Parenting In Sunday Day In The Park By Bel Kaufman

Inefficient parenting is all around us in many shapes and forms. This story is about a family of three who decides to go to a park one day. While at the park, they run into a conflict with a kid throwing sand at their child, Larry, and his carefree father. As they leave the park to go home, the parents become agitated with Larry and scold him for being upset. This story has multiple examples of all three parents being ineffective with their strategies which could lead their children to grow up being bad people. In Sunday Day in the Park by Bel Kaufman, all three parents use ineffective and lousy parenting methods.

First, the father of the child who threw the sand at Larry uses a careless parenting strategy when his son is recklessly throwing sand. One Sunday, a family brings their young son to the park. While at the

After Joe's father decides to tell Joe he can do whatever he wants, Larry's father gets involved. He puts down his newspaper and tells him that while it is a public park, he should not encourage his son to throw sand, to which Joe's father responds that his child has every right to do what he wants. The two go back and forth before the two get ready to fight each other. The author describes: "Morton half rose; the Times slid to the ground. Slowly the other man stood up. He took a couple of steps toward Morton, then stopped. He flexed his great arms, waiting. She pressed her trembling knees together. Would there be violence, or fighting? How dreadful, how incredible….She must do something, stop them, call for help. She wanted to put her hand on her husband's sleeve, to pull him down, but for some reason, she didn't." This is another example of careless parenting. While Morton, Larry's father, and Joe's father get into a fight, both kids are watching. Because of this, they may think that getting into fights is ok when they grow