Imagine almost losing your life for commenting to a complete stranger that their choice in discipline may not be the best.  Lefenus Pickett could have just as well been anyone of us on June 18 last year as he boarded a Philadelphia Septa bus and shortly after, witnessed 20 year-old Penny Chapman spanking her son when he started to run up and down the bus.  After Pickett complained and referenced that Chapman was “abusing” her son, he then said he witnessed an offended Chapman call someone on her cell phone, and when the bus stopped on Cecil B. Moore Avenue, she was escorted off of the bus and two men armed with weapons proceeded to shoot into the bus 13 times.  The bus driver sped from the scene and amazingly none of the passengers were hurt.

Unfortunately, this is the reason that many of us choose to say nothing when we witness parents who choose to broadcast their obvious lack of parenting skills in public for the world to witness.  We question if it’s really any of our business, we want to avoid confrontation or we foolishly believe that if we haven’t had the opportunity to parent ourselves, we obviously don’t know any better than those who in many instances didn’t plan on becoming parents themselves.  It truly does take a village to raise a child.   Most of us had parents or parental figures when we were children and have enough of a frame of reference to know who deserves to be “Mother-Of-The Year” and who needs to be meeting with child services.

We’ve all seen it at least once.  And while I don’t partake in social work as a hobby, I must say that it turns my stomach when I see a mother proceed to cuss and demean her child, kicking him while he is on the ground crying because she’s upset that he keeps pestering her to buy a dollar toy (which I actually have witnessed).   If a child’s own parent isn’t even protecting them, you have to wonder who is.  So I am calling out trifling parents everywhere and letting them know that their behavior will no longer be tolerated.  Hopefully none of the traits below apply to you, and if they do, there’s no better time to make a change.