My Oh, My Oh, My

There's a question that trips up a lot of us: when do you step in with somebody else's children, and when do you keep quiet? I'm thinking mostly about grandkids here. Push too hard on disciplining them and you may find the door to their parents' house doesn't open quite so warmly next time.

The situation changes when you're the only grown-up in the room. If a child misbehaves and you let it slide, that's usually the wrong call. Children need to learn that reasonable adults deserve respect, particularly adults who have been handed some authority over them for the moment. Give them a pass and you teach them that acting out carries no cost, which leaves them unready for all the later moments in life when they'll have to follow instructions and treat what belongs to other people with care.

Now suppose another responsible adult is right there, a parent or a teacher or the babysitter. The math shifts. If it looks like a person or something valuable is about to get hurt, you act. When it's genuinely life or death, move first and deal with any resentment afterward. Short of that, it often pays to hang back a beat and watch whether the other adult takes care of it. Should they do nothing, that's when you might decide to intervene, even knowing it could cost you some goodwill.

The point is not to default to doing nothing because nothing is easier. At the same time, know yourself. If you run hotter than most people and your threshold for what counts as misbehavior sits well below everyone else's, that matters, and it matters double when the line between your property and theirs comes into play. So pause and weigh where you actually stand. Say it's one of your own child's toys and your child has looked after it well. In that case, no, you don't stand by while another kid wrecks it.

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