I hope your baby burns her eyes out

The BBQ Pit
242

I would never touch another person’s kid.

But I can and will scare the living shit out of 'em with just a stern look and tone of voice.

True story:

When I was a teenager, my stepmonster agreed to babysit somebody’s toddler (he was maybe 3) for her, which meant my stepmonster had no intention of doing any babysitting. She dumped the kid on me for the afternoon. This kid was a spoiled rotten, whiny, pain in my ass. At one point, he asked me for a drink of water. I said yes and went to get it for him. Evidently, I wasn’t moving fast enough for this kid, so he threw himself down on the floor, spreadeagled, and proceeded to scream his brains out. Full on temper tantrum. Quite impressive.

I stood there for a second :dubious: and then I picked him up off the floor and knealt down so we were eye to eye. In a very low, calm and quiet, but menacing tone, I said, “Maybe that works at your house, but I am not your mom and this is not your house. If you want something, you can ask for it and I’ll get it for you, but we DO NOT SCREAM in this house. Do you understand?”

:: blink blink ::

:: nod ::

“Okay then. How do you ask for a glass of water?”

“May I have a glass of water please?”

“Very good. Yes, you may. I’ll get it for you.”

Problem solved.

You be the parent. You set the limits. You enforce them consistently. Do that, and I don’t have to step in and handle your parenting for you. I chose not to become a parent because it’s clear to me how difficult a job that is. I have no interest in parenting anyone else’s little hellions. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand there and ignore some spoiled little punk’s temper tantrum when it’s disturbing me and everyone else around us.

243

It’s funny how all of the non-parents are always the most knowledgeable people on the subject. You may think you’re Billy Badass because of one encounter you had with a toddler when you were a teenager, but it’s obvious you don’t know a tenth as much on the subject as you think you do.

This shouldn’t be construed as defense for Frylock, at all. I can’t imagine how kid could simultaneously be jumping on the couch and not misbehaving at the same time.

244

Schrodinger’s toddler!

245

Classic. Maybe the kid should be closed in a box.

246

Were it ever observed, Frylock’s explanation would surely collapse.

247

Even if there were a sign that read “Jump on this couch?” Hmm?

248

I know, right? Hey, wow! Give the kid a stern look and request firmly that they say “please” - no parent of a misbehaving child has ever thought of trying this! Once the word gets out, our entire society will be transformed! I’m going to start making up posters immediately.

249

Hey, if you parents can’t get your kids to behave, why the hell do you get your panties in a twist when some stranger gives it a go? I’d think you’d be grateful that somebody else was willing to cap your hellions ass free of charge.

250

That subatomically unlikely scenario, if it did exist, would present a good teaching opportunity for **Frylock **to impart the “if your friends told you to jump off a cliff…” lesson.

Presuming, of course, that he would *not *want his child to jump off a cliff at the urging of his peers. His parenting philosophy remains somewhat shrouded.

251

“Cap my hellion’s ass”? Did you go to like, “Gangster Slang 101” and fall asleep after the first five minutes?

252

Oh, shut the hell up. I don’t give a good Goddamn if someone tries to discipline my kids when and if they misbehave. What cracks me up are idiots like you and other folks in this thread who think that they somehow have this unique power to scare kids because of a mean tone of voice. Here’s a fucking tip: almost any kid is going to be extra intimidated by any adult that happens to not be his or her parent. My sister in law came downstairs in a pair of bunny slippers and sent one of my son’s toddler friends scurrying to his mother when she asked “Who is this handsome little guy”.

We’re not going to be impressed with your badass stories on the internet, and we aren’t going to take you particularly seriously when you act like total jackasses and call our kids names. You’ve never met me, or my kid, and you sure as hell have no idea how I raise them.

253

Hint

If they are bothering other people in public so much they feel action is required you are doing it wrong.

If they aren’t, then good for you .

254

I thought it been Schrodingered.

255

You don’t have any idea who is or who isn’t parenting wrong, as you have no idea what you’re talking about.

