That’s an awful long flight for little kids. We flew from Boston to Rome when I was 12. Eight of us, between 2 and 12 years old. We got up and moved around from time to time. There’s simply no way you can reasonably expect kids to sit still that long. It sounds like they were just moving around, not being noisy. I don’t see a problem with that.
Well, going through the stewardess area is bad - that’s basically restricted to the flight staff, and I’d be worried they could get into/accidentally knock over something. That kind of area is built to handle flight attendants using the space, not to be childproof, and so there might be things in a child’s reach that could be damaged/harm a child/etc. And I wouldn’t mind it so much if the kids were just running, but typically that tends to also come along with shrieking/loud laughing/etc., and often people try to sleep on flights like that.
On my last flight back from visiting Italy, there was a child (probably 2 years old) sitting in front of me who was seated with his mom. His dad was seated several rows up with other family members, and came back to talk with the mom once, but otherwise paid no attention to his son. The mom was completely ineffectual in dealing with the boy. I saw few to no things there to entertain the child, and so apparently he tried to entertain himself - not that I blame him under the circumstances. He tore apart at least one set of airline headsets, he threw pillows in the aisle, he sat in the aisle when frail Italian elderly folks were trying to walk up the aisle to get to the lavatory. The whole time, the only thing the mom would do would be to quietly say his name, and not in a “you’d better listen to me or I’ll do more than say your name” tone, but an “oh please listen” tone. I was in the lavatory after dinner when my husband had to interfere. I had a complex cross-stitch project laid out over the tray table. The boy turned around, standing on his seat, and saw the pretty stitching, and reached out a (food-dirtied) hand to touch or grab it. My husband said in a firm but not very loud voice, “No!” The boy looked at him, stunned. Then he turned and sat down in his seat. My husband told me this later, and that he got the feeling the boy didn’t hear that word very often. Again, I don’t blame the kid for being bored out of his skull; the parents should have prepared better for the trip as well as keeping him under more control.
I have to say, I preferred that to the trip there, where a group of 4 Chicago suburbanites - on an overnight flight - drank heavily, and laughed and talked sporadically, just loud enough to wake you up but not frequently enough to want to speak to a flight attendant as one feared you’d wake up far more in the process and be completely unable to get back to sleep.
Damn, I can’t find the cite for this, so you’ll have to trust me 
on this:
A recent articele in the Boston Globe reported a study on children and TV watching. The conclusion was that kids who spend a lot of time watching TV at an early age do in fact have more trouble concentrating. The most striking correlation was for children who’d been exposed to a lot of TV watching from a very early age – just months old. The hypothesis is that the infant’s/child’s brain is still, you might say, getting its wiring connected and working, and that significant exposure to TV alters the way in which the brain functions. Permanently. Which could explain a lot, couldn’t it?
Oh, and Miller:
So… where’d it all go? 
That’s a good point. My mom may have had it easy, we were all readers, except for the youngest, and they got read to, or read at, depending who was doing the reading. One of my brothers did the most menacing version of The Cat in the Hat I’ve ever heard. Anyway, bringing along a shitload of books usually helped keep us settled on a trip.
People like that are the reason my husband and I often threaten to bring our three cats with us wherever we go. Then again, they don’t scream, so it would hardly be worthwhile.
Chefguy
Were you at Panera Bread? I don’t know what it is about that place, but it is some kind of crying-kid magnet. The “out for a day of shopping” Mommies all bring their precious darlings in there, and before you know it, one of them is screaming at the top of his lungs. I enjoy the food, but I have yet to go to this restaurant over lunch and not see at least one child crying or misbehaving.
And I’d like to thank you and the other parents like you from the bottom of my heart.
I am quite close to a couple whose parental style can best be described as the perpetual path of least resistance.
When their daughter was two, my husband and I met them at a fairly casual restaurant for dinner and we nearly came to blows because I emphatically refused to condone her crawling on the table or running around the aisles.
“Oh just ignore her so we can eat.” chirped my friend. :rolleyes:
Nope, can’t do that because I’m embarrassed to be seen with you.
Now that’s she’s eleven, discipline is an on-going issue and I have to say that in most cases, the score is bratty child 1, parents 0.
Oddly enough, she’s quite well behaved when it’s just she and I and I have no qualms about doing things with her in public as long as her parents aren’t part of the mix.
If your kids were causing a disturbance, couldn’t you just take them and leave? That would be a guaranteed way to eliminate the annoyance.
Never heard of the place. This is a local bakery called Europa.
Well I’ll do my best. My son is only a few months old right now, so I have yet to encounter a problem. He sleeps through dinner or will play (mostly) quietly on my lap.
I think a lot of it has to do with discipline, as well as not having stuff to keep the kids busy. Kids will be kids, you have to expect that they will fidget and get fussy, even the best behaved ones. You have to be prepared to be stern and have stuff to distract them.
The kids on the plane for example, when I was small my Mom would have a backpack FULL of things to do on the flight. Cards, books, pen and paper puzzles as well as snacks. I won’t say I didn’t fuss or run around but my parents at least kept it to a minimum.
nyctea scandiaca sometimes it isn’t possible to leave right away (like me, if my son ever acts up before the food gets there, I’d have to wait for food before leaving. I don’t have someone to take him outside while I wait for food, and I am not going to pay and leave my meal if I’ve already ordered). It also depends on the level of the disturbance/annoyance. Shrieking their head off because they didn’t get the meal like they wanted? Leave, ASAP. Crawling around the table and talking loudly? Tell them to calm it down then distract them with something else to do. At least that’s my game plan for the future.
Depending on the situation, I might.
