Did you actually read what KF wrote about doing everything they could to keep the baby quiet, including taking the kid out of the restaurant?
No?
Ok then.
So overhearing obscenities is superior to a crying baby? Who’da thunk? I would have preferred to hear the little brat scream his head off than hear an adult that should know better say fuck in public.
I sit in a lot of restaurants where the tables are close together. You can easily overhear the dinner conversation in a booth behind you or a table next to you. I’ve learned the most fascinating things - including a long conversation between a man and a woman where he was bemoaning the state between him and some girl (she was obviously just a female friend), that almost had me just walk up to him and say “honey, she just ain’t into you.” But that would have been rude, so I just stuck to my book.
There’s an alternative. They could kick you in your idiot ears. That way the parents could stay and you wouldn’t be bothered by the noise. Everyone happy.
On a side note, why is it I read all these evil-parents-and-miserable-baby stories from the US? I can’t recall ever having been more than marginally discomforted by any baby in any public place. Either you have moron parents, evil babies or a general fucked up idiot public with extremely delicate sensibilities and an overrated sense of the importance of their own feelings. My guess is all three.
I sure did, chief. I also caught this lovely narcissistic sentiment:
Furthermore, the vitriol expressed here:
was presumably in response to Alice The Goon’s Post 119 in this thread. A careful reading of that post would find that Alice’s friend did not direct invective at the obnoxious parent in question. To wit:
Go shove your “reading comprehension lessons” up your ass.
I don’t have time to educate parents on how to handle screaming infants. I’m too busy with the heavy responsibility of keeping public transit workers conscious.
That’s it - put a baby in every subway kiosk! The workers won’t be able to nod off, and the wailing will be muffled inside the enclosure.
Win-win.
Maybe it has something to do with you hailing from a place where “the common Danish practice of leaving children unattended outside restaurants and shops” is apparently the norm?
I remember that story. I knew the girl peripherally (everybody knows everybody peripherally here). Denmark almost declared war on your miserable ass on account of this. Consider yourself lucky. We would have pillaged and laid waste to New York.
But that’s right. Babies are left to sleep in the baby carriage (summer & winter), when you notice a child crying in a carriage you are supposed to notify the parents at which time it is considered very bad form for the parents not to take up the baby. But that apparently is too dangerous in New York so she was probably silly to do it there. But good idea. If you want rid of babies crying in public places because they are tired, make the city safer so the parents can leave the baby outside.
[QUOTE=Fuji;12039540 A careful reading of that post would find that Alice’s friend did not direct invective at the obnoxious parent in question.[/QUOTE]
This is what Alice The Goon posted:
"My friend’s way of handling the screaming newborn-having parents behind us was to look directly at them periodically and say to me, “I wish someone would shut that fucking baby up.”
The invective was definitely directed at the parents, in a passive fashion. Why? Probably because they didn’t have the balls to say something directly. In short, the “friend” was a complete asshole. And if someone had “not directed” this kind of shit
at me or my wife, the asshole and I would have been exchanging some “directed”
words.
No, you gibbering cretin. If the friend (scare quotes not necessary, shithead) had directed invective at the parent, that would have involved actually speaking to them. But this is irrelevant - from the context of Alice’s story, it is quite clear that the parent did hear the friend’s comment. And they had a chance to speak directly to the friend, but passed on that option. Just as passively as the friend making his initial commentary. But only the friend “lacked the balls”? Sure.
What those words might have been, pray tell? “Stop talking amongst yourselves about what inconsiderate assbags my wife and I are being! Say it to our smug, self-righteous faces, you child-hating bastard!”
Well, yeah, of course the flip side is true. I don’t go to Moe’s Family Feed Bag because I don’t want to be seated across from a table of kids who just got out of soccer practice.
This is hilarious. When would you ever need to take action against a child in order to ensure your survival? What kinds of children do you know? Are these the little kids from “Children of God”?
I thought that’s what we were talking about. But even if we were eating at TGIFriday’s, you should still stop your kid from being an asshole to everyone else in the room. Take it outside.
Please try to focus.
The asshole looked right at the parents and made comments that were clearly intended for the parents to hear. It is utterly irrelevant whether the friend addressed the parents directly. But keep splitting hairs, jackass.
