A Mom Said ‘No’ To a Stranger’s Child—Was She Wrong?

In the age of gentle parenting, many parents are leading with empathy and compassion when it comes to raising their kids. On the whole, that’s a good thing, whether they are correcting the harsh way they might have been raised or adopting a kinder, more patient attitude toward child-rearing.

But sometimes parents overcorrect—and that can lead to tense situations when you have to confront a child who might have learned boundary-pushing behavior from a probably well-meaning but misguided caregiver. 

As one mom recently found out, parents can be too gentle with their kids, forgetting that it is just as important to teach them boundaries as it is to make sure their feelings are protected. As we’ve outlined before, some parents also forget that gentle parenting doesn’t actually mean letting your kids get away with acting rude, especially in public and to other adults. 

Is It Ever Okay to Say ‘No’ to Another Parent’s Kid?

The mom, Amil Niazi, who writes a parenting column at The Cut called “The Hard Part,” outlined her experience in a tweet with more than 7 million views.

She wrote about how on a drop-in day at her child’s school, she had to say “no” to another kid who was rummaging through her purse. Seems straight forward enough, right? Not to the kid’s mom. Amil wrote “The mom confronted me and said she didn’t like my tone.”

The interaction brought to mind a problem parents face: When is it okay to discipline someone else’s child—especially when they might have a different parenting philosophy than you? It can be a tricky situation to navigate, but when a kid is trying to run off with your wallet or car keys, it’s safe to say that you’re almost always within your rights to stop that behavior if a parent won’t.

“Please understand kids need boundaries and they need to sometimes hear no,” Amil went on to write in her tweet. 

How Other Parents Reacted to the Situation

According to the comments on her post, it seems not only are parents having a hard time knowing exactly when and how to intervene when other people’s kids cross boundaries that are in place for a reason, they are also experiencing the results of parenting that is too permissive in all aspects of their daily lives.

“I was chatting with a friend the other day who’s a pediatrician. Once when she was with a toddler patient, the kid was grabbing her tools so she told them ‘no’, and the mom went in a baby voice ‘what do we tell the dr [sic]? That we don’t say no!’ writes one person. 

Another commenter tried to see the humor in the situation, writing “I’m not negotiating with a tiny burglar.”

Hey, everybody makes mistakes, and parenting is a constant learning experience, so I try not to judge parents who are still learning to balance compassion for their kids with age-appropriate discipline too harshly. But I don’t think I would have any trouble politely admonishing a kid with a simple “no,” if they were violating my personal space, trying to take my belongings, or causing my own child distress. 

Why It’s Okay for Parents to Rely on Each Other to Step in Sometimes

A close friend explained this idea to me as what she called “community parenting,” and it’s always stuck with me as a good idea. Parents can and should lean on each other to fill in the gaps and blind spots in our own parenting.

Kids learn from all the adults around them, and as long as they approach kids in a good-intentioned manner, we should trust our communities to help teach our children how to treat others with respect. 

I’m not saying we should let other people parent our kids. Rather, more parents should welcome, rather than react defensively, when another parent steps in to support your efforts to teach your kids courteous manners. You aren’t going to get it right every time—its unrealistic to expect you to! That’s why we have each other.

As one person on Twitter put it, hearing the occasional “no” helps kids “understand boundaries, not grow up to be jerks, and [teaches] them that there are consequences for every action.”

Well said.