Consequences? Parenting basics (or so I thought).

I find it hard to understand the model of raising children in North America. I thought that there are prince and princesses in Scandinavia, but here, they are small monsters and manipulators as I can observe many children do not face any consequences for their behaviour. 

Ok, maybe I am too tough on my kids, but my circus will not be able to function if I will not have structure and help, my circus will not be able to travel and explore the world if I go alone with every caprice or hissy fit with my kids. But I do believe in fairness and creating human beings whom I will be proud of to ship into the open world. 

However, I find it so difficult to bring them up on this side of the ocean. Screaming, shouting, making hissy fits right in the middle of the shopping centre is absolutely a normal thing in any mall. And there are absolutely no consequences of bad behaviour, nasty speaking to the parents or being rude. I wonder how on earth do parents planning to see their kids being decent human beings and building the future. 

Recently I had an incident in the supermarket that not made me mad but also confirmed my observations. One of my kids, recently, has taken something out of the supermarket, without me paying for it. It was a small thing, a lipstick, costing maybe 50c or something like that. I could easily say, oh, get on with your life, but I chose not to do so. In fact, I drag the kid back to the supermarket, got to customer service and made the kid to explain how this little thing ended up in the pocket. The fact is I was hoping to teach someone a lesson and I was really hoping that a customer service worker will play along with me. But the fact is, the response I got shocked me. "So, you don't want this lipstick? You want to return it?" Ok, if it was an 18 years old one, that would be a criminal act, so for crying out loud, scare the kid so this will be remembered that for the rest of the life. But no, we get this smily young gentleman telling us,  that it is ok and thank you for returning the thing back to supermarket. People, is it me or is it wrong? I not only publicly humiliated my kid, made her publicly say that what she did was wrong but upon returning home, someone was not only grounded but had to perform extra home-duty to get her to understand the seriousness of her actions. 

Listen, I am not trying to raise my kids perfect. Oh no, we are far from perfect family in, I believe, almost all the aspects of life, but I am trying to raise responsible human beings who will understand the consequences of their actions and respect me and the society. 

So what I do? I let them fit into the society, by teaching them the basics: 

My answer: N-E-V-E-R