I agree. I’m almost 40 - when my brother and I were kids my parents were approached by strangers and complemented on our behaviour. Now, we were nice kids that generally didn’t act like little shits, but we weren’t perfect by any stretch - this leads me to believe that there were lots of rotten, unsupervised kids roaming around at least 40 years ago. My mother - never a kid lover - agrees.
I also agree with this, as well as a strange sense of entitlement to never be bothered by anyone, ever, under any circumstances. The same people that bitch about loud children seem to bitch about people who are slow at bank machines, or people who struggle to find where they’re going, or people who impede the progress of the Impatient Ones by even 30 seconds. Boo hoo - you took too long filing your cup with pop! Boo hoo - you have 17 items in the 12 items or less line! Boo hoo - you’re walking too slow on the bike path!
Frankly, I’m more disturbed by those who think they’re entitled to live in a quiet bubble, never interacting with anyone expect at their bidding, preferably if that person is bringing them something or serving them in some way.
Seriously, people need to control their kids and parent a little, but other people need to realize that they’re not Special Snowflakes that deserve to have perfect experiences everywhere they go. You’re an adult. Sometimes shit happens. Get over it.
I’ve told this story before, but once upon a time I was a waitress at a beer and burger place in a mall. This was a super popular Anchorage chain restaurant that otherwise provided good tips and a decent working experience (as much as working at a restaurant can that is).
But lunch times on Saturdays were sheer hell. This is when all the snippy soccer moms brought their monsters to the mall and O’Brady’s was the place to eat. At one of my tables, one of these Saturdays, three moms and several kids crowded into one of my booths. They were bratty as usual, but one of the kids took the condiment packs and was in the process of tearing them open and pouring them on the table.
I said something to the effect of “oh here, let me get those out of your way” and I quickly scooped up the entire thing, wiped up the contents of the first victim sugar packages, and scooped the whole thing onto my tray. One of the moms said (with much indignation and a huge sense of entitlement) “he was PLaAAying with that”!
I too shocked to answer anything more than “I’m sorry they’re not toys” or something like that (wish I’d been quicker on the draw). But yeah, this mentality that children are some sort of magical creatures that should never EVER have their precious little individual spirits crushed with any sort of discipline, ..and that anyone within earshot should just deal with it because (air of shock that everyone isn’t mesmerized by their little angel), “they’re kids!, that’s the way kids are” grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr …drives me NUTS.
Well, there’s a point at which the doctors say that it’s ok to take babies out and about, and IIRC, it’s sometime around 1.5-2 months old. It’s not such a terrible idea to take your kid out places early in the evenings so that they get used to being out; most of the time the kids who pitch absolute crying fits are the ones who have been yanked from their comfort zone and put into a high chair in a loud restaurant and are ignored, instead of the kids who’ve learned how to behave and not be afraid in restaurants from an early age.
We started taking our son out to dinner or out to shop with us once a week from when he was whatever that initial age they recommend was, and he’s now 8 months old, and doesn’t even blink or care when we take him out to eat somewhere, or put him in the shopping cart and wheel him around the store, etc…
That being said, on the few occasions where he has had a meltdown, we’ve always grabbed him and taken him outside of the restaurant or store to soothe him and calm him down. We’ve never just let him scream. About the only thing we’re guilty of is when he’s having a good time, sometimes he laughs and shrieks with glee, and can get a little loud, and we haven’t been as diligent about taking care of that as with the crying and upset spells.
Oh, CanvasShoes I was a busboy at a Chili’s in 1989, and I got my ass chewed by a parent because their kid was flinging the coasters we had on each table all around that part of the restaurant. I went up and said “You stop that, and you pick them all up and put them right here.” Apparently I overstepped my boundaries or something; I had no intention of picking all those coasters up because that bitch wouldn’t keep her kid in line, and that’s what I told the manager… at which point I got my ass chewed for alienating a customer.
No one is saying what you suggest here. In fact, most posters have made it very clear that it’s not so much that the kids are misbehaving, or even how they’re misbehaving, but that there is a certain faction of clueless parents who sit and do nothing.