I look at it this way–I have a responsibility to keep my children under my control primarily for their own safety, and secondarily to limit the disturbance of strangers. If we are somewhere that loud or wound-up kids would be a hassle (fancy restaurant, museum, library) we leave, although I’ll be honest and admit that we’re almost never in places like this simply because they’re so young still.
However, if we’re somewhere that I consider an “everyday environment”–the grocery store, for example–I feel much less of an obligation to keep them **strictly ** controlled. In these instances, I tell him to hush up, or sit still, or whatever–but even if he doesn’t immediately put on his halo, I’m still going to finish my necessary shopping. A loud (normal loud, not screeching demon-harpy loud) child at the grocery store might be a bit annoying, but it doesn’t interfere with the other customers utilization of the store in the same way that it would interfere with a romantic dinner or a deep study session.
I forgot to mention that when the child was crawling on the table and shrieking “NO!” (apparently in a reaction to the choice of upholstery, since nothing else appeared to be going on to elicit the response), the mother responded with–and please keep in mind that this kid is about two–“Look around you…can’t you see you’re in a public place? You’re not supposed to act like that in a public place!”
She might as well have been trying to explain physics to a dog. I didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or walk over and slap the stupid out of her.
We should be allowed to carry squirtguns and shoot obnoxious children, kinda like you do with cats.
Why is that so stupid? My kid’s two and he would understand that comment perfectly. He might not like hearing it, but he’d certainly understand it. If there’s no backup action to underscore the verbal direction then yes, that’s pretty stupid. But what she said in and of itself seems perfectly reasonable to me.
When the kids were younger, I’d set the standards before we entered the resturaunt. “I want you to be so good, the waitress will puke,” I’d tell them. Usually it worked (although we never once had a waitress puke…). On those occasions it didn’t, I’d warn them with, “Do we need to go to the Ladies Room?”
Now, the Ladies Room is different from the Bathroom. In the Bathroom, you do your business, wash your hands, and return to the table. In the Ladies Room…well, the first trip is done with a firm grasp on the upper arm by Mom, during which Misbehaving Child is dragged/marched into the Ladies Room. The first trip, MC gets a warning–always “in the face”–and expectations are rehashed, only more severely than “making the waitress puke”. The second visit, MC gets a spank.
In almost 20 years of parenting, I think I’ve made a second trip to the Ladie’s Room only twice. Almost always a warning is enough.
Perhaps. In the kid’s state of hyperactivity, anything said to him was meaningless babble. Since no discipline had yet been forthcoming, and the child was clearly in command of the relationship, the comment to him was a fine example of absurdity. Negotiating with small children is pointless and futile. The mere act of negotiation renders the parent ineffective, IMHO. It’s pre-emptive capitulation at its worst.
At any rate, it wasn’t the worst case of misbehavior I’ve ever seen, but I felt like venting.
I have a friend who, when her howling brats were younger and out in public running wild and grabbing everything in sight, would gently scold them, “Remember, we look with our eyes, not with our hands.” I’m sorry, when you’re in a museum and your child is grabbing at fragile exhibits, you stop them from doing it.
My kids misbehaved in public occasionally, but I don’t think they ever got away with doing it unscathed. Even when they were two years old. I have zero pity for people who spawn children and then proceed to ignore them for years, and then wonder why (a) the kids are brats and (b) they’re getting into major trouble.
If I had behaved like that in a restaurant my dad would’ve spanked my ass right then and there. Unfortunately, parents can’t do that today without getting child services called on them. If that mother could’ve given him a swat on the butt and firmly placed him in the booth or on the chair maybe he would’ve shaped up. Of course, maybe that’s just normal behavior for him and the mother was trying to save face by telling him “you can’t act like that, this is a public place, etc.,”
My kids have been known to act up in public but we’re pretty strict and nip it in the bud pretty quickly. They know that if they act up we’re leaving and taking them to a babysitter and going out without them (and we’ve done that before!)( so for the most part they’re usually well behaved. Giving them crayons and paper in the restaurant really helps too.
Restaurants should have, in addition to smoking and non-smoking sections, child free sections!! There are times my husband and I actually get to go out to dinner alone, with no children, and it never fails we are seated by a table full of screaming, unruly brats!! Maybe we should start going to more upscale restaurants… or eating after 9:00!!
A few weeks ago I was in a bookstore browsing when I heard a disturbance at the end of the short aisle I was in. I looked and a child was yelling and throwing a small toy skateboard on the ground. The mother said ‘please don’t do that’ while the kid continued to smash it on the ground.
Mom: Stop it.
Child: NO!
Mom: If you don’t want it I will give it to someone who does, come on, please don’t act this way.
Child: I DO WHAT I WANT.
Mom: I can’t believe you would act this way in public.
Child is now stops, looks at her and then very deliberately lays on the ground and bangs his head.
What happens next is truly incredible: the mom gets down next to the child and under her breath says “I will give you $20 if you stop doing that.”
Child: Go to hell.
Child walks away, past me. Mom calls after him “I don’t know what I am going to do with you. You are never going to make it when you start school. I am going to have to keep homeschooling you.”
The real kicker? This child had to be at least 8-9 years old. I couldn’t believe the temper tantrum he was throwing and his mother’s response.
When I reached the checkout line, guess who was in front of me? The kid was still mouthing off to his mom, so she told him to go wait outside. A few minutes later I hear a loud banging on the front windows and sure enough, the kid is pounding on them. The whole store is looking out at him except the mom, who was pretending not to notice.
I would have to disagree. I think you do have an obligation to keep your children strictly controlled in a public place. Isn’t that part of being a mother? A loud child does interfere with my shopping. Nobody - child or adult - should behave in a disruptive, annoying manner in public. The earlier you teach your kids this, the better.
I don’t think “hush up” or “sit still” is going to do the job.