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When parents bring their kids into a store, it is their job to ensure that they behave well. Unfortunately, many parents don’t do their job very well.

Occasionally, however, a parent will do such a good job that it catches the workers by surprise, and that is what happened in this story.

When a child was throwing a tantrum and screaming in the store, his mother responded by imitating the child and doing the exact same thing. Shockingly, this must have surprised the child because it got him to stop.

Read through the full story below and see what you think of what happened.

Best parenting ever? Or how to silence your child.

Hey all, I have a short story for you today. At the time of this story I was working for a major toy store a friend of mine had gotten me the job and I was working in the video games department.

When you work in retail, you get to deal with all sorts of kids.

I have worked retail in some fashion or another for a long time and have seen a ton of awful children and I have seen parents ranging from amazing (our hero today) to straight up abusive (story for another day).

Today is the story of one of the best parents I have ever seen.

He doesn’t usually have to deal with the customers.

At this point I had been promoted to R-Zone trainer, so I didn’t do much actual customer interaction anymore. I was around specifically to train employees, manage stock, and keep up our displays in our video game department.

It was a very strange pseudo management position (all the responsibilities none of the pay). But this day we had several people call in, so I was actually on the floor helping people.

Crying kids are so loud.

The company I worked for had a warehouse layout as most big box stores do, so when a child lost their mind over not getting whatever toy they wanted, the whole store could hear it.

Worse yet, because of how the buildings layout was if a child threw a tantrum the sound basically got piped directly into the employee bathrooms. Ya try taking care of business when you have a mainline to a screaming child, ya nope not pooping today.

Let’s get into what actually happened.

Now the story. It had been a pretty slow day as most toy stores are during work hours on a weekday. A young mother (20 something) came into our store with her 2-4 year old child (I am terrible at guessing the age of children.)

He was old enough to be talking. She smiled at our greeter plopped her little one into one of our carts and headed off into our store. I go about my business sprucing up my department reorganizing and making it look nice.

When her little one decides he wants something and she isn’t getting it for him. Que a sounds similar to a fire alarm and nails on a chalk board just a high pitched screech with a dry stutter.

Kids can be annoying, no doubt about that.

Before I continue, I honestly really do not like children, mostly because of situations like this where they are just loud and obnoxious and I am used to parents letting their kids get their way instead of showing restraint and discipline, which just gives them incentive to be little brats.

So, I figure she is going to cave and give this little wailing banshee what he wants.

This must have been hilarious.

Nope the mom is unfazed and she lets him scream his little head off for about 5 minutes or so (felt like an eternity). He starts flailing and kicking in the seat on the cart. Supermom has had enough.

Supermom glares at him then lays down in the isle in our store face first and begins screaming and flailing just like her son. It was truly a sight to behold a 20 something woman having a full blown tantrum, the irony was beautiful.

Mom really knew how to shut her kid up.

I did not know that children that young could get embarrassed, but apparently she did. That little screeching monster shut his mouth and looked around red faced and embarrassed.

Supermom got up looked at him and said. “You done? Good.” She went about her business bought a few things and left and I did not hear another peep out of her son the rest of the time they were in.

Kids often respond well to unexpected things, so I think it could work.

If I ever have children I am actually interested to try this out and see if I can get it to work.

There you go my parenting of the decade award goes to her.

It can be so fun to see parents do something unexpected that really works and gets their kids to behave properly.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about the story.

Kids get confused when adults act like this.

Here is a daycare worker who has tried the same thing.

This can work too.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who found a way around his company’s denial of company time to study for his Commercial Driver’s License.

Here is someone who did the same type of thing when she had little ones.

This person has a similar story.

Sometimes you have to get creative when parenting. In this case, Mom really knew how to get her child to behave.

Of course, this must have been embarrassing, but it was also very effective.