Again, why do parents take it so personally when anyone says they don’t like kids???
It’s NOT comparable to saying “I don’t like ----- people”.
Ethnicity is different. Kids are not a protected class, they grow and become adults!
The poster is not saying they don’t like Miss Elizabeth’s kids so relax…
There are plenty of people in the world who LOVE and adore kids and plenty that will dote on YOUR kids. Enjoy that.
Oh, what nonsense. Different than they were in 1987?
In 1987, people said exactly the same things.
In 1977, people said exactly the same things.
In 1967, people said exactly the same things.
In 1957, people said exactly the same things. (In fact, in 1957, juvenile deliquency was something of a national obsession.)
But most kids TODAY are well behaved, as you would notice if you’d actually take time to look. Most kids at all times have been well behaved. Are you telling me there weren’t ANY kids who were badly behaved when you were a kid? I’m 35 and I know that’s a big old load of bullshit. There were bad kids when I was a kid, though most kids were pretty good. Just like today.
So according to you, kids are worse now than 20 years ago. But also according to you, your own sibling who would have been a kid less than 20 years ago - according to you, she’s 19 - WASN’T poorly behaved. So do you really think your family is special and better than most others? I have a sister in law who’s 19 and she’s really well behaved too, always has been, maybe I’m just in a superior fgamily as well. Or do you think perhaps, just maybe, there’s a degree of perception bias going on here?
Rickjay, I’m wondering if you’ve gone back and read my posts and if that changes how you’ve characterized me and what I’ve said.
I don’t think kids behave differently. I think there are just a whole lot more people, so we’re in each other’s faces more.
Of all the places I’ve taken my twins (and we get out a LOT) the bookstore patrons were probably the least friendly. Usually, as I’m scanning and gauging, I catch people giving my kids little smiles and hoping to make eye contact. Not the people at Barnes and Noble. They gave my kids the evil eye, just waiting for them to have a big fit. The kids were good, though; they got a little loud at the end (we’d eaten cookies as part of our outing), but I made a beeline for the door about then.
/slight hijack, but here’s what this kind of thing is like from the parents’ view.
Last summer we took them to a wolf sanctuary. It was so awful. My husband and I are such animal loving people – we’ve marched and protested against fur, and donated money to all sorts of causes. Written letters. Boycotted products. Whole nine yards.
In fact, back when we had energy for such things, we were the kind of pains in the asses who’d remind people at the zoo that they should NOT tap on the glass. Quite righteous, we were.
So we take our twins to this wolf sanctuary (which advertises in the paper all the time, they WANT visitors, CHILDREN WELCOME, it says so in their ads) thinking that we’re sharing this great love of nature with our children. This is their heritage, right? This is what their parents are all about. We’re not sitting at home watching mindless television - nooo! We’re gonna take them to see the wolves because we are Good Parents, teaching them Values.
There’s some kind of exhibition they do every day and we got there in time for that. But first, the tour guide (the place is crawling with tour guides) she starts explaining to a big group of us all about the history of the place and the wolves and this and that.
The Old Me would have been sitting there experiencing Reverence for Nature and Outrage at Man’s Inhumanity to Wolf.
The New Me is hoping she’ll finish soon so we can move on to some action because these children (the twins were 2.5) are GETTING BORED and we’re struggling to keep them quiet.
Right about then, I look over to where my husband is watching our son. They’re both standing by the fence. My darling boy, fruit of our loins, bearer of our name, picks up a rock and throws it at the wolves.
:eek:
The guide paused for the longest time, I swear I thought she was gonna throw us out. I was so mortified. Dh maintains to this day that our son was “trying to feed them”, but I don’t buy it.
I’m sorry, but I’m honestly at a loss. I don’t know how it is I’m supposed to have characterized you.
Is this more of your over-the-top Pit-style behavior? It makes your arguments seem MUCH less credible. And I’m already stretching to see anything credible about them.
Your analogy has gone awry here. If you posted a thread about loud, obnoxious women at a restaurant on their third glass of wine, I think there’d be quite a lot of people agreeing with you.
This is not a thread about babies in general. It’s a thread about babies who are not behaving well in public.
You seem to have implied (especially in the part I quoted in response to you) (i) that I don’t think children should be allowed out in public and are different from children from past years, (ii) that I don’t like children and (iii) that I agreed with Captain_C’s first post about an adult going into a store, hollering and seeing what would happen.
Again, see what I’ve actually said re: misselizabeth’s suggestion for comparison, what I said in #92 and the post I wrote right before I asked you whether you had read what I wrote.
If you didn’t suggest any of that, then your post quoting me and mentioning me could have been a little clearer.
