Brat Children

For the record, I work in retail. And usually, I love it. Today I did not.
I had a screaming child. There is nothing in the world worse than the incessant, overwhelming ear piercing scream of a child. And it is perfectly impossible to talk over. Which, when your job is sales, and relies heavily on good sales pitches, is somewhat detrimental to business.
To top it all off, there was also a brat child. One of those ones that runs around the place picking up various items, irrelevant of value and either throwing or hitting them on the floor. I was sorely tempted to resort to the fire
extinguisher...

But this isn't my main gripe. My main gripe is some peoples attitudes towards children who behave this way. My personal attitude is that a good solid clip round the ear works miracles. Other attitudes include that the child may have 'problems'.
Now I acknowledge that problems like autism exist, and a mentally ill child is probably a total nightmare sometimes. Fine. Most autistic children I've met, either at work or otherwise, the mothers have quietly mentioned that is the case, and in a lot of cases I've generally found that a balloon seems to work wonders! But the screaming child in question, when I asked the mother if he was okay she told me he was hungry, and continued to ignore him!
Hungry?? Well feed the bloody thing then! Don't just ignore him and keep shopping! At the very least, take him outside until he's done screaming and stop pissing off an entire shop full of people! And don't ignore the other one too! She finally actually spoke to the second child when I informed her that she would need to pay for anything he damages. Money works wonders doesn't it? She didn't appear concerned for the safety of her child, but the safety of her purse? Ah, now that's another matter!

Now, I happened to mention this incident elsewhere, and was immediately upbraided because the child could have a 'problem'. What? Brat syndrome? Well yes, actually, apparently just that. Something like ADHD.
Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but ADHD stands for 'attention deficit hyperactive disorder'. Which means a child with a short attention span who has a tendency to run around a lot. So basically, a naughty child.
Seriously? There is a medical classification for 'being a brat'. Well, surely doctors should be prescribing clips round the ear then! No, they prescribe drugs. For children.
And this new 'illness' leads to the assumption that brat children are problem children, and allowances should be made.

Now I'm going to stick my neck out here and suggest that maybe ADHD is a made up illness from america used by people with bad parenting skills as an excuse.
Maybe it's a real illness recently discovered which not a lot is yet known about. Only time and medical research will actually tell which. But I still doubt very much it applies to all naughty children. I would expect most naughty children are simply the product of bad parenting, and a very few are the result of ADHD.

I think I may have just hit on one of the biggest problems in the country today. There is a definite correlation between brat children and abused benefits or council housing. Surely this tells us something?

And do you know what I blame? Yep, the same thing my Grandmother would have blamed, Computer Games, Television and the Labour Government!

Bitching over, thank you for listening...