I adore the squeals of happy children. Didn’t mind, in the least, buying a house nearby to a public school. Worked in service most of my life, saw and dealt with all kinds of children. Still a firm believer that most families are trying. Hard.
In a back yard down the street the only house with a pool, sold to a new family.They let the children shriek and scream in the pool. It gets old very fast, an entire block of people who’s once serene back patios became unbearable. They seem to only shout, at the pool. Everyone can hear their every conversation. I’m embarrassed for them.
I would never tell them how to parent, but, in truth, all it would take, to placate the neighbourhood, would be to just once hear an adult come out and say, ‘Hey, we have neighbours, and they don’t need to listen to that. Pipe down or get out of the pool!’
Even if it didn’t work, oh how glorious it would be to hear just once!
There is no excuse for children shrieking, if you cannot make your child comply, spirit them away until they stop.
It’s obvious that there is no correcting going on here. 95% of the time I hear the squealing - the parents do absolutely nothing. Plenty of other kids are well behaved in public.
An occasional outburst is very tolerable - if corrected.
If you can’t control your kids - keep them at home until you can.
I’d never talk down to a 13 year old - or anyone for that matter. Seems like this other stuff is in another category.
Of course I realize that none of what I say matters. Just as giving smokers dirty looks when they were polluting my air didn’t work - the same goes with inconsiderate parents who things their kids squealing is an adorable learning experience. Maybe 10% will get embarrassed enought to stop, but if they are aren’t embararrased already - I doubt any looks or anything else will change their behavior.
This is my (unfortunately very extensive) experience also. The parents who correct it don’t *have *kids who squeal like that. It’s really not that hard.
I can never figure out how it doesn’t bug the shit out of the parents too.
My daughter recently did it. I was reading her a letter from her older cousins, and when I read that they’d named their new kitten “Totoro,” she full-on Justin-Bieber screamed.
And honestly I was delighted, because it was freakin’ adorable. But we were at home, and no neighbor was around to hear it, and it’s a very rare thing for her to scream like that.
In general I tell kids that an earsplitting scream tells adults that someone is injured, so they should only do it if there’s an actual emergency. And virtually all kids are okay with that explanation.
I don’t know what’s funny about a kitten named Totoro because I don’t know who/what Totoro is But it’s fine as a once in a while thing. I’m not a noise nazi. Merely a noise moderate.
No, that’s not what she said at all. The kid is only 1 so she can’t discourage it, she laughs and carries on when the child squeals, she had to write an open letter to the public about why they should be cool with hearing it…
I’m not about to wade into the middle of this perennial topic, but complaining about having to hear a baby/child scream/shriek because you’re worried about hearing loss has got to be one of the more ridiculous arguments I’ve seen on this board about anything.
So if OTHER people don’t like the behavior, THEY are the ones who need to avoid Walmart, the grocery store, and other places? Even though it’s your kids who are causing the disruption?
You are imposing your kids on other people, who did not choose to interact with these kids. Sometimes one parent has to shop while the other parent minds the kids, or two single parents have to swap babysitting so each can shop. You CAN teach them the basics of behaving at home. You can teach them that it’s only appropriate to scream when outside, away from other people, and that they can only touch things that are their own. This means that they have to learn to leave Brother’s or Sister’s belongings alone, unless Bubba or Sissy want to share.
The world and society does not owe you or your kids any accommodations. It’s up to you to make sure that your kids act appropriately when in public. Yes, sometimes the kids will act up…but the burden is not on other people to put up with this.
Actually, I had several quotes but I decided to answer them all sort of freeform.
Background - female, born in 1961, brother 2 years older, had a sister 2 years older than he but she died when I was 4.
Look, ignore the 13 year old. She is probably sulking anyway
But I can’t do that you whinge? I can’t afford a babysitter you whinge? My special snowflakes need to learn to be socialized you whinge? They are just making happy sounds you whinge? I think you are whinging a lot …
First off, thanks to the jackasses who are afraid every person other than them is out to abuse their baby - they will only let their mother/sister/aunt baby sit, and thanks to job based mobility nobody from the family lives near enough to babysit. Thanks to the enforced infantilization of teens there is the lack of trust in 12 year old girls to babysit for $5 an hour so you can leave the kids at home and run errands. Hell, I don’t think you can now leave a 12 year old kid at home alone without someone reporting you to Child Welfare [or whatever it is called in your area] I know I babysat neighborhood kids when I was 12-13 on weekends.
