I don’t always hold my dd’s hand, but she is also well behaved and knows better than to run off or touch things. There is a religious shop here though that we don’t ever enter. We went in once, my Daughter wanted to buy a cross for her room with her allowance. Neither my dd or I touched anything… there were at least 100 signs saying “CONTROL YOUR CHILD!” and “Do NOT touch ANYTHING!” “Children MUST not touch anything!” etc. Some were ruder than that. My dd was 4 and could read quite well, she pulled on my hand and whispered in my ear “Mommy, Why do these people hate children??” We left the store without buying the cross.
I understand perfectly that there are people who don’t control their children. A sign on the door and one by the checkout stating a nice “You break it you bought it” policy or a funny one like the one above should have been plenty. Then when people of any age ruin something, you ring it up as a sale.
I notice you’re in New Mexico, too. Would that shop be in Ruidoso? If so, that’s my in-laws’ store and no, they don’t hate children.
It would be nice if the sign on the door (which there is) would be sufficient warning. However, day in and day out, ADULTS come walking in with dripping ice cream cones and cups of soda (despite the sign saying “No food or drink”) and kids come sailing in on “heelies” (I HATE thos idiotic things!) and playing hide-and-seek among the display racks while the parents sit out in the courtyard smoking, figuring, I guess, that as long as the kids are in one of the shops, they’ll be safe.
I am glad your daughter is well-behaved, and my in-laws have gone out of their way to compliment and reward children who exhibit good behavior in their shop (sadly, it doesn’t happen often.) But the problem is that the MAJORITY of parents do NOT care if their children respect other people’s property. One woman once argued with me when I asked her not to let her four-year-old handle an expensive baptismal gown (the child was trying to tear the plastic cover off to touch the beaded appliques), saying that her daughter could do “whatever she wanted to in a public place”. I told her it was NOT a public place, her tax dollars did not support us, and if she wanted to let her child play with the merchandise, she would have to pay for it first. She left in a huff, but at least the person who eventually bought that $80 baptismal gown got it in good condition (or else they would have had to buy a smudged one with beads missing for $40–which is what my in-laws would have paid for it wholesale.)
As for signs everywhere, I’ve heard kids say to their parents, “This shelf doesn’t have a sign, can I touch the stuff on it?” Or the parents say, “Oh, it’s a book, they can’t break a book” (no, but they can tear and smudge pages and bend corners and break spines!) And sometimes, it’s a matter of safety. One of the other businesses in the square where the shop is had a child knock down a display because they were jumping up to reach something on the top shelf (presumably put there so a child WOULD’T touch it). Did the parents apologize? Did they offer to pay for any damaged merchandise? No, they threatened the shop owner with a lawsuit if their child got hurt!
If your daughter respects other people’s property, then she should not have taken offense at the signs (especially since the owners, apparently, did not feel they had to warn you verbally), anymore than my 14-year-old takes offense when I can’t let him go into a convenience store that states that NO MORE THAN 5 KIDS IN STORE AT ONE TIME. A few times I’ve stopped for gas and seen a line outside the store of kids waiting to go in to buy a soda or whatever. So even though I have to go in and pay for my gas myself instead of letting my son just run in, plunk $20 down and say, “Pump #3, please”, I don’t get upset.
Store keepers KNOW what they have to deal with and they’re doing the best they can to protect their assets since a lot of people have NO CLUE what it means to respect other people’s property. One in a thousand children is like your daughter or my son. If 999 in a thousand were like them, we wouldn’t need any signs at all.
Anyway, come back into Immaculate Heart and tell my BIL that Amy sent you!
that straightened her out in seconds.
So some of us are trying.