A hundred years ago, it was common for the more financial affluent families to have a parlor or a room in their house that was not used for the family but existed merely as a place to entertain. This room was better furnished, often cleaner, and may have been the only room in the house that was really decorated since it was the public face of the family. While it would be ridiculous for me to assume that there is not a difference between how we act in public and how we act when we are in our comfortable homes or privacy (that is what socialization is all about right?), I think it can be confusing and create problems for our children when there is a HUGE difference between how we discipline in public and what we do at home.
Now I fully admit that I am a human parent and that even though it takes a lot for me to lose my patience and yell—I do occasionally get crabby with my kids and it is usually at home. I think expressing emotions, however, is different from discipline. For example, if you use time outs at home and they work well, you can extend the same system to public infractions. This keeps the consistency of a working system going. Of course, this requires that as a parent you have to be willing to set those limits and follow through whether you have an audience or not. When my children were in the “time out” phase, I would scope out the “place” wherever we went. That way, I knew what I would do if things got out of control. For us, it often meant a trip to the rest room or outside. My kids knew they would get the same warning whether in public at home and then I would act. It meant that I had to get thick-skinned about removing a misbehaving child from a restaurant or leaving a fun activity if someone couldn’t behave.
There is one area where I think that public discipline can be “different” than at home. If you are someone who loses their temper quickly and says mean, spiteful or hateful things to your child then you may be inclined to use different language when you are out in public (although I hear plenty of parents talk this way or threaten violence to their children in public as if it is the most reasonable thing in the world.) In this case, you might consider how to make your private parenting more like your public parenting.
See Also: Dealing with Behavior Problems in Public
Discipline Problems? All it Takes is a SMILE
Should You Discipline Other People’s Children?