It is also irrelevant what the parents chose to say or not say. We’re talking about the friend. I realize focusing is difficult for you, but please do try.
I don’t know what I’d say. But I wouldn’t let it pass.
So, it’s okay to be rude to other families with kids, just not people who don’t have kids, or people who didn’t bring their kids out that night?
**Absolutely **not.
Everyone knows that the *proper *response is to grab them by an ear each, twist, march them back to their table, and deposit them in their chairs, after which you kick the adult(s) presumably “responsible” for them in the fucking teeth.
Do you see anywhere that I suggested a magic age? No. And you won’t. Because each parent should be engaged enough with their child that they can get some inkling of how they will behave in public from how they behave at home. You apparently have some retarded notion that the only way you can train your kids how to behave in public is to constantly drag them out there, whether or not they’re ready for it, and subject the rest of the public to their bad manners. Even if it means letting them scream and run around in a restaurant for two hours.
Upgrade to a trebuchet, and I’m sold.
If their bosses are idiots, maybe. They’re only “helpless” if they don’t have the power to ask patrons who’re causing a disturbance to leave. You wouldn’t let an adult sit at a table and scream; you’d ask them to quiet down or remove themselves. So when the person screaming is a child, too young to be responsible for their own behavior, it behooves the parent to either quiet the child or remove them. And it’s the job of the management of the establishment to ensure that one of those two things happens.
Humans don’t generally keep daylight waking hours just because of cultural norms. It’s built into our biology. Now, that doesn’t necessarily make it **abuse **to shift your entire family’s waking schedule 180 degrees from almost everyone else around you, but that doesn’t mean it would have absolutely no negative impact whatsoever on the kid.
Where did I write that it was ok to be rude?
I think there are people in this thread who are so sensitive that they’d complain if every kid in the joint wasn’t almost completely silent. Kids will be kids, even well behaved ones. If someone is so offended by kids being kids, then they should avoid kids.
I often think the same thing. In my more that 40 years walking the planet, I’ve only on the rarest of occasions been incommoded by noisy children. Reading these threads, you’d think some folks were afraid to go out in public, for fear of being assaulted by them.
I vote: too sensitive.
It’s irrelevant to you. But that’s understandable, given your overweening bias in assessing the situation. I was making a comparison between the behaviors of the two actors in this little drama, and noting that although both acted in a “passive” (“indirect” would probably be a better choice of words there) fashion, you only singled out one party for not “having balls”.
Ha. Bullshit. You’d let it pass and then come here and cry about it the next day. But since I’ve relieved you of the burden of spontaneity, please feel free to indulge your wildest, Bronson-esque fantasises. Pretend that I’m the one in question who dared to mention such an unspeakable aspersion against you and your little pwecious snookums. What would you say to me again?
We try to avoid them, but since the parents’ are always taking them out in public, there’s nowhere for us to go! 
You miss the point, and add some details you just plain invented. If you want to beat the shit out of that straw-man you’ve made for yourself, be your guest.
You may have missed my posts in which I state that parents and non-parents alike have a duty to reasonably accomodate each other.
Parents: that means judging whether the venue is really child-appropriate for children of that age and taking reasonable measures to disciple, pacify or if necessary remove unruly children;
Non-parents: that means being polite in turn to the well-intentioned parents who are behaving as above and realizing that your tender and delicate sensibilities may be upset by the sight of children in public.
You absolute exclusionary rule is not reasonable; it is excessive and counter-productive. You cannot merely hide children away until you are certain they will behave. If you do, they will never learn to behave in public.
If you are such a delicate hothouse flower that the sight or sound of a child ruins your day, that’s unfortunate but it should not be the basis of public policy.
It isn’t. So far, there is a pretty general consensus of that one. If that was the issue, the thread would be pretty short.
Actually, despite my hectoring of kidneyfailure and tacoloco, I don’t encounter the phenomenon that often, either. The place I most frequently recall dealing with excessively noisy kids is on airplanes, but in that situation I cut the parents a hell of a lot more slack. However, given some of the situations as described by Clothahump and Alice The Goon, I would definitely find myself on the side of the “child-haters”.