How do you discipline other people’s kids?

Some friends of mine—we’ll call them Mike and Carol—hosted a couple of their son’s friends for a birthday sleepover a couple of weeks ago.  The night included a trip to the movies and other fun and shenanigans.  Before they left for the theater one of the boys—we’ll call him Oliver—kept acting up and saying some mean things to one of the other kids; so Carol pulled the kid aside and gave him a “we don’t act that way in this house and I’d like you to stop saying those things” speech.  Oliver muttered something and went into the room to join the other kids.  Right away, Carol heard him tell her son, “Your mom is so mean!”  Again she pulls Oliver aside, firmly tells him to stop, and sends him back to the others.  Needless to say, Oliver made some other remark once again.  This time, Mike heard him.

So Mike yells for the kid to come into the kitchen.  Carol stood with her arms folded and wishing she could chew out Oliver.  Mike then says one of the best lines I’ve heard in a long time:  “Oliver, there are two cars leaving here in fifteen minutes!  One’s going to the movies; the other is going to your house!  Which one are you gonna be in?!  Huh?  What’s it gonna be?!”   Oliver got the message, but will unlikely be welcome back to the house again.

While mopping up the puddle of urine on the floor that leaked out during a laughing fit after hearing this story for the first time, I filed away Mike’s threat for future use.  I also thought about how I would have handled that scenario.  When the kids are young, parents stay for play dates, birthday parties, etc., but once the kids hit an appropriate age for the drop-off all bets concerning behavior are off.   Most kids act better outside the home than they do when they are with you, but you might run into one of these button-pushing, limit-testing hellions in your future.

So, noodads, let us know:

How do you (or how will you) discipline other kids when they are in your care?

This is the latest installment in our Master Debaters Series. There are some topics that seem to fall into the consensus category: drunk driving is bad, guns kill people, Transformers are better than GoBots. But that only covers less than 1% of the decisions you and your spouse make towards the upbringing of your kids. The majority of issues tend to fall more in the gray area.

Here at Noodad.com, we take pride in delivering important advice for dads. But we realize that some of our advice is subjective. The collected readership surely has things to add and unique perspectives to contribute. 

So where do you weigh in?