So, now - you have to drag unwilling unsocialized toddlers around and try to socialize them in public instead of doing it at home where it used to be done … so now you can antagonize even more people.
I know I sound absolutely medieval about it, but you actually do need to find a baby sitter for the sproglets so you don’t need to drag them around irritating people while you do errands.
There is absolutely no reason you need to teach them table manners out in public - we learned them at home, and didn’t need home table manners and out table manners, they were all the same. We were not allowed to run and scream in the house, running was a play park activity, and screaming was not allowed at home or in the park [screaming and screeching is a distress sound to alert adults to danger. There is a HUGE difference between yelling as in a baseball game and screaming/screeching] and to be blunt about it, you should not be taking kids shopping unless you are getting clothing and shoes for them that need to be tried on until they are at least school age. Baby sitters. Baby sitters. Baby sitters. If it is legal for your 13 year old to actually baby sit, you have a built in baby sitter. It will teach her responsibility and give her a few extra bucks.
Some overgrown babies here need to chill out & quit their squealing about living in a world of sound. It sounds like Clee is doing a great job! Wish more folks would allow themselves to see the world again through the eyes of a child.
As we also live in a world of smells, I trust you won’t object if I relieve myself on the carpet next to your table. And try the pâté, it’s wonderful here!
If you pissed yourself at the next table, I would trust that you were incontinent and couldn’t help yourself. Being an empathetic adult I would refrain from making faces at you or complaining loudly to the waitstaff about the odoriferous mess you made.
And I’ll bet they’d have had a much more difficult time with her at 18 months or 2 years old for 3 hours. It’s not 3 and 4 year olds who I’m talking about here- my son’s only 2, so I’m not going to speak about any children older than him. Right now, I’d think it’s not unreasonable to expect 3 year olds to behave better for longer than 2 year olds, but I don’t know what the time frame might be.
But 2 year olds have the attention span of a gnat- getting them to pay attention for more than about 15 minutes to anything is difficult, especially if the kid’s on the more active side of things.
Plus, all kids are different. My nephew (now 12) was very, very different from my son- you could plop him down on the floor at 18 months, and he’d sit there. No exploring, no examination. He’d just play with his trucks or book and contentedly sit. My son’s not like that. He’d sit there and play with the truck for 5 minutes, then go exploring his surroundings and get into stuff.
It’s not a disicipline issue; it’s a personality one. Some kids are more curious than others, and some are more active than others. Sometimes parents hit the “out in public” jackpot like my BIL and SIL did with my relatively uncurious and placid nephew, but others like me, got extremely curious, exploratory, active and determined children.
One of the reasons that I think parents often get a little eye-rolly about advice proffered by non-parents is that most parents have gone through the experience of thinking they will parent a certain way, or that there is a right way/wrong way to handle a particular situation, and then having all of that knowledge updumped over their heads like a sack of rotten garbage when faced with a child who stubbornly refuses to comply with this parenting technique that you just know is supposed to work, goddammit. So you have to try something else instead until you figure out what does work. And you find that you are parenting in ways that you really never thought you would, because that’s what you have to do in order to turn your kid into a functional adult human being.
Nonparents, though they have had the experience of being a child themselves – and there is something to be said for advice given from that perspective – have not had this trash-dumping-over-head experience. So when they say things like, “Look, all you have to do in order to have X behavior is Y. I know this because when I was a kid, my parents did Y and I did X. It also works for my niece.” All you can do is shrug, because you know there are no umbrella solutions in parenting, but that knowledge comes from years of having your own attempted solutions dumped on your head like a trash can, and you can’t really replicate that for a nonparent arguing confidently in a message board thread.
More on topic, I don’t put up with my kids shrieking or throwing fits in public. I just have a really low tolerance for that, from my kids or anyone else’s. That said: If anyone asked me, I could offer advice about how to achieve this, but all I can tell you is what worked for my kids. It might work for yours, and it might not. I don’t presume to have all the answers about parenting, and anyone who does is full of shit.