The only other people who have disciplined my children are their grandparents, but there are several instances where groups of children may be watched by groups of parents. In such situations, it is not out of the realm of possibility that one child’s brief misbehavior may escape the attention of a parent, especially in contained environments. My kids aren’t old enough to have experienced such situations very often, but I’ve seen it happen with older kids. In those cases, blanket statements such as the one you made above are totally wrong.

256

Blah and blah and blah.

Try working with kids, school-aged kids, for a living, as I did for twelve years. I wonder what reaction you’d have when you got right down into a ten year old’s face and talked sternly, nay, intimidatingly to them after they’d just accidentally crashed into another, younger girl whilst rollerskating, and when all the other kids started laughing, said ten year old commenced to slamming the girl’s head into the floor repeatedly; then, when you returned to your place of employment after the field trip, you were harangued by the ten year old’s mother (who also happened to be your boss) for “overreacting” when the whole situation was clearly the fault of the younger, smaller girl? This is but one of many examples of instances where I or some other adult had to discipline another child who was clearly in the wrong, only to have our motives called into question because we had the TEMERITY to speak in a tone that ventured anywhere near to being cross at their special wittle snowflake.

257

Or, like me, if you happen to be a soccer game (kids) and it starts suddenly pouring; the field empties, and you are left with the sight of a 4 year old, alone, who is NOT yours; you’ve never seen him before.
How the fuck does THAT happen? Wouldn’t a parent when they called the game off, oh, I don’t know–look around for their offspring, call their name(s) and get them to the car? Thank god I’m female–I put him in our car. If a man had done that, no doubt he’d have been arrested. Mumsy wasn’t pleased or grateful that I had kept Jr dry. IMO, she was embarrassed by the incident, but that doesn’t excuse her lack of civility to me )“get in the car, Troy.”–not even a thank you. She didn’t even get out of her car! People amaze me.
Please don’t tell me I don’t know who is or who is not parenting “wrong”. You obviously have not been a parent all that long. I see wrong parenting every single day–the grandma who controls her kids (I assume they were her grandkids) with a ruler in Target–as in ruler applied to knuckles, elbows, backsides, back of legs etc; the mom who allows Jr to climb displays; the aforementioned kid on the standing table at McDonald’s; the kid yelling “it’s 2.69 a box!” to his mom across several aisles of grocery store (and she yelled back, “put it back!”). I could go on and on. These are just examples of bad every day parenting, bad manners and bad discipline.

To add insult to injury, in this thread we have heard from someone who saved a little girl’s LIFE, only to be castigated by the clueless parents. Parents can’t be everywhere and yes, they do miss somethings, but the reply to a stranger’s saying, “you’re daughter was caught in a wave and almost drowned” is not “get away from her, you pedophile monster you!” it’s “thank you; omg, I was so scared. It happened so fast” etc.

Same with bottles of Tabasco sauce (perhaps not with so much fervor), same with catching Jr running out into the street because Mumsy is arguing on her cell etc.

That’s what this thread is about.

258

Who gives a shit? I fail to see your point, or how your inane rambling has anything to do with what I’ve said so far. If you didn’t mean to respond to me, then fine.

Blah, blah, and blah right back at you.

259

I didn’t tell you a fucking thing.

Bullshit. Nothing I’ve said is indicative that. The fact that you see bad parenting all the time has nothing to do with the fact that billfish is critiquing my parenting skills with no fucking clue about me or how I have raised my kids. I really have no idea what it is I’ve said that you even take issue with, or if you’re just spewing your ire willy-nilly.

260

Brightnshiny - if the situation went down anywhere NEAR how you describe, you showed admirable self restraint. Please feel welcome to take the tabasco from my kids any day!

I’ve come out on the short end of any number of arguments of the type Frylock maintains are unwinnable - but I’m not sure I’ve made myself appear more of an ass than he has accomplished in this thread! :stuck_out_tongue:

On my commuter train there are often family groups who came downtown for the day. I try to do my best to ignore the vast majority of loud and overactive kids, and instead, compliment the comparatively few folks whose kids show appropriate manners.

In my experience, if you try to discipline a kid other than yours, they’ll respond with something along the lines of “You’re not my parent. I don’t have to listen to you.”

