What age children are you talking about here?
-FrL-
Yes and thank you. That’s exactly what I meant.
I think they are horrid places for learning manners myself and we avoid eating in those places in part for that reason. The behavior being modeled for my children by other children and their parents is “its ok to take your BBQ chicken nugget into the ball pit” and “no one needs to use inside voices.” And I have enough “but Mom EVERYONE else…” without purposely choosing those places. Your milage is obviously different, but McD’s eat in with a Playland is an exception, and we avoid Chuckie Cheese like the plague. (Chuckie Cheese is also better for the seven + set - the games are too advanced for most toddlers here and the bigger kids run over them. And by seven plus, I’d hope your kids have enough manners to take them to Friday’s or Outback.
Yeah, that’s absolutely been my experience - I’ve had to “debrief” them after visiting McD’s and CEC’s (on some occasions, not always). Although that’s a good learning experience, too; I explain that they are to follow MY rules, and that I am not in charge of those other children. But I absolutely DO let my kids “run free” a bit while we’re there (no shrieking to the point of causing Mommy a headache, sure). Go play on the toys! Go jump around a bit! That’s how I get a break. That’s what I’m paying for! It sure as hell ain’t the food.
Totally different behavior from, say, the Chinese buffet, or Dairy Queen.
The “kids will be kids” thing, it’s just SO dependent on the situation. Like at McDonald’s - that’s a popular rest stop for people on the road, whose kids have been cooped up in the car for a few hours. OF COURSE they’re going to run around like maniacs for a while. Where else are they supposed to go? It’s not like a traveler knows where the city park is (nor would a good park be located off the interstate).
I’m definitely in the “can’t spoil a baby” camp, though; I figure those people get theirs once the kid’s old enough to really pitch fits. Nor can you make a toddler sit perfectly still for story hour (I’ve seen swats administered there). I let mine splash and stomp around in our park’s pool, it’s made me somewhat unpopular but I think those other mothers are fucking NUTS (plus they apparently don’t want to get their hair wet). Let the kids play, here, now - THIS is their chance!
It occurred to me, thinking about this thread, that parenting is a JOB, like every other job (except you never, ever get a fucking day off). Only it’s very public.
If your non-child-having-desk was magically transplanted into the middle of the shopping mall so everyone could watch you work all day long, what would they see? Would you be doing your job perfectly every single minute? If they happened to pass you while you’re on the phone with your girlfriend or staring off into space for a minute, can you imagine the conclusions they’d draw? Particularly if they’d never worked in an office themselves?
But you can spoil them a lot earlier than a lot of people believe. Responding to “I want attention” cries at eight months (if your eight month old has reached the stage of development where they do that) sets you up for tantrums at two. Children do learn to manipulate you earlier than a lot of “but you can’t spoil a baby” people believe. I’ve had friends who are picking up their two and three year olds at the smallest yelp under “you can’t spoil a baby.” And that is part of the set up for the whole “spoiled brat.” Which is why Mom at B&N might let her kid cry for five minutes before picking him up - will he self comfort (a VERY important skill to learn and its MORE important to learn to do it in public, otherwise public becomes the place where a kid learns to act out to get Mom’s attention.)
Fessie–I agree. A playplace/ground is the place for loud, boisterous etc. I can’t imagine a pool without splashing etc–except for those kids who splash strangers or people who don’t want to be splashed. Our public pool prohibits splash fights-which is unfortunate. Someday I think all fun will be banned due to feaer of lawsuits. Our elementary school principal banned balls on the playground (she retired this year-yay). It’s all a bit ridiculous.
Spoiling is a tricky subject. One mom’s spoiling is another’s filling basic needs. IOW, we all have our own limits. Certainly I think kids are too catered to these days. And Dangerosa has a point about Baby learning to self-soothe. I still contend that the parent should at least LOOK at Baby to make sure nothing is wrong. But 2-3 minutes of crying in a public place is too long, IMO.
I think parents get into trouble when they reinforce the wrong behavior–that article was spot on about that.
But the point that we keep making here is that all your training and stuff is wonderful, but I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT. You think you are training your child, and if you do it right it will only happen a few times in public, but if every child does it a few times, I still end up hearing a screaming child nearly every time I go into a mall or a restaurant, which adds up to hundreds of occasions of enduring screaming children for me.
