You should be able to discipline other people's children, whether it be in your own home or if you see bad behaviour going on at the playground.

That's according to editor of Rollercoaster.ie Sarah-Jayne Tobin, who told The Hard Shoulder that kids need to learn to respect all adults – not just their parents.

“On the outset, I’d just like to saythere are differing degrees of punishment and I wouldn’t be obviously endorsing anything OTT or anything of the sort; any corporal punishment or anything like that,” she said.

“But I do think on the greater scheme of things, kids learn by making mistakes and being corrected.

“I do think that they need to be able to respect adults and a more senior voice shall we say.”

Father Shouting At Young Daughter. Image: MBI / Alamy. 30 September 2013

Ms Tobin said there are boundaries in her house that her son is expected to follow, and she sees no problem enforcing those with other children on playdates.

“In the aftermath I would always say to the parents of the child, ‘By the way, there was a little bit of an incident and I had to give them out to them or whatever’,” she said.

“I think it can get to the stage where we’re giving kids a huge amount of rope and a huge amount of control over situations that they’re either not socially equipped to deal with yet.

“If they’re misbehaving, throwing a tantrum or whatever, or they’re just not mature enough to deal with, they do need someone to take a firmer hand and correct them when it’s wrong.”

'It's not worth the drama'

Freelance journalist with the Irish Independent Chrissie Russel said that she never takes on that responsibility.

“I keep it quite passive-aggressive, I’ll be honest,” she said.

“I’m a big fan of the word ‘we’ - ‘Oh, we don’t want to break that, oh I don’t think we would want to tramp dirt in – I think I do a lot of that but I don’t think I would get it specific.

“In the instance that would ever happen – which it wouldn’t - I would go to the parents and say, ‘This happened’.

“But then I’d be heart scared of, you know, suddenly there’s a sub-WhatsApp group somewhere where I’m the shouty mummy and then my kid doesn’t get invited to houses.”

Ms Russel said “it’s not worth the drama”, but Ms Tobin said other parents had never taken an issue with her giving out to their child.

Primary school children reading in a classroom in the UK.

She said that many parents struggle with this, as social media has contributed to a fear of being judgement from other parents. 

“I do think we all need to rally in together and stop comparing and criticising each other and instead, maybe look at each other and say, ‘Well, that’s a good idea’, and ‘Maybe I’ll try that’,” Ms Tobin said. 

“I mean, there’s so many things that we face as parents, so many challenges we face as parents that you do need to kind of rally in and support each other.” 

According to Ms Tobin, she would even go so far as to give out to children on the playground if she thought they were being sufficiently bold.