When I’m at work, I inwardly cringe when I see a mother with children coming up to my lane, because I know they’ll be screaming, messing with everything they can get their hands on, throwing food on the floor, and throwing a piercing tantrum when Oblivious Mom won’t buy them that Twix they want. At least until OB caves in and throws the candy on the conveyor belt. I’m genuinely surprised (and pleased) the two times out of ten this doesn’t happen, and generally compliment the mother on her well-behaved children.
So yes, I suppose in a way you can say I don’t like children. But I like their parents a whole lot less. I have issues with people who treat me and my work station like crap, regardless of age.
I found an article that may or may not be of interest.
http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20010901-000027.html
Is there an age limit here? Is that why she was banned?
Pixiesnix, I found the article very interesting, and I’m not a parent!
One of the things the article says is something I have believed for many years - “time out” or other punishment needs to be punishment, not a hidden reward. My husband’s nephew was diagnosed as “ADHD” when he was about 6, but the way his mother raised him led me to believe he didn’t have a problem other than lack of discipline. Bad grades? “Go to your room!” Where he had a computer, a phone and a TV. Send me to my room! The same young man blew a trust fund of just under a quarter of a million dollars shortly after he got his hands on it. He has nothing to show for it - no place to live, no drivable vehicle, no education - nothing. In the last few years, since the trust fund ran out, he has finally gotten and held a job - but keeps coming to his uncle and aunt when he gets low on funds. We don’t help anymore - when we did, it just encouraged him to come back for more. We’ll feed him if he is hungry, but that is it.
Sorry for the long post, but I don’t think parents are doing their kids a favor with the way things are done now. I never got a trophy or a reward for losing (I’m 46). When I finally earned one, it meant something.
And I still think SOME parents are so caught up in “the miracle of birth” that they think everyone else is as enthralled with their spawn as they are. If I wanted to hear screaming kids I would have had some of my own. And there is nothing wrong with me for not wanting to reproduce.
Thanks, I never know if I’m contributing to the board or not.
[Zoidberg] Hooray, I’m helping! [/Zoidberg]
Amen to that. Whenever someone asks me if I want children and I say no, they look at me wide-eyed and say, “Don’t you LIKE children?”
Look, lady (and it’s generally grandmotherly types who ask) just because I don’t want children doesn’t mean I’m a baby hater. I simply know my limitations. For instance, my little one-year-old nephew visited this morning and he was a smiling, giggling delight. Doesn’t make me want one of my own.
Pixiesnix, I too found your article very interesting, but it did make this thread a bit more complex.
When I first read this thread, I thought this woman was doing what the article said. . . not rewarding poor behavior by not picking up the child. Only problem with this in this situation is that she’s now in a public place where quiet is generally expected. I’d say that she should have been practicing this at home, and if she hasn’t gotten the child to where the child can behave appropriately in public, then I think the parent should have taken the child outside.
That said, the OP was written in such a way that the time and the degree of the poor behavior seemed pretty innocuous.
I think that in general, people should take their shrieking child outside or try to get them to stop crying. In this case, before the shrieking started, perhaps.
I think the main difference is that the article was mostly talking about children of preschool age and older, while the OP was talking about a baby. Babies I give more leniency to, mostly because they barely know what’s going on. Children have the wherewithal to know what’s expected of them and what’s not, and should be held to that standard. And by “children”, I’m talking about preschool age and up.
I personally have no position on the techniques stated in the article, as I have minimal contact with children in general. I was mostly interested in what the article said about children today being more out of control than in years past. I should have said that I was neutral on the contents of the article, sorry about that.
I also agree with you about taking a screaming child out of a public place, if anything for the sake of the other customers and the staff.
I didn’t fly until freshman year of college. I just asked my husband (he’s the same age as I), and he didn’t fly until an overseas vacation sometime after college.
So no, people did NOT bring children on airplanes in general, back in the day.
In addition, we’re talking about screaming babies, not 12 yr-olds. And when I was raised, screaming babies didn’t belong on airplanes, in restaurants, or any other adult place.
Just because you have some hellions you want to inflict on the rest of us, doesn’t
make it acceptable. Here’s a hint–they smell bad, make too much noise, run around uncontrolled (thanks to “parents” like you), and have your rather unfortunate looks.
FUCK OFF, ASSHOLE for calling me a liar.
One of my “best parent” recollections…
As a bartender/hostess/waitress at a Country Club, I dealt with all sorts of people. Some of the members really didn’t have a pot to piss in, but their parents or grandparents were founding members so they “had” to be members. Most of the younger members were only members for business or family reasons.