As for putting my desk in the mall and everyone watching me work, that is comparing apples to oranges. If I ignore my work it doesn’t run around and trip other people and break and dirty stuff and scream for no reason.
Again, you’re in a bowling alley/pool hall and you’re disturbed by a baby crying? Your point about spoiling a baby is well-taken, but again, you’re expecting quiet in a bowling alley?
You know, it seems to me that a lot of the anti-child posters to this thread seem to be struggling with the big fat open space that exists between “cult of child worship, my kid can do anything he/she wants” and “children must be held to the same standard as adults, and hearing a baby crying for sixty seconds is a horrible imposition on everyone in the world.”
Jesus, really? I mean, you hear a six-month-old baby cry for sixty seconds and oh my god sweet holy god you can’t stand it the world is ending this is ruining my entire day or possible my entire life? Really? What the fuck? There is of course a limit to how much disturbance a child should be permitted to make in public before being removed from the public setting, but the degree of restriction being suggested here is just silly. As someone else said, I guarantee Borders doesn’t want its customers-who-are-parents to feel pressured to leave the building every time their kid makes a peep. Who the hell gets this worked up over a tiny bit of crying? In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently a parent (and I tend to err on the conservative side when it comes to getting my daughter out of Dodge if it seems like she’s about to go nuclear), but when I was not, a baby crying in a bookstore for two minutes wouldn’t have even registered on my radar. Is this really something people get upset about?
Yeesh.
But featherlou, training children to become relatively civilized human beings is part of life. It’s not an optional extra, like rollerskating or learning to juggle. People HAVE to do this.
I’ll gladly give you the bars, the 3-hr-meal restaurants, the $75/ticket concerts and the R-rated movies.
But grocery stores, malls, bookstores and restaurants with cartoon characters – I think those should be shared.
Although I don’t like to hear screaming children anywhere, and don’t think kids who can’t avoid grinding food into the carpet of a restaurant should be taken home immediately, I hardly think that asking people not to take their kids to Le Pommier or the 10:00 pm showing of Alexander is too much to ask. I do expect that there are some places in the world that are reserved for adults to have fun without the presence of kids. Taking them to Fuel and Fuddle for the half price food after 11:00 pm special is inappropriate. That’s adults only time, and quite honestly it’s an adults-only bar. There’s no kids’ menu. The sign on the chalkboard used to say, in part, ‘This is a bar. We don’t have a kids’ menu.’ I don’t frequent places that are specifically designed for kids, like Chuck E. Cheese or the playground at McDonald’s. I don’t have a problem with kids being in a Denny’s or an Eat n’ Park, but I do have a problem with parents not making sure they behave appropriately. Meaning if your one-year-old baby is crying for food, then fine, feed it. If your four-year-old hellion is running around playing food sculpture on the salad bar and causing a trip hazard for the servers, then you need to either restrain your child or take them out of the restaurant.
Do you, Rick, think that there are no places that should be adults only? Would you take your kid to Fuel and Fuddle, a bar that announces it does not have a kids’ menu? Do you take them to R-rated late evening movies? What about restaurants with people who play the violin while you eat your 100$ meal?
and think kids who can’t avoid grinding food into the carpet of a restaurant should be taken home immediately,
Oops.
I think people are also confusing a few different “parenting styles”
I think of cult of the child as “I spoil my kid rotten and believe he/she should go with me everywhere” - its very similar to me to people who think their dogs belong at the nail salon. Its an entitlement mentality on the part of the parent - both that THEY should get to take their child (dog) everywhere and that they child (dog) is exceptional enough that normal societal rules should not apply. This is children at fancy restaurants, quiet concerts, plays etc. This is kids who have iPods at seven (and lose them and get new ones), kids who walk out of Target every time with a new toy.
There is the “free range child” movement. Kids will be kids and should be allowed to act out whereever/whenever. These parents aren’t bothering to parent their children or raise them - to these parents their children will magically become adults who know self control. The few times their parents stuff them into nice clothes to go to a real restaurant (rare, because the child is permitted to decide generally if they should go) these are the seven year olds who fling bread at other patrons - and their parents don’t do a darn thing about it except perhaps smile at you and say “oh, she is only seven.” You are more likely to get free range children in grocery stores, Target and the movies. Sometimes with parents who don’t parent, sometimes dropped off.
There is the “a child isn’t going to change MY life” parents. These are the ones with the stroller in the smokey bowling alley, the six year old kid at the rated R movie.