I have a feeling you people have a long list of things that irritate you about the world, and you have my sympathies if you have high expectations for a trip to the big box store or Pizza Hut. We aren’t talking about a pleasant visit to the Louvre, you know that, right? Get over yourselves you have no right or reasonable expectation of a pleasant trip to Walmart. No one does.
Again, my kids don’t shriek and I don’t like screaming or shrieking either. They are encouraged to play in an appropriate environment, and no one in my family is going to be discouraged from laughter or chatter. Manners and eating well are our most important task right now, and I’ve got a few years of neglect to undo. The pediatrician seems to think that the nonverbal girl’s trouble is being raised in isolation by a mother with no job and no car so taking her out around people, noise, and new stimulus is far more important than worrying over your convenience. Special snowflakes they aren’t, but their progress and happiness comes well before yours because I love them. I don’t even like you. You are responsible for your own happiness and well-being so if you want to shop in a child-free environment, do so after midnight, shop online, or hire a shopping service. Those things should be at least as easy as hiring a babysitter, right?
As far as the inconvenience to other shoppers, that’s just tough. Whether I’m alone or with the kids I have a much harder time navigating around the electric scooters, folks who clog up the aisles to chat with each other or come to a complete sudden stop while on the phone, or people zigzagging around unpredictably while texting than I do a stray kid. I could say “leave your phone in the car, ignore friends and neighbors and focus on your task, and lose weight or take better care of your joints instead of using those huge, noisy scooters” but I wouldn’t say that because guess what? It’s a public place and a big world. You wouldn’t think of demanding that senior citizens stay home and hire a shopper rather than poking around and slowing down your progress, you wouldn’t think of telling a scooter user to lose weight and don’t come back until you can walk the aisles and take up less room, and you wouldn’t support a ban on cell phone use in stores, so extend the same consideration to families. And by consideration I mean mind your own business, by the way.
If it matters to you I have several goals each time I take the whole family out. I’m teaching manners. I’m teaching please and thank you and excuse me. I’m teaching the two foster kids how to eat better so they don’t eat themselves into a hover round. I’m teaching my 13 year old to consider real live people before her cell phone and to put it up in public. I’m teaching her how to shop for more nutritious food, and how to value shop. She knows to make herself available for older shoppers who might need help. She knows she should be prepared to reach things so that scooter users don’t have to heave themselves off their carts. She knows to immediately start bagging groceries rather than wait for the clerk to do so, and she knows to put the carts away. And the little ones are learning that they aren’t the only people on the planet, and that they must stay out of the way, they need to be polite and friendly, and they are not allowed to handle everything they see.
You may not know it now because you know everything, but at some point in your life you will need my kids to help take care of you and you will be grateful they know how to cook healthy food. You will be grateful they have empathy and will help you reach things you cannot. You will be grateful they won’t mow you down in the aisles when you are gray and shaky, you will be grateful they won’t get online and bitch about “old people” who ought to remain shut in and lonely rather than getting in their way. You will be grateful they will respect you as a human being even when you are well past the stage you have much if anything to contribute to society. I’m not confident about every decision I make as a parent, but I’m sure about this one. My kids will be better people than people who hate kids.
Again with the stuff about the 13-year-old. No one cares about a parent bringing a 13-year-old to the store (hell, my 13-year-old does at least 25% of our grocery shopping all by herself, and people who think anything of it think it’s nice, like the checker who complimented her for being responsible). Before you had the two younger ones in your care, did you still feel the need to explain these to the public about your 13-year-old? I’m not trying to be bitchy about it, I just don’t get it.
This right here. I have kids (now fully grown and with kids of their own). I have no trouble with kids in public, if the parents are parenting. I don’t have trouble with kids making kid noises, again, as long as the parent is engaged and actively parenting.
It’s the “well they make noise, that’s what kids DO” types that make me wanna climb the clock tower with an Uzi and take 'em out. Look, “Family Restaurant” or no, there is NO good reason why a child has to “squeal” all of the time for no reason. As someone upthread pointed out, the decibel level can be painful, and the pitch, OUCH!
If the parent is actively teaching the child “no no, INSIDE voice” it’s one thing, but just sitting there while a child is deafening everyone in a half mile radius because “but it’s JOYFUL shrieking” is wrong and inconsiderate.
But it’s fine as a once in a while thing. I’m not a noise nazi. Merely a noise moderate.