The My House My Rules is pretty sacrosanct to me. I’m not going to get pissy with the parents over it or have an argument about it in front of the child in their house. Those are the ground rules they decided and it’s their house. But I am under no obligation to stay there and tolerate the situation. As above, “I came over to talk with you and I don’t appreciate being sushed, so I think it’s best we call it a night”. Let them consider how that works after the fact and decide for themselves if they want to continue working that way without any further recriminations or argument.
If they come over to my house after this, nothing will be said up until the point the child tries to shush me, when I will shut down that shit immediatly.
My guess is that the parents are form the “never invoke parental authority and discuss things with your child instead school.”
I like that school in concept, I really do, and I think in general discussing things with your kid is better than pulling rank. However, it completely breaks down quickly if the child realizes the simple fact that as the number of “why’s” they ask increase, the more answering the question trends towards impossible.
The main problem with “discussion” is that kids haven’t quite gotten that there are quite a large number of things in society that are “just because.” Adults have accepted that a number of asinine things are necessary to do simply because they make the specific society they live in work – and if you subscribe to the idea that “if my child can stump me on thinking up a good reason, I’ll let them do it” is doomed to fail. The reason for this is that whenever you ask “why” enough, no matter what the starting question, you’re eventually going to hit:
A. An area far out of your expertise (whether it be quantum physics, sociology, etymology, or some specific history)
B. Completely arbitrary social conventions that one cannot violate if they want to live a relatively painless life
or
C. Bizarre metaphyiscs like “What is the meaning of existence?” or solipsism.
Kids haven’t really learned when those boundaries come up and that quantum superposition, while it technically affects the reason like it affects anything, really isn’t relevant to why they’re not allowed to have McDonald’s every day.
However, this is from all the info given in the tread. If I was just reading the OP I’d guess that the parents just have a different conception of guest etiquette than the OP – if it was just the child politely asking to turn it down, without any of the prior shushing or anything I’d be inclined to think it was just a clash of etiquette boundaries.
