stone Mountain is charged with felony cruelty to children. It was unclear if he had an attorney and a telephone call to his home Wednesday was unanswered.
Authorities say the girl and her mother were shopping Monday when the toddler began crying. The police report says Stephens approached the mother and said, "If you don't shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you."
Authorities say after Stephens slapped the girl, she began screaming.
That last line is the best part. Though I'm sure the man derived intense short term satisfaction from finally taking action against some squalling brat, it didn't even work! On second thought, I think the mug shot is the best part. Just the perfect angry old man face/expression. If you'd read the headline, and had 10 possible mug shots to pick from, this guy would surely have been your choice.
I'm tempted to cross reference the fact that this took place in a Walmart out in the country, and get all arm chair sociologist with recklessly speculative and classist remarks that the mom was probably some negligent, Britney Spear-sesque white trash hillbilly, talking on her cell phone and browsing the hair care aisle while ignoring her screaming brat... but there's zero info about that in the news item, so I'll refrain.
Also, lest I seem too endorsing of a felony act... it's dumb, and stupid. Blaming a crying child for crying is like blaming a barking dog for barking; it's not the animal's fault, it's the owner's for not properly controlling it, or at least removing it from ear shot if it can't be controlled for whatever reason. If the old man were so pissed at the noise, he should have gotten up in the mother's ear, and either driven her to stop the baby, or made her so uncomfortable she left the store. Or he could have slapped her; that would still have been illegal, but at least she's not a defenseless baby, and she's responsible for her actions, and those of her living baggage.
As for the title of this post, okay, maybe we're not all tempted to slap a noisy baby/child, but we all want them to stop crying, or go away. Or both, ideally. But mostly we (adults who have no children of our own) want the parents to make it stop. Which is, of course, exactly what the parents most desperately want, and most of the time they're trying hard to make that happen, and are mortified that they can't impose their will/discipline/love on the grubby, decibel-generating creature they're tethered to for 16 or 17 more years.
Are there any laws about that sort of thing? Are parents legally obligated to try to keep their children from screaming? Or to remove them from the public sphere if they can't? If an adult were standing somewhere screaming, "disturbing the peace," then police could be called to deal with it. Or more likely, some bigger guy would do what stern fathers do to sniveling children, and "give him something to cry about."
Normal adults have a sense of the needs of others, experience embarrassment, or at least hold a concept of self preservation that keeps them from making a nuisance of themselves the same way children do. No one's going to arrest a baby for crying, but do parents have a responsibility to consider the noise pollution they're inflicting upon everyone else? Ethically, yes. Legally? I dunno.
I was wondering about this very issue a couple of months ago. I was in a Home Depot, and a nicely-dressed Chinese couple, in their 40s, were shopping while their son, who was about 7, ran around like a maniac. He was hyper, utterly oblivious to others, and very noisy. Every few steps he would stop and utter this shrieking cry, very high pitched. Bird-like, really. And he did this constantly, for at least 15 minutes, without either parent ever saying a word to him or even acknowledging his behavior.
I first saw them in the garden section, where I thought it was an actual bird, and wanted someone to shotgun it. Eventually the noise came towards me, and I was surprised to see this shrieking kid. Clearly not distressed; he was smiling and running around like the store was his private playground. And sort of circling his utterly oblivious and unconcerned parents, as they walked with their cart and talked together in low voices.
They moved off into the main part of the store, and even though they were a long way away, I could still hear the kid. Which means everyone else in the store could hear him too. Eventually I went into the store to pay, and he was still at it. Aisles away, this shrieking caw kept going up, and as I walked to the front he came racing along the main aisle, screaming some Cantonese version of "Mama mama mama mama!" After 4 or 5 aisles he saw their cart (they never made a sound, perhaps hoping they'd lost him?) and ran up towards it, again making the happy cawing shriek sound.
They came back past me while I was in line, the parents still utterly absorbed in each other and the blueprint or shopping list they were holding on their cart, the kid trailing along behind making his fire alarm sound effect. I tried to catch his eye and made a "shhh" expression with my finger to my lips, but he didn't register any sort of eye contact with me, and just kept up the racket until I got through the self check and mercifully escaped the store and the noise.
Admittedly, there are a lot of variables in this one. I don't know if the kid had autism or other disorder that kept him from behaving in civilized fashion. It might even have been something of a cultural thing, since Chinese (at least in China) are often dotingly devoted to children (especially sons) and spoil them with unreserved non-discipline. But the fact that the kid was fairly old, certainly of school age, and the fact that the parents made zero effort to shush him, and hardly even seemed to know he was there, made it very weird.
And made me wonder, at the time and afterwards, what amount of noise and disruption strangers are expected to tolerate from someone else's child before they step in? Would someone have been out of line to confront the parents, tell them their child's behavior was unacceptable, and that if they didn't stop him they'd have to leave the store immediately? What if another customer (like me) had done that? What if the store manager had done that? Obviously you can't just slap the kid, or carry him bodily out of the store, but don't parents have some reasonable obligation to control, or at least make an effort to control, their offspring?
I imagine Roger Stephens, or his attorney, is pondering questions of that nature at this very minute.
Labels: babies, odd social interactions