I’ve made the mistake of touching other peoples’ kids twice, and will never again. Once, the kid was one of a group beating my kid up, and I grabbed him by the arm. Used some choice language too when he said they were “just kidding.” The other time I chased down some kids who ding-dong-ditched our house (we’d been getting it quite often and it was getting quite old) and I caught 2 of them by their hoodies. In both instances, subsequent discussions focused nearly entirely on the inappropriateness of my actions, rather than anything the sweet little darlings might have been doing.

So I pretty much operate under the assumption that every kid in every situation is going to be a little shit, try to avoid them whenever possible, and then just be pleasantly surprised on the reatively infrequent occasions that I am proven wrong.

261

I’m going to tread a fine line here, because I’m genuninely interested in pursuing the above comment in a kind of third-personal way, but the obvious connection to my own shenanigans in this thread can’t be avoided.

Without justifying myself or condemning anyone else regarding parenting, I do want to note that I think there’s a fundamental, possibly unbreachable disagreement between two mindsets going on here. The above quote seems to indicate that Vinyl Turnip simply believes that there is no such thing as a permissible case of couch jumping, at all. Once it is describable as a case of “couch jumping” it is, because of that very fact, impermissible. Even if the owner of the couch has put up a sign saying it’s for jumping, it’s still not permissible.

Others’ comments in this thread seem to show that there are many that share that notion.

Meanwhile, I think there are permissible cases of couch jumping. I think the sign would make it permissible, of course. I even think that a cleanly sock-footed five year old jumping ten or fifteen times without losing physical contact with the cushion, while closely watched by an adult, is sufficient to make couch jumping permissible for many couches, assuming the kid isn’t disturbing anyone. And I think you can go some distance toward down the path towards outright leaping with abandon and still have permissible couch jumping. (“Some way down the path,” not all the way and not even very far down that path.)

I simply think there is no good argument that each and every case of couch jumping is impermissible. Is damage to the couch the issue? A kid doing what I described is not damaging the couch. Perhaps this can be argued, but it seems unreasonable to me to think that kid is damaging something while adults sitting in that couch aren’t doing even more damage. Is cleanliness the issue? That can be taken care of with a clean pair of socks. Is the peace of mind of other people the issue? Well, in the scenario I just described, it’s not an issue.

So that’s the beginning of an argument, but really, I suspect there can be no successful argument about this. Because as the above quote seems to reflect, and as it has seemed to me from watching other conversations relevant to the topic, I think that for a whole lot of people, couch jumping simply equals bad behavior. It’s as impossible to argue that it can be okay to jump on a couch as it is impossible to argue that Earth is not Terra. Justifications for the claim that jumping on a couch is always bad are not arguments for that claim, but rather, explanations as to how the claim works out, in every case, to be true–because it necessarily must true after all.

And so, that’s another reason I’ve been uncooperative. Vinyl Turnip said it exactly right earlier: When I say “nobody wins these discussions” what I ‘really mean’ is “I wouldn’t win that discussion.” I’d quibble with the phrase “really mean” here but the point is well taken. Vinyl Turnip seemed to think this constitutes some kind of criticism of or justifcation of skepticisim towards my position, but that doesn’t follow at all. It’s simple: No one ever wins these discussions, therefore I would not win this discussion, and since it is pointless to enter into an argument when one knows in advance one will not win, it is pointless to enter into this argument. That’s right. I can’t see what could be wrong with that reasoning.

And the reason nobody wins such discussions is, I think, the one I just described at some ridiculous length: There are simply two irreconcilable mindsets at loggerheads here, and I don’t think argument can make either of them see whatever is valid about the others’ point of view. I think there can be permissible couch jumps. Most of you I’ve been talking with think the exact opposite. And these thought seem to behave (at least for you guys!) as a kind of fundamental assumption that it would be nonsense to question. Hence the idea that it is “unimaginable” how a kid could be jumping on a couch without misbehaving. I can only make sense of calling that “unimaginable” if somehow the two are supposed to be related definitionally. For me, they’re related contingently rather than definitionally, and I have no idea how to procede in an argument between these fundamentally different ways of seeing the issue at hand.

Kids are best consumed after being raised on a diet of tobasco sauce and bacon.