^^^Oh I assure you she learned it was not a good thing for Momma to walk her out of the sitiation. And as I said she is a lovely young woman and a great Mom. So I did something right.
Were they slinging feces at you?
mmm
I’m not a parent, but I got the chance to parent a kid for a while (engaged to her mother) and…got extremely lucky. She was basically a saint. But if she was ever in the mood not to be a saint in some particularly loud or dramatic way then I would promptly stop caring about what she wanted, and if at all possible (and especially if we were somewhere she liked), we were out of there.
I maintain this attitude with all children I interact with (mostly nieces and nephews). Mostly it seems to work pretty good - the kids don’t listen to their parents, but they usually listen to me, at least until they forget. But with my fiance’s kid I just got lucky and can take no credit. The kid was bizarrely well-behaved.
My kids are remarkably well behaved (I use the term literally–it is an everyday occurance (every day we go out anyway) for strangers to remark on how well behaved they are.)
We didn’t do anything to deserve this. They just came out that way.
If my kids behaved in public the way they sometimes do at home–I would probably be helpless.
So yes. I do think it’s hard to keep your kids from acting like they monkeys. They pretty literally are monkeys. So… try to not let it bother you, but also don’t feel like you have to tolerate an infinite amount of it. Just let it be real man.
Based on some people I know who are lovely and great parents and who themselves have abusively horrific parents, I will say your inference does not follow!
We have some good friends who are raising a spoiled demon child. Having dinner at a semi-decent restaurant (like TGIF or Olive Garden) is a nightmare; the kid is almost four and throws screaming fits that requires one of the parents go outside with her - we end up eating with one of them while they switch off standing outside or sitting in the car with Bratzilla.
Now we gently suggest ordering out for dinner at their house.
Are you sure the child is a spoiled demon, and doesn’t have a sensory processing disorder? I know that it can be awfully hard to tell the difference when they’re that age. One of my nieces does, and while she didn’t have abnormal issues in restaurants, she did in school to the point where she had to be home-schooled for a while.
When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to color on the placemats, etc; we had to sit silent and motionless until our food arrived. Other people of my generation have described the same thing. Needless to say, we didn’t eat out much because it wasn’t a fun experience for anybody.
Whoops, wrong child thread.
Grocery store managers absolutely hate people who do this kind of thing, especially if they left a cart with a lot of refrigerated or frozen food. They would rather listen to a crying child for a few minutes (I mean really, how long does it take to check out vs. a wasted trip) than deal with that.
One woman on another board has told the story many times about how there was one store in her neighborhood when her daughter was small that she couldn’t go into with the daughter because she would scream as if she was being tortured, and when the daughter became old enough to tell her what was wrong, it turned out she was. That slightly annoying rattle that one of the refrigerators made, the one that could be heard over much of the store, was physically painful to the child’s ears.
p.s. And this is one reason why many public places that charge admission periodically have free or deeply discounted days and times.
I agree entirely w/ Bek (with possible consideration of leaving the cart.)
The parent is responsible for taking the kid places. They should not choose to train/experiment with their kid in contexts where they are going to lessen the experience of others who spent good money. Yeah, good kids flame out - and when they do, you remove them. And you make SURE they realize that leaving was not a “reward” in any sense.
There is one situation where I will say something to parents if I see a child walking around with a tablet, and that’s the antique mall where I have a booth. Yep, seen kids, usually boys in the 7 to 9-year-old range, walking around with their head down and totally not watching where they’re going in a place with stairs in unexpected places and thousands of dollars’ worth of fragile items on display.
The young son of one of the owners was doing this for a while. He harrumped when I said something, but I probably wasn’t the only person who said something because this didn’t last very long. I later saw him playing games on a computer in the office.
Yes, this is true, sorry I failed to mention that in between time.
