Is this what we've come to?

This morning on the train a hippie mom (young white, with a nose ring and living in Brooklyn) got on with her two kids (younger girl about 4 with blond hair blue eyes, and an older boy about 8 who looked like his daddy was Obama-esque), like the kid in the Aruba ads sitting down here but with shorter hair.

The kids were sitting down, while the hippie mom stood up. The little girl was acting like a jerk. She was moving around and climbing up on this big black dude who was sitting there annoyed but didn't say anything. The mother told the girl repeatedly to calm down and stop bothering other people on the train. Finally the mother says, "Ok you've lost your sitting down privileges" and pulls the daughter off the seat. Now the kid goes into full fake crying and yelling mode, her brother just looks at her with a "this chick here" expression.

The girl is yelling so the mom's response is, "Keep it up and you will loose your chance to go into Starbucks later." The girl screams louder. Mom repeats, "I'm not joking, looks like you're missing out on Starbucks." The kid fake cries even more. Finally their stop comes and the mom says, "Ok get ready to go because this stop." The little girl miraculously is healed of all damage and instantly stops crying and they get off.

How do you threaten a 4 year old with Starbucks? Why the eff is a 4 year old even IN a Starbucks? What happened to kids just being scared of their parents because they are kids and their parents are actually parenting?
I was a really really good girl