I’m 53 and a grandmother (so it’s almost time for me to be taken out behind the barn and put out of my misery..for sure, but I have a good few years of tax paying left in me, so don’t disappoint a slacker or two just yet okay? :D), so not only do I remember 50 years ago and being a child (and being properly parented), but I’ve raised two of my own, so I’ve definitely had those toddler meltdown experiences in public (not me, my kids, though after they melted down, I’ve come darn close to doing the same!). There is a huge difference in choosing to discipline or remove a badly behaving child from a public venue and just cluelessly allowing your child to keep on being a brat and annoying everyone in earshot. You’re acting as if people expecting the former is the most unreasonable, unattainable act possible.
Even though people didn’t go to restaurants as often back then, and not often with little kids, there were many other places in life where one did take children, and we were expected to behave properly. That, or we were removed and/or disciplined. Another difference between today and back then is that, if for some strange reason one of us did go a little bonkers in public and say run screaming around the aisles of a grocery store, just about any other mom in the place would stop us with either the infamous stinkeye or, if necessary, a “young lady! where IS your mother”? Which would stop us in our tracks and properly chasten us and stop our nonsense.
There are some good parents out there, who do do their level best to parent properly. However, there is also a huge percentage of parents who are very lazy and selfish. And that IS the behaviour and mentality that results in kids brattily running throughout a restaurant shrieking and getting into other peoples’ plates. It’s not that parenting is something that’s impossible to attain, it’s that those parents don’t want to mess up their own fun, so they refuse to do what’s needed to be a responsible parent and a decent member of society.
Yup. I don’t recall being trained how to act in public - the training started at such an early age, and it was non-negotiable. By the time we became aware of the world around us, we already knew what was expected of us in public. And yes, every adult was allowed (and expected) to discipline us - I mean, they were adults!
I think there’s also a misperception in some people that there isn’t anything you can do - kids do what they want, parents put up with it, and that’s just the way it is.
Oh the kids these days. They do not respect their elders. They run wild. Not like when I was growing up. Then we had real discipline.
This complaint is, literally, as old as literate civilization.
Every single generation appears to believe that when they were kids, things were different - and better. Parents were more responsible. They cared about discipline. Not like todays’ clueless, lazy, irresponsible parents, and wild, undisciplined hellion children.
Yeah, even in the 8th century B.C. families would go out to the Olive Garden for a bite, then linger over their wine and play games on their stone tablets, while the kids ran wild.
At least in those days, there was the threat of the Roman Legion confiscating your untamed brats and selling them on the slave market.
We try very hard to make sure our kids are, for all intents, invisible in restaurants. When they were at an age to cry they would be rushed out to the parking lot and like a previous poster I’d use the strap them in to the car seat until they agreed that it was time behaving inside technique. This can be stressful but that’s what you sign up for when you decide to be a parent.
However, I did find one interesting corollary to this. One of the most calming, relaxing things I can hear which will immediately put me into a state of bliss and lower my blood pressure 20 points is Someone Else’s Kid crying in a restaurant. When I first hear it I’m ready to spring into action to correct my child, but then when I realize it’s not my kid and I don’t have to do anything about it I enter into a happy fugue state. Ahhhhhhhh…
I think the biggest difference between now and when I was younger was the sense of community.
Not only did that mean that we talked to our neighbours or that it was okay to ask strangers (other people’s parents, store clerks, etc) for help but it meant that if there was a child who was acting up or getting into a dangerous situation, any adult could intervene.
I was doing some bad thing (I think it was spraying other kids with the hose) in my front yard. Of course, my parents weren’t on the scene. So, the neighbour man told me to knock it off. So I did. My mom overheard this and not only did I get in more trouble, she was embarrassed and apologized to the neighbour man for my behaviour.
Since I am a nosy bitch, I will correct children in the grocery or a restaurant. The typical reaction is:
why are you talking to my kid stranger!
it’s none of your business what my kid does.
Which is, frankly, not true. Parents do not have eyes in the backs of our heads and even the most dilligent parent will miss things. Kids are smart. They will wait until your back is turned or you have a millisecond of less than attentiveness to act up. We need help. We need community.
And we need to be embarrassed when we, as parents, screw up. We need to correct not just the children’s behaviour but our own. Sometimes it feels like the parents are really the ‘special snowflakes’ who can’t handle anyone criticizing them.
Perhaps it’s not the children who are different now, but the adults. That is, there are more parents who ignore their kids’ acting out and more adults willing to make excuses for both the parents and kids.
