I walked over to a local eatery at noon. It’s one of my favorites, because you can get a good, cheap homemade soup and bread and I (normally) like the atmosphere. There was a line for the food, which I didn’t mind, and I spotted a table containing some screaming kids, so figured I would go to the other end of the small space so as not to be annoyed.
Fat chance. Two women with small children in tow decided to sit at the table next to me. The boy, who looked to be somewhere around two, apparently had a one-word vocabulary consisting of “no”. “NO”, shouted at the top of his lungs and accompanied by some acting out. “NO”!, accompanied by attempts to escape out the door. NO!!!, accompanied by throwing food on the floor and climbing on top of the table.
All the while, of course, the mothers rolled their eyes, gave him completely ineffective withering looks (hello, he’s TWO, for fuck’s sake), and made sarcastic remarks about his behavior (see previous parenthetical).
I noticed that I was now shoveling my soup in in rapid-fire and progressing to full automatic. My tranquil lunch hour now somewhat tarnished, I made haste to escape the melee.
I know there have been innumerable threads about ill-behaved children and the hopeless parents who can’t seem to figure out who is in charge, but goddamn it, this is a tiresome trend in our society; of parents who somehow think it’s wrong to set limits and impose discipline, and whose response to acting out is to get the kid medicated by the time he’s three. There seems to be no end to it, so I guess escape is my only recourse.
I must be the luckiest dad in the world. I read storys and hear stuff all the time about how horrible 2 year-olds act. My little dude is always pretty cool and behaves himself when hes with me in public. I never seem to have a problem with him. Either he’s special, or his mom is doing a superb job. Or both.
Ugh, yes. My only kid is nine months old, and we’ve stopped taking her out for the most part, because she’s not equipped to behave in a restaurant (or movie theater, which I would never dream of doing myself, but I’ve witnessed it).
I hate it when dumb selfish parents impose their unruly bratlings on peaceable diners. I hate it just as much when some folks automatically equate me with these lazy jerks because I won’t spank my child. For us, discipline means keeping/taking her out of situations where she’s bugging other people. It’s more difficult and puts more of a crimp in our lifestyle than either just letting her run rampant or taking her to places she can’t handle and then smacking her for failing to handle it.
We were doing some shopping at Target earlier this week. There was a mother with her older child in the cart - he was at least eight, and sitting in the basket of the cart.
He’s singing “Hit the Road Jack”. Which would have been fine under normal circumstances, as I think kids can be funny most of the time. I can usually ignore all kinds of stuff because it’s typically normal kid stuff - they’re hungry, wet, or tired.
And this kid was singing it at the top of his lungs.
“HIT THE ROAD JACK! HIT THE ROAD JACK! AND DON’T YOU COME BACK NO MORE!”
His mother was repeating the lines back to him softly. Not saying “Junior, keep your voice down. Junior, indoor voice.” In the meantime, Junior’s voice is reverberating through the ENTIRE store and grating on my nerves, as well as several other folks nearby who immediately turned tail and ran when they saw where the noise was coming from.
To those parents, I say “Your kid isn’t that fucking cute! If it’s screaming in a store, and it’s not hungry, wet or tired, tell it to shut the fuck up!”
(Yes, I know it’s not that easy, but with an eight year old, it SHOULD be, if the child’s been taught manners.)
I am sorry to say that I’ve had one or two incidents where my toddler son made a ruckus in public and disturbed the dining of the other patrons in the restaurant we were in.
I am proud to say that I did the proper thing by hauling him outside, read him the riot act, and refused to take him back inside until he agreed to behave himself.
While my wife was pissed at me for those incidents, I am glad to say that our son is now reasonably well-behaved(*) whenever we go out to eat.
(* = Meaning that, while he might stand on his chair or fidget a bit, he won’t do any ear-piercing screaming or temper tantrums.)
I would have gotten my ass beat for behavior like that when I was a kid, My mom didn’t put up with me or my sister behaving like monsters in public.
As for parents not controlling their children… I went to a nice steakhouse (upscale, like one step below Mortons upscale) and there was this little brat there, maybe 5* , running around (not being noisy too much) and crawling under tables :mad: . The parents were not even paying attention. I got up to “go to the bathroom” and I went to the hostess and complained and asked if they could do something about it. A manager (?) stopped the child and found the parents and the behavior stopped, Thank Og!
*Who in their right mind brings a small child to a resteraunt where no entree on the menu is under 30 bucks and everything is a la carte and no kids items whatsoever?? I sure as hell wouldn’t take a kid to a resteraunt where the average bill for two people for dinner and 2 drinks is nearly 150 bucks!!
My parents used to take me out to dinner all the time when I was little. And I never, ever made a scene. I’d bring a bag of books (Tintin comics, for preference) and quietly read the entire time. No screaming, no throwing food, no fussing, no bothering other customers.
And nine times out of ten, the waitstaff would give me a free desert for being so well-behaved. I tell you, when I was five, I was a frickin’ genius.
avabeth–if I had seen that my first thought would have been that the boy was mentally disabled. Do parents of normal 8 year-olds really make them ride in the basket these days? Mine are still babies, so that’s a serious question for anyone willing to field it.
