DNA vs Bad Parenting.

Some years ago I posted a video on my personal face book site.  It showed  a kid about 5 or 7 banging a shopping cart into another 30 ish man, not his father, just a stranger, in the waiting line at the supermarket.  The man opens a carton of milk he is buying and pours it on the head of the kid.  The kid starts crying.  I took the post down after a couple days after many people told me the guy SHOULD have poured the milk on the mothers head.  After all, 1) she wasn't doing anything to stop her kid from hitting the man, or not enough and 2) she was the parent.  The kid is her son.  She should have taught him, or disciplined him in general that you don't do that kind of thing.  In other words, it was her fault as a bad parent.

https://www.opposingviews.com/category/man-grows-tired-unruly-boy-hitting-him-grocery-cart-while-mother-ignores-situation-video

I took the video down, but in recent months I have had second thoughts about this whole theme.  Let me explain.

Not my daughter, just some random photo 

For many years and over many topics I was always half worrying, 'oh, i better teach my girls correctly or else people will think I am a bad parent'.  Even now I criticize them when they eat their food with their fingers and ask them if they do that in school and I tell them under no circumstances may they eat with their fingers at other peoples houses.  After all what would the other parents think of my wife and I?  That we couldn't teach our kids to eat with a fork and knife and they don't know how to? Or that we don't care to teach them manners?  And we don't teach them how to be polite and not arrogant and share and say thank you ... and all that stuff.

But lately, I start to think where does some of this stuff come from? It ain't me.  I am not a nasty...  Well, my younger girl, she can be really mean a lot of times and teases.  And it isn't me.  I try to teach her to be nice and not tease her sister.  I tell her 'dont talk like that, say it nicer. Why do you have to be so mean when you say it? I didn't teach you any of that.'  And I didn't.  I am a very pleasant guy and was even more pleasant and nice when I was a small tyke.  I wasn't mean.  I didn't yell at people when I was three and get upset that someone got a pizza with black olives instead of green.  I was happy to get a pizza. But this girl... where did it come from? Or where DOES it come from?

I keep asking her, 'can you say that in a different way?  Please use nicer language and don't yell or call people stupid if they don't remember what you said or don't do it exactly how you want it'. I ask my wife, 'were you a nasty kid?' And she says no. I was a nice kid.  I have to believe her.  But where has it come from?  We teach them to be polite and nice.  

So, i say to myself, 'you know, I am not a bad parent. I don't teach my daughter to be nasty and yell at people, to yell at her father.  I try to teach her to say it nicely.  'You make me angry' she says.  It has to come from inside her.  There must be a DNA for anger.

I have asked this question before and I have been warned that laymen (me) show their stupidity by blaming things on DNA, but, but, where is the behavior coming from? It has to be from some distorted, mutated DNA. OR some DNA from some other family member.  Maybe my side of the family.  Maybe my grandma wasn't a nice person.  Maybe she was mean and passed on a recessive gene for nastiness??  And it is showing up in my daughter, it didn't show up in me or my mother, but my daughter.  Maybe.

And so was it really the mothers fault that her son was banging the other guy with the shopping cart?  Well, she could have yelled at her son harder and physically pulled the cart out of his hands.  But as far as the fact that the kid was doing it in the first place, NO.  Maybe she tried to teach him every day, that is not the way to behave, but he does it anyway.  He ll end up in prison and I couldn't say definitively it was because he had bad parents.  And maybe HE deserved the milk on his head and it taught him that he can do these things, but he will pay the price too.  Maybe his mother didn't and couldn't teach him that. I mean its not like SHE was going to pour milk on his head if he was bad.  It took a stranger to get angry with the brat and teach him consequences.  As a result he wont go to jail.  Although he still might because he has the DNA to be mean.  And he is going to end up knifing someone or smashing someones head on the concrete.  And I doubt that will be the fault of his mother.

Just some thoughts on my part.  Thank you for reading.  Make a comment if you like.