There’s no irony in your inability to deal with the social graces. And you know we’re not talking about a stray noise. We’re talking about adults who think it’s cute and don’t do anything about it and allow it to continue unabated.
Hey, leave the town crackhead out of this! I wish we could have elections for crackhead. And Marion Barry was both!
Have you ever noticed how nobody ever admits to being one of “those” parents?
You must not live in Toronto, where the mayor is the town crackhead! 
Babies make sounds some of them loud, what noises would you like abated? Who else is on your noise abatement list, because if it is annoying you it must be abated.
My advice get some ear plugs and blinders, and keep your social graces to yourself.
The answer to your question is obvious, the loud noises. But you already knew that.
since you don’t care about the world around you then I have no advice for you. It’s my hope that karma surrounds you with a neighborhood full of similarly uncaring people.
I have noticed that. It’s called “Doperland,” where everyone is also a good driver who never talks or texts while driving.
Are there only two possibilities? A child either never makes a peep or screams like a banshee unendingly? Most children I know are usually well-behaved but will yell once in a while.
This, and Magiver is the guy who argued that the Utah goblin toppers did a service to the community by destroying a natural monument. His grasp on the needs of the public at large is rather tenuous.
My husband is a jokester with a job that means he knows a lot of people and it seems like everywhere we go he finds a friend and an opportunity to crack a joke. He also has a very distinctive and loud laugh that sounds something like a cross between Tigger and a Scrubbing Bubble. It’s hilarious and when strangers hear his laugh they either grin or laugh, too. And it’s much louder and more frequent than the baby’s delighted squeals. No one has ever shot him a dirty look or corrected him. I suppose we haven’t run into Magiver at Walmart yet.
This is the most hilarious thing I’ve read in a long time, considering you are the one saying the ruined 170 million year old rock formation was just a rock sitting on some dirt.
FTR, this discussion has devolved into me defending my right to take my kids out to stores. All I really wanted to do was explain why I do it to the childfree. I was also deliberately child free until my thirties and unimpressed with kids. I didn’t find their silliness or frivolity cute, I didn’t care to listen to a tantrums at the impulse aisle, and I was pretty bored with my friends who were parents. I remember what it was like to be unencumbered and the center of my own universe, and my feelings and opinions overrode those of most others unless they suffered an obvious infirmity.
I really, really needed the wake-up call that is parenthood. I needed to be removed from my singular orbit and I really needed to consider others and accept the status quo. So that’s where I’m at now, thick in the middle of it, doing my best to keep my kids pleasant and quiet though I occasionally fail at that task because they are people, too, and prone to moods and hunger and sillies and an infinite number of variables they can’t express but often bubble out as noise. Forgive me, I’m trying. We’ll do our best to stay out of your way, and I’ll appreciate any attempt to help me teach them to be pleasant to others. If I promise never to let them stand in a chair or a buggy, wander a restaurant, dart through a parking lot, or scream like a scalded haint, will you, the childfree, cut me some slack? I really am trying to raise decent, empathetic people who also laugh and have fun. Because I generally laugh and cut up, too, and no one gets mad at me if I throw my head back and laugh. No one gets mad at me if my voice jumps an octave because someone hands me a surprise cookie. No one gets mad at me when I clap after a favorite song or a fantastic movie. And I will always immediately remove them from any public locale if a tantrum boils over. Please don’t get mad and glare at my kids if they laugh or squeal a little. Most likely they’ll outgrow it even though I didn’t.
Well, you’ve certainly explained it. 
You’ll be receiving the bill for my shattered irony meter.
Others meaning the young people who will take care of us when we’re old. I don’t give two shits about your futile hope for a child free trip to Walmart.
Eta you’re the grown up, you can visit whichever store you choose at whatever hour makes your experience more pleasant for you. Enjoy your freedom to choose!
Yes, if you do that, almost everybody will cut you a great deal of slack. The problem is, as I see it, that you’ve spent half your posts in this thread saying that you are doing your best to control and teach your kids, and the other half saying that there’s nothing you can do to stop them constantly shrieking and throwing stuff, and that everyone else should just ignore it.
The very short version is that, in a shared public space, if behaviour wouldn’t be acceptable from an adult, it’s not acceptable from a child. With obvious exceptions for very young children, and for places specifically designed as children’s places.
Obviously, the response to a child acting badly and an adult doing the same should be different. If a young child takes something and throws it at someone (as per one of your examples), they should be stopped from doing it, and instructed that they don’t do that. An adult should probably be arrested. This doesn’t mean the child is given a free pass to do it, and the criticism in this thread is (mostly) towards those parents who do give them such a pass.
I never text, and if I need to make a phone call, then I pull over. The ringer is always off, so I don’t feel the need to answer the phone.
However, I will admit that I’m a bad driver. Not in the sense that I get into a lot of accidents, or cause them, but my driving skills are definitely worse than average. Let’s just leave it at that for this thread, OK?
You and your whole family sound obnoxiously loud from your description. How do you figure “no one gets mad at” you when you make a lot of noise in public? I’m not particularly noise sensitive myself, but I know quite a few people who would indeed be quite disturbed by the behavior you report. They would not glare at you or tell you to shut up, but they would be hoping you’d be swallowed by a sinkhole or struck by a meteor with each bray of your laugh or melodramatic screech of pleasure.
I talk on the phone while driving, using an earpiece. I do it to keep myself alert and on task. No texting though, as that would require taking my eyes off the road.
Do I have to leave Doperland now?
Noted, and the humorless scowls and sullen looks by those who wish harm on us for enjoying ourselves will be politely ignored.
Jesus, complaining about laughter in public. :rolleyes:
Ah, so you really don’t give a fuck about your impact on others. That’s the benefit of the doubt withdrawn, shut your damn kids up.
If it’s not clear, no-one’s complaining about laughter. If you don’t get that, you need to reread the thread.
Whatever you’re responding to here, it isn’t to anything I said.
You need to calm down.
Sorry your “open letter” has failed to generate the wave of sympathy you expected - but both the content and tone of your postings (including the protestations of gee-I-used-to-be-selfish-just-like-you-childfree-people-but-I’m-not-self-centered-anymore*) were hardly calculated to achieve this effect.
*regrettably, it doesn’t look like anything has changed.
I certainly don’t need sympathy, more adults have children or grandchildren than don’t. We get each other just fine and the unpredictable curveballs kids throw really don’t phase us much at all. Would have been nice to agree that most outings grocery stores and family style restaurants can be expected to include everything from little angels to little hellions and that no one should be judged for one crying jag or tantrum, but my feelings aren’t hurt if you judge me because my kid threw a ball down an aisle.