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Is It Ever OK to Discipline Someone Else's Child? A Pediatrician Weighs In
Is it ever acceptable to discipline someone else's child — especially if your kid is at risk for harm?
'It's a very fine line,' Dr. Flo Rosen, 70, a retired pediatrician and grandmother who goes by 'Ask Bubbie' on social media, tells
Rosen said on TikTok that a mother had asked her for advice: Another child, whose parent was nowhere in sight, was bullying her young kid at the park — would it have been OK for this mom to reprimand the other child?
Yes, concluded Rosen, but carefully.
'You never, ever want to touch another person's child, but can you speak to another person's child and reprimand them? Well, that used to be very common,' Rosen said in her video. 'It was really viewed as almost collaborative or 'collective discipline.' If any grandmother on the street saw you playing and didn't like what was going on, they would comment and you and would listen. Well, times have changed.'
Rosen's advice in the video: 'You have to protect your child, so ... in a situation like that, if another parent is not stepping forward and your child is at risk of being bullied or injured ... you do have to step up and your presence very close by might be enough to deter less than good behavior.'
She added, 'If not, it's certainly reasonable to say something like, 'At a public park, we all take turns' or 'We all share.''
Then, said Rosen, stand by to check that your child, for example, gets to have his turn on the playground.
If that fails?
'The best thing to do is to leave with your child,' Rosen said in the video.
'You don't want your child to feel punished because somebody else wasn't behaving,' explained Rosen. 'It's really important at that point to say something like, 'Wow, you know what ... why don't we go get some ice cream?' or 'Why don't we go for story time?' Or something that you know your child will like and kind of distract your child and remove them from the situation.'
Rosen added in the video: 'It's also OK, in a very quiet moment afterward to talk about it and say, 'You know, I don't think that other child was being very nice because he wasn't letting you have a turn. When we're at the park, everyone should share.''
On TikTok and Instagram, where the clip was uploaded, parents shared their own opinions.
'I love this because it sets the scene for future social situations. No one should choose to be around people who are unkind.'
'If you see my child misbehaving, go ahead ... takes a village.'
'I had to leave a park with my granddaughter. I tried to talk to the two kids and be kind and include them ... they continued to call my granddaughter names. So we left. I'm a teacher and I thought I could defuse it. I was really shocked.'
'I watched a table full of older ladies step in when a couple of teenage boys were fighting in a restaurant. It stopped them in their tracks.'
'Never touch another person's kid? I wouldn't say NEVER. If a kid is ATTACKING my grandson, I'm going to touch the kid ... I'm going to pull the kid off mine.'
Rosen tells it's a balancing act: 'You have to weigh educating your child by giving them tools to stand up for themselves versus looking after your child so they aren't harmed.'
If you walk away with your kid, says Rosen, ask them: 'How do you think you could have handled that if I didn't step in?'
When are kids ready to fend for themselves?
'If a child is at risk for being physically or significantly emotionally harmed, you have to intervene,' she says. 'If a child is able to say, 'That's not nice' or 'Don't do that,' then you can stand by and see what happens.' Rosen says parents should teach assertiveness to their children.
Can you confront the other parent for not mediating? Listen to Bubbie.
'If a parent doesn't know enough to do the right thing, you getting angry at them on the playground probably won't teach them,' says Rosen.
Plus, the other parent might blame you for lecturing their kid.
'That would get my back up,' Rosen admits. 'I would probably say, 'If you parented your child, I wouldn't have to.''This article was originally published on