This club, in addition to the monthly membership fee, charged a “surcharge” of about $40/month if you did not partake of any of the club’s facilities. In other words - use it, we charge you. Don’t use it - we charge you.
One couple had a novel solution. They would call on a Tuesday or Wednesday and make a reservation - and ask to speak to the Head Waitress. They would be seated in an empty banquet room. They would bring a blanket and quiet toys for their daughter. She was exposed to as much as she could stand of “manners” and then she went on her blanket - with plenty of waitresses and waiters to make funny faces!
It has been (let me count) 25 years since I worked at that CC, but to this day I remember that couple - both for how they were teaching their little girl to be civilized, and for the way they did it without forcing others to deal with a baby in the process.
My stock response is, “Sure, if they’re well-roasted, served with potatoes, and maybe a little horseradish.”
But seriously (and no, I am not advocating child cannibalism), I have to ask: since when did not wanting children around equate to hating children? I admit, there are times and places I don’t feel children belong (the local sports bar at playoff time, for example), but in spite of not having or wanting any of my own, I don’t hate kids. What I do dislike (note that I did not say “hate”) is parents who insist on taking their kids everywhere, and berating those of us who complain when those kids act in a way that is, in our minds, unacceptable for that setting. There was a time, believe it or not, when parents would call a babysitter to look after their kids at home when the parents went shopping or out for an evening. Given what I read here on the SDMB and what I see in real life, I guess calling and paying a babysitter is just not done anymore. I’d see it as just part of the cost of choosing to have children, but apparently, I’m one of the few who have that view.
More importantly though, it seems that what is “acceptable” differs between parents and non-parents. I don’t know who should have the “right of way” here, but it also seems to me that arguments of “parents spend money on kids’ books” can easily be countered by “kids’ books don’t cost $60 to$100, which is what I might have spent on one book of the two or three I was planning on buying had I not been forced to leave by an annoying child.”
At any rate, perhaps what we should all do is to be more mindful of our fellow patrons. Your child is shrieking? Do something. You standing there, reading a book, while your knapsack blocks the aisle? Do something. You’re blatting with your friend and blocking me from getting to the history books that I’d like to look at? Move, dammit!
IMHO, it is not unreasonable to allow for others, including children, in any setting; it is unreasonable, however, to believe that the rest of humanity is in such awe of your child that it must allow him or her to do whatever he or she wants, regardless of the wants or wishes of others, in every setting.
Carol, RickJay is not far wrong. He is absolutely correct in implying that babies and children have been a part of commercial aviation since flight tickets were sold.
In 1964, my family was going to fly to visit relatives in Toronto. My sister was six months old. I, at age four, was very excited because I was going to fly in an airplane! Sis was oblivious to the situation, but me being older, was in tune with everything around me. What an exciting experience for me! I still remember that flight; what I also remember was my mother holding my baby sister and comforting her throughout it. Mom said in later years that she wouldn’t have any more kids if it meant having to travel with them. She didn’t, but she never let Sis or I forget that flight. Or the others we took as children. Perhaps as we often say here on the SDMB, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” but in this case, it may well be. Certainly, neither my sister nor I were anything other than paying passengers on any of those flights in the 60s. Though we did get some really cool junior pilot’s wings and stuff from the stewardesses.
I may disagree with RickJay at times, Carol, but on this, he’s absolutely correct: children did fly, and they have done so for years. It’s very common, and has always been so.
I’d just like to add to the conversation: I used to live near quite a few Amish in mid-Michigan. Let me tell you, their children are quiet, curteous, and mannerful. It can be done. When my girlfriend and I finally have children (yes Miss_Elizabeth, when. Sorry) I intend to do my best to raise them that way: lots of hard work and treated as adults from day one.
Of course children flew back then, but I disagree that it was “very common”. Hardly anyone in my circle did, and as I mentioned my husband had the same experience. Maybe you all weren’t around back then, but we drove places! Road Trips-Florida, Texas, California, etc. And thus we didn’t bother anyone else but good ole Mom & Dad.
Perhaps it’s a cultural difference, “back then” or not. Here in Canada, with no interstates to speak of, we flew. Road trips, such as you mention, were rarely taken–we didn’t know if the road between Ontario and Manitoba was even open at this time of year! It was easier to fly or take the train, so we did.
I’m not arguing with your experience, Carol, but perhaps just shedding a little light on an experience that, while different from yours, wasn’t so unusual. And indeed, might be seen, in certain instances as “common.” Such as, in RickJay’s and my Canadian experience. If your American experience was different, so be it; but it would be incorrect, IMHO, to state that “children did not commonly fly.” Maybe not, in the USA, but certainly elsewhere.