When I was a pain in the arse kid, before gravitating towards grumpy old manhood, it was my mother who disciplined us. She was a one parent family with four kids and joke jobs working as a shop assistant or office cleaner. However if my brother or myself misbehaved she would just look at us catching our eye, it was enough to stop us in our tracks, if we ignored the silent warning then sharp stinging pains would quickly follow, then we stopped misbehaving and frequently bawled loudly for sympathy from the crowd. The next remark was 'if you don't stop that noise I shall give you something to cry for' and that would bring a snivelling silence. We new the rules and if we embarassed her in any way, we did so at our peril. Sometimes we tested out the boundaries and were paid in full, quite right too. When I look around at the behaviour of children having screaming tantrums in supermarkets I feel sorry for them, that the parent who should be in charge, was neglecting that childs cry for help. Children pay us out in the fullness of time, for the way we choose to raise them.