Hell, by 8 my mom was sending me off with my own cart and list so it would take less time!
Re: the OP. I’m not going to heap too much scorn on these women (even though they sound like total bints), just because I’m sure mine have done their fair share of annoying strangers. Of course, I make every effort to minimize or eliminate such annoyance, but it’s never a guarantee. As much as I’d like to, I don’t have a psychokinetic device to control them with. Can you imagine the fortune you’d make for marketing such a thing?
I’m sorry your lunch was ruined Chefguy. If I may ask, how were the other children with the women behaving?
He was definitely not disabled - he was talking to his mother normally when we passed him at one point. He was just singing very loudly for the hell of it. I’d have given him a pass if he’d been disabled. He was just fucking annoying.
And I’m not sure why he was in the cart - but he could barely fit. At that age, I was embarrassed to even be near the cart, much less in it.
I have to admit, horror stories and evil children make me appreciate my friends and family who do control their children - and have great kids for it. (Not that ALL of my friends and family do, but most do…).
I’ve always had a problem with the “indoor voice” idea. That just means that the next time the kid is in a public place that happens to not have a roof over it, the relentless caterwauling will be A-OK.
“Now, honey, you need to use your non-hell-spawned-demonic-banshee voice!”
I used to work as a waitress. I never understood parents who would let their kids go running in the aisles when waitstaff are carrying hot pots of coffee, bowls of hot soup, and red-hot fajita platters. Not only do they obviously not give a shit about good manners, but safety is unimportant, too.
I’d like to know who invented those teeny little kids’ size shopping carts in grocery stores. I have to constantly dodge carts being pushed by uncoordinated 3 year-olds running at full speed.
I was about to infringe upon his creative tendencies with the entire new release section of the DVDs .
If I see the kid on American Idol in ten years, I’m officially moving to the woods of Colorado and becoming a hermit because the human race has gone to hell.
All I can say is if my son acts up like that, we’d be leaving and heading home. Take the food with us.
The kids drove me nuts as a waitress too. I remember one girl who I had to catch a few times from running into the kitchen, and into the lounge while the dad just stood around looking blank. I would take her back to him and tell her to stay with him, then him to keep a grip on her. He’d do so, then the next time he was in with her she’d be off like a shot.
Nah, it wasn’t the lunch (I’m just so misunderstood ), which is normally sort of hurried anyway. It was the parental disregard for the rest of the customers in the place, and the lack of control of her own life that bothered me. The kid, without some guidance, will only become worse-behaved and more anti-social. The mother will end up on prozac, the father will leave because he figures it’s the wife’s job to control the kid, and the kid will end up sharing a pill bottle with the mother. Shit, I’m jaded…
The other kid was an infant, so not a problem, but in a couple of years…
The kids at the other table were just as obnoxious. Is it the fact that we now plant our kids in front of the TV from birth, cave in to their every whim, then wonder why they can’t focus for more than two minutes?
My kids watched a lot of TV, but they knew that Dad’s right hand was the law. I didn’t abuse my children, but they respected adult authority and knew that there were consequences to every action, good and bad, in our home or in the homes of others. And they still do.
I agree, most times kids should not be taken into resteraunts if they are too young to behave…Grocery stores are different, because many times a mom has nobody else to watch them while she does her needed shopping=(
i was flying back from Germany 30 Feb, Frankfurt to Boston, and there was a woman with 6 children of assorted sizes, all looking under 12 or thereabouts. 3 of them were doing laps around the backmost seating section … up the aistle, through the stewardess area, down the other aistle and through the toilet area all the way back, around and around for most of the entire 7 hours of the flight. The idiot parent wouldnt contropl them, and the poor inefective attendants couldnt manage to do anything wither. I would have strapped the little buggers in and lockwired the buckles shut so they couldnt get out!
The problem is that they’ll surprise you. You can have a child who is reasonably well-behaved in restaurants 9 times out of 10, but if circumstances are right, that 10th time will be the Dinner From Heck. The kid’s just in a mood to be difficult, and no amount of playtime, or toys, or books, or whatever, will get him or her back to “normal.”
Child psychologists call this “testing the limits of the parent/child relationship.” I call it “I ain’t putting up with this bullstuff, cut it out or I’ll throw you out.” Makes me feel guilty when I have to do it with my own kid, but that’s parenting for ya.
Assuming they weren’t yelling or doing this during the dinner service, why is this bad? We used to walk around on flights when I was a kid. Maybe not for the entire flight, but we’d make a few dozen laps around the plane over the course of a 9 hour flight from Amsterdam to Vancouver. There was a time when airlines encouraged everybody to get out of their seats and move around at some point during long flights.
, running around (not being noisy too much) and crawling under tables :mad: . The parents were not even paying attention. I got up to “go to the bathroom” and I went to the hostess and complained and asked if they could do something about it. A manager (?) stopped the child and found the parents and the behavior stopped, Thank Og!
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