IS IT OK TO YELL AT OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?

The owner of a Maine diner is not apologizing for yelling at a 2-year-old child for crying in her restaurant because it got the girl to be quiet. Darla Neugebauer, owner of Marcy’s Diner in Portland, is suffering backlash on social media among people who say they’ll never eat at the restaurant again. Neugebauer wrote on Facebook that the girl had been crying for more than 40 minutes by the time she slammed her hands on the counter and told the girl to be quiet. She said that the parents ordered three full-sized pancakes for the child but ignored her, and she claimed they didn’t feed her after the food arrived. “Life’s full of choices and you’ve got to live with all of them,” Neugebauer said. “I chose to yell at a kid, it made her shut-up, which made me happy, it made my staff happy, it made the 75 other people dining here happy, and they left, they may never come back, other people may not come in. Their loss really.” Tara Carson, the mother of the child, wrote on Facebook that anyone with young children should understand that crying is normal after waiting such a long time for food. “I turned to my daughter and I was like ‘Listen, this is how I’m raising you not to be as an adult. Like, you will never be like this when you get older,'” Carson said. “I felt helpless as a mom that, you know, I couldn’t do anything to help her, because I can’t explain why there’s crazy people in this world that behave like that.”
* And the two-year-old responded, “Why, yes, mother, I see that now. Your explanation is crystal clear.”
* Still working out that whole mother thing, eh Tara?
* Are there really people on the internet taking the mother’s side?
* I nominate Darla Neugebauer for woman of the year.
* “Life’s full of choices and you’ve got to live with all of them.” Wow, make that “diner owner / philosopher” Darla Neugebauer.
* And it sounds like the special of the day is wisdom.
* Remember when Hillary said, “It Takes a Village”? Well, this is the village part.
* And apparently it takes a village to get this kid to shut up.
* PHONE TOPIC: Would you have yelled at the crying kid?