I remember a few years ago when one of my friends had her son - there was a bit of difficulty with the delivery so mom and son were kept in the hospital for about 10 days. I was bringing her food 'cus she’s vegie and a hospital’s version of vegitarian dishes is pretty nasty. I was there with her and her husband and baby. He was naked and started to have a poo. The three of us stood there fascinated and enthralled by this little guy pooping. We were silent while it was taking place. I mean, I’m talking about poo here and just because it happened to be coming out of a teeny baby it became a “moment”.
I get you - I understand your fascination with kiddies - my niece is the coolest chick I’ve ever met (she’s 5 this coming Monday).
Both sides of the divide need to chill the fuck out, if you ask me.
Like featherlou is bothers me when kids don’t seem to give their elders the respect that age entitles them to. Maybe that’s an old-fashion concept, that a child should know that it is inappropriate to speak to an adult the same way they would to another kid, that when they’re dealing with strange grown-ups it is proper to call them “Mr.”, “Miss”, or “Maam” and not “hey you!”, and that certain things should be reserved automatically for adults like the front seat of a car or the head of the dining room table. I don’t think kids should be treated like second-class citizens, but they shouldn’t be treated like minature adults either. This wasn’t how I was raised.
Back when I was kid, it bothered me that I couldn’t do and say everything may parents could, but now, as an adult (childless, though), I see the value in training a kid to respect certain boundaries. When you’re a kid, let’s face it, you’re kind of clueless on a lot things. It is going to be a lot harder to get through to a kid if the he/she is taught that their eight years old understanding of how the world works carries as much credibility as a forty year old’s. Being treated like a child as opposed to a minature adult makes it easy for a child to develop humility.
Maybe the “I loathe kids” faction has had one too many encounters with children who were taught that it is okay to give unsolicited opinions, be manipulative, and be rude and destructive all in the name of “exploration”. That doesn’t excuse them for slamming all kids, but it may explain where their sentiment comes from.
It sounds like he was speaking EXACTLY for you. He told me to leave YOUR scars alone particularly.
Here’s the point: I don’t care that you ‘have no interest in children’. What I do care about is you and the rest of the childfree crowd saying that people who DO like kids are in some sort of “Cult” or that we don’t care if they misbehave or somehow We’re at fault when a kid is ‘snotty’ to you.
And by the way, I wasn’t aware that this thread was solely for people who agreed with you whole heartedly.
You know, it’s interesting how quickly one’s posts get mixed up and blown out of proportion. First off I NEVER asserted that they ought to be bitchslapped, that was someone else.
Secondly, while my posts were full of colorful names for children, it was aimed at THAT particular child. If you bother to check the grammar you’ll see i’m referring to the particular child in the OP.
As for calling children sticky and smelly? They are. I’ve got hypersensitivity disorder. They smell. A lot. So do most adults to tell the truth. Children just happen to be worse about it because they don’t notice it, or haven’t been trained to keep clean ala adolescent hygene principles. The worst smelling person i’ve encountered wasn’t an adult, it was a fat 9 year-old. He smelled like the underside of a baboon’s ass.
In general i’m kind to children, but snotty little kids don’t get the Mr nice guy treatment from me. Personally, I don’t really want any of my own, and i don’t understand those who’ll step up to defend their little darings whether they are wrong or not.
It’s amazing how quickly you forget what you’ve read. I never said you specifically advocated bitchslapping.
Who’s defending little darlings? I simply ask that you act civil (not role modely, not over friendly, not cuddly) around kids, and that you don’t generalize them all in one category like…hmmm…stereotyping. It isn’t fair to anyone. Like I said, some kids are rat bastards, some kids I prefer to my adult friends. But if you stomp around the world, like some do, maybe not you, but some, saying “ALL KIDS SUCK” you’re awfully closed minded.
Jarbaby, here I am, a person who likes kids, and person who would never flip off a kid or cuss them out or (God Forbid) slap them, and yet, miraculously, I don’t feel such a great offense with the OP. And, here’s another shocker: I didn’t know that featherlou had a disinterest (or whatever you want to call it) over kids. Yeah, me, who has been here since 1999. I didn’t know. So much for “common knowledge.”
I thought the complaint in the OP was a little lightweight, but I’ve seen so many “lightweight” complaints in the Pit that I didn’t give it a second thought. No biggie. So, a kid was snotty. The OP didn’t do or say ANYTHING to said snotty kid, the OP posted a semi-trivial rant in the Pit. Sounds pretty harmless to me.
While I do like kids (I love my nephews and think my sister has done a great job raising them), I do see evidence of “the cult of the child.” That’s a sarcastic term, and to me it includes people who think that “No other gods before my child.” I could go on the explain what that I think that means in more detail, but truthfully, it’s been discussed exhaustively before and I’m too wretchedly tired with all of this to dredge it up again. Suffice it to say, that even amongst us who like children, we notice a “cult of the child” mentality amongst some parents. 'Tis the truth.
Still, the kid was setting up a school crossing, so he probably assumed the OP was a parent coming to collect a kid. He was not out of line to ask the assumed parent to cross following crosswalk rules- it was his job. I, too, doubt the kid was “snotty” but it seems pretty likely that “snotty” was what was heard.