I am not sure what you’re accusing me of. I never spanked or used physical means on my children. I never had to. My middle child ( this daughter) was my difficult child. She pushed every limit and questioned every rule or decision. I was able to discipline her with time outs and verbal direction. By the time she started kindergarten she was very well behaved. She melted down as soon as we got home from school in those early days, we got through that and all went well, til she hit her teens and we found other ways to communicate. I never got so bored repeating the rules and regulations to her. But we survived that too. And as I said she has turned into someone who is pleasant to be around and more like me than I would have ever imagined in those trying early years. Consistency is the key.
Oh yea, I am sorry grocery store manager for the 2 carts of groceries I left full, in the middle of the bread aisle, I intended to come back in but it wasnt possible, because raising my kid was MORE IMPORTANT, than melted fish sticks and soft butter. It couldn’t be helped. I literally only had do that twice. So I don’t think I sent WALMART into bankruptcy. I have seen my share of full buggys standing at the check outs when someone’s card was denied. No one is rushing around putting that stuff back in freezers. I don’t really feel bad about my 2 carts of groceries, I am sorry I don’t.
They’re not “choosing to train/experiment”. They’re trying to live their lives. You know: buy food, receive medical care, maybe even (horrors!) risk taking children to the --gasp!-- zoo! 
I hear people with kids say this about a lot of things. “Oh, you’ll find out when you have kids!” “Just wait until you have a kid, you’re see.” I always roll my eyes at this logic.
Yeah, I had a kid…no, it wasn’t that hard to have him (and his friends which we often took with us) behave in nice restaurants. We started them out young and practiced good manners early.
The funny thing is that my kids are/were (there’s a good age span there) well behaved. My older one, I was raising as a single parent and people would praise me all the time about what a great father I was since he was so well behaved. Not to sound self-deprecatory but a lot of it was just genetics and me getting really lucky. I shudder to imagine the situation if I had to one-man raise a feral hyena child. My younger one has the blessings of two parents but is generally a gentle soul.
That said, while I assume everyone agrees that your children shouldn’t be running through a china shop with torches and knives, most kids aren’t all that bad. And if a kid is turning around in his chair at a restaurant or drops his silverware with a clatter, who cares? And, assuming the parents look like they’re giving half a shit, then I’m inclined to not worry about it because they’re trying, life goes on and children are part of society. Learn to deal – you’re supposedly the grown-up with adult reasoning and coping processes. The parents who don’t give a shit that their kid is throwing spoons? They also don’t give a shit about all the eye rolls, gusty sighs and internet postings you can make either.
I’m accusing you of zero things.
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like the idiot 9 or 10 year old brat who nearly wiped me out on a local bike trail. he was coming towards me pedaling lazily, but because his attention was focused on the phone his stupid parents gave him, he was weaving all over the place and I just barely missed colliding with him. and the “fuck you!” I got back when I yelled “watch it!” made my vas deferens sever themselves.
if you’re not going to do the work of being a parent, please for the love of god don’t have kids.
A kid can change from a perfectly well behaved dinner guest, to a running and screaming terror in less time than it takes to sip a drink. That kid you just noticed creating the disturbance might have been sitting perfectly fine for 20 minutes, and then boom.
With a 4.5 year old, we’re starting to get back into going out to restaurants. For about 3 years we did it rarely, because it was not a good experience for anybody involved. I think a big part of the parents’ responsibility is knowing if their kid has the temperament to sit through the meal, and to have appropriate distractions to make it easier for the kid.
Hunger and boredom can overwhelm the best behaved kid. There is a brief window when the kid is hungry, and so interested in thinking about ordering, then happy waiting, then involved eating, and then contentedly full. Stretch any of those out too long (and too long changes day to day) and there is a big problem. A good server can bring bread to a hungry kid, or even bring out the kids meal first, and attuned parents will know to ask for these things when necessary.
It’s also on the parents to operate on kid time. You can’t expect a little kid to stay quiet for too long while you linger over drinks at the end of a meal.