As a good example of parenting I look to my own brother’s family. I have a four-year-old nephew who’s as spirited and rambunctious as any kid his age. In public places he sometimes gets bored, moody, etc., like any kid would. They don’t take him to “fancy” restaurants while he’s in this phase, and if we go to a more kid-friendly pizza or wing place and he begins whining or kicking the booth they’ll address it immediately and tell him to behave. If he keeps it up, they take him outside for a one-on-one “you need to cut it out, now” talk. That usually does it; if he still persists, it’s time to pay the check and go home. Sucks to do so, I’m sure, but that’s part of the price of parenthood.
They aren’t authoritarian or mean about it, nor are they asking too much of a child his age. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do as parents socializing a child, and they do it with love, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate seeing it while other parents’ brats are left to run amok with impunity. At home, in the backyard, etc., he can play and scream to his heart’s content, but he’s being taught (whether he likes it or not) that when you’re in a public place like a restaurant, you’re supposed to behave. It’s frightening to think how many kids *aren’t *being taught that simple lesson, and what we may all be in for in a few years.
That’s a big difference I find from place to place, the % of “screechy parents” to “parents who know and appreciate when a stranger tries to help”. The screechy ones get worse results than the second group. Frylock, I must be one of the most un-mean-looking people above the age of 3mo on this Earth. People ask me for help all the time; I’ve had little kids I didn’t know grab my hand to cross the street (the other hand was holding their Mom’s). And yet, there’s been times when a kid tossed a toy on the floor, I picked it up and didn’t have time to hand it to their mother before she started yelling at me and grabbing for the toy - ok, ok, lady, I promise I wasn’t going to lick it!
Well you know, this may be coming out of left field, but it occurs to me that maybe there turns out to be a gender gap here–it may be that I find I can do things like that without people reacting poorly because I’m a guy. If I were female, maybe other females would feel more secure it letting me know how they really feel, but maybe since I’m a male, because of various more or less unconscious processes that go through people’s minds, they feel less legitimate in yelling at me for doing something like that. I don’t know. Just speculating, probably with far too little basis.
What we have in this thread is really a whole lot of confirmation bias and selective memory, aided and abeted by the fact that bad behaviour is simply more memorable and noticable than good. Of course people don’t notice the “good” parenting going on as much as the “bad” - by definition, it doesn’t come to their notice as much, unless they or those close to them are doing it.
Hence the perception that while I (or my brother’s family) are good parents, because I see it every day or frequently, the rest of the world is going to hell in an handbasket - why, I can very clearly remember that time in 1989 (see one of the posts above) when a bad parent got stroppy with them when they were waitstaffing … parents these days!
This is the mechanism that explains why, without fail, each generation believes that kids and parents were worse that the one before.
Yes. Well, I’m telling you what I have personally witnessed, and you are of course free to wave it away as selective delusion or intentional bias if you feel that better supports your own pet theory.
What we need here is someone who has been around to see two generations of children as an adult. I am thinking over 70 should do it. And it would be ideal if they were childless.
Right. And it doesn’t take many yellers before you’re (or rather, I’m) hesitant to offer help.
I think it’s exactly the opposite. I think women are less secure around other women, and feel defensive. If they look like they need help, then they look like they’re failing. If a guy offers to help, that’s kind of okay, because we’re conditioned to need help from guys. There are jokes about pickle jars and tall shelves, but we’ll accept a guy’s help with changing a tire and lifting and carrying heavy things, and that doesn’t feel threatening. A guy who picks up a dropped blanket is gallant, and sweet, and gets the ovaries quivvering just a little.
But if another woman - particularly a stranger - steps in to help, it can feel like she thinks you suck and you’re a failure as a woman and mother and all around human being. Which are thoughts that are secretly in the heads of most mothers of small children, anyhow. Feeling like your “failure” is being noted and made public by a strange woman is terribly threatening. It’s perfectly natural for that feeling to make one defensive, and snap, “I’ve GOT IT! It’s FINE!” in order to reclaim control of the situation and prove to her (by which I mean yourself) that you are capable.
So I understand and have great empathy and sympathy for where it’s often coming from. But knowing that makes me MORE hesitant to offer help, because I don’t want to cause a temporarily overwhelmed mom to feel all that. If I thought they were snapping because they were mean people, I wouldn’t care so much and I’d risk annoying mean people to help nice people.