THe “snotty” part wouldn’t have been in commenting on why the OP didn’t wait for the crossing guard (though, of course, no crossing guard was available), it was the phrasing. “Next time, wait for the crossing guard.” is a command, more or less. Not a question, not a comment, not an expression of concern, a command. And that sounds pretty snotty to me, especially if it were coming from a 7-year-old kid.
Yeah, you’re not part of the cult. Sure. That’s why you showed up in this thread with your patented jarbabyj Bloodyminded Literalism, and started shrieking about how we’re all such horrible people who go around randomly assaulting children and even <gasp> FLIPPING THEM THE BIRD! OH. MY. GOD. Jesus, get a grip, woman. I know you’ve got boatloads of issues about having children. God know’s you’ve talked about it on the boards often enough. But just because you really want kids doesn’t mean people who don’t want to be around kids are freaks or monsters or :rolleyes: bigots. It just makes us people who are different from you. Since your reaction to us is pretty much the same reaction we have to kids, why don’t you follow our lead and just avoid the people who bother you so much? I mean, sure, you’ve got as much right to air your opinion in this thread as anyone. No one’s arguing different. But you posting in this thread is like me hanging around a playground. You so obviously hate anyone who disagrees with you about kids, why do you torture yourself by posting in threads like this? What are you hoping to accomplish here, aside from making enemies? Go start another thread about how much you want to fuck Brett Favre, or something. God knows we need to hear more from you about that subject.
Amazing how people can look at the same incident and see completely different things. I read that and it recalled to mind a passage from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. It was on how to hand out criticism without getting someone’s back up. The story went something like this. Some brilliant manager of men(famous, don’t remember his name) was touring a steel plant one day and ran across a group of workers smoking in an area they weren’t supposed to be in. There are, of course, lots of ways to approach this situation. Obviously it is an issue because they are breaking the rules and this should not be ignored. On the other hand, barging up and saying something like “Can’t you read!” while pointing at a “No Smoking” sign tends to breed resentment. The way this wonderful handler of people, and the person Carnegie was holding up as a role model, resolved the issue was to go over to them and chat with them for a second. He then presented them each with a fine cigar and added the line “Now I’d appreciate it boys, if next time you’d smoke these outside.” No interruption of their current situation or forcing them to relocate immediately based on his authority, but a gentle reminder that they should follow the rules next time.
I read the OP’s description of the situation and was thinking, “Hmm, someone’s been passing along Carnegie’s advice to seven year olds. Impressive.” The phrasing seemed fine, perhaps even optimal to me. The matter of a “snotty tone” would seem the cause of any legitimate offense from what I saw of the OP. The phrasing was in line with what some of the most skilled people-handlers on the planet reccommend. Apparently mileage really varies
The problem is, I think, that seven year olds shouldn’t be “handling” adults in the same way that an adult in authority over others should. YMMV on that as well, I am sure.
That phrase is markedly different than “Next time use the crosswalk.”
“Now I’d appreciate it” turns it into a polite request, not a command. And who wants to be “commanded,” especially by a seven-year-old, especially when you know that the seven-year-old “command” is not really relevant? (An adult doesn’t have to have a seven-year-old crossing guard to help them across the street.)
If the kid had said, “Could you wait for the crossing guard next time?” that would be different. Or, “Why didn’t you wait for the crossing guard?” That also would not have seemed so commanding.
There are a lot of ways that the kid could have addressed this adult, still gotten his point across, and not have sounded so commanding. Now, is possible that the tone of voice this kid used was so sweet and so mild that only a jerk would have found it snotty. But I find that to be unlikely, personally, because of the phrasing used.
Some people will put their own spin on anything a kid says.
When I was a wee lass, about the same age as the kid in the OP, my mom had dragged me to one of her political meetings. Or maybe it was a church meeting, I forget. Anyway, after I’d been there for a while, some woman asked if I wanted a “snack”. Cookies? Sure, thank you! Milk? Oh, no thanks (I didn’t like milk; still don’t, in fact). Well, they also had juice. Yeah, juice, great! Pause…“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
Now, I swear to you all that I meant that in the nicest way possible. If it was going to be a major upheaval for her to get juice for me, then I didn’t want or need it. I didn’t even want or need the cookies if it was a problem for anyone. I really didn’t want her to go to any trouble: that’s what I meant, and how I meant it.
But that’s not the way it was taken. She immediately flung up her chin and minced off to the break room, repeating in a squeaky-voiced imitiation of me, “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble! Oo la la! If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, madame! Mmf!”
So I didn’t give the precise answer that fit perfectly with her idea of How a Child Should Behave. That made me a brat, right? And then I had no appetite for the cookies. Further evidence of brattitude.
And it doesn’t make the kid in the OP a monster just because he hasn’t taken the Dale Carnegie course. Some people in this thread have been acting as if he’s in the same category with kids who bomb cars with rocks. Fergossakes, someone at his school thought he was mature enough to be entrusted with crossing guard duties.
And maybe he just sounds “snotty” because he’s little and his voice is naturally high. Maybe he should get a voice filter, so that everything he says comes out like The Rock is speaking.