It should be blindingly obvious that none of these is a parenting philosophy I appreciate.
There are the “children don’t belong in public” parents - I’ve met some child free folks who ascribe to this, but I have never met any parents who have - and the ones I’ve been exposed to via heresay frankly seem like abusive assholes who are trying to hide something (or tried to) by keeping their kids out of public.
Then there are the normal everyday doing the best we can to raise our kids and live our lives parents who make mistakes, take the kids out when their blood sugar is low, are completely out of toilet paper when there is no one around to watch the kids and once in a while want someone to feed us food where the waitress will bring us a glass of wine without needing to pay $10 an hour for a sitter.
The problem can be that with a two minute Boarders exposure (or even a ten minute one) it can be difficult to tell if you have one of the first types of parents or the last type.
All of this reminds of me of the time I went to an orchid show by me. It was held in a very large conservatory, however, the aisles were very narrow and the entire area was jam packed with…you guessed it, orchids and people who wanted to look at the orchids.
Everyone there understood this was a place for leisurely, contemplative browsing except for the two 6 or 7 year old kids running around, dodging in between people and camera equipment and screaming at the top of their lungs. Their mothers were oblivious to the whole fiasco.
One of the people at the show was carrying a leather envelope with him. As one of the kids ran by him for the umpteenth time, he slapped the kid, hard on the back/shoulder area, with the envelope. The kid stopped, startled and looked around for his mother, who again was completely oblivious to what had happened. The man just looked in the other direction and walked off to look at another display. This didn’t stop the kids from resuming their obnoxious activities but it did give a brief respite and if I could have bought the the man a drink, I would have happily done so.
Now on to the “nobody touches my kid” posts.
I’m reminded of the time I called a buddy and suggested a Saturday afternoon at the racetrack. Betting horses, drinking beer, good “guy” fun. He readily agreed, saying he needed a day out. We arranged to meet at the track.
Imagine my feelings when I arrived at the agreed-upon meeting place at the track and saw Buddy–accompanied by his six-month-old in a baby carrier!
We had a good time, but it reminded me very much of the Flintstones episode where Fred and Barney take Pebbles to the racetrack. Unlike Wilma, though, Buddy’s wife really had no problem with it when she found out. And unlike Pebbles, the baby’s selections didn’t win.
And I’d think that 2-3 minutes is too short not to reinforce the “if I don’t want to shop all I need to do is cry” behavior - particularly once the child reaches somewhere around a year - eighteen months. I’ve met people who can’t take their elementary school-aged children into the grocery stores because it causes a meltdown - and they are the people who promptly removed their small children from grocery stores. The kid has learned the way NOT to have to run errands with Mommy is to be a pain in the butt about running errands with Mommy. This works great as long as Grandma lives three minutes away and Dad is around - and works less great when Dad is out of town and Grandma as moved to Miami.
I mentioned before the logistics of a tantrum holding child, one that has always confused me - we used to go to a restaurant (still do on occation) that is waitress served and child friendly - but even Chuck E Cheese isn’t so child friendly that I’d leave a tantruming child there. What does one do to remove the child if you are a solo adult - your check hasn’t arrived yet, the waitress is no where to be seen, the rest of the waitstaff is ignoring you when you try to wave them down to get your check. Do you walk out on the check and come back the next day without your children to make good? The one time this happened I dropped $20 (more than enough to cover the meal twiceover) on the table and left, but I had cash, not an every day occurance.
As I’ve said many, many, many times, of course a baby should NEVER be taken to a movie. Not any kind of movie. They don’t make movies for babies; they do make movies for young children, and it’s fine to take a 4-year-old to a movie for 4-year-olds, but a baby? That’s nuts.
Of course there are lots of places babies shouldn’t be taken. But STORES? AIRPLANES? Or any public place after *two minutes * of crying? You can’t even safely get out of some stores in under two minutes. Jesus.
Dangerosa–I agree with your parenting types.
valleyofthedolls-I have no qualms about telling kids like you described to be quiet, stop running or someone might get hurt. I like to say it somewhat menacingly (I’m a soccer mom-I don’t do great menacing). It usually gives them pause. If the parent won’t parent, then the village should.
<prepares for onslaught of condemnation>
Free range parents. Cult of the Child parents would be shushing and trying to turn this into an educational experience - or at least bribing halfway decent behavior with promises of ice cream. Normal “try hard” parents would be saying “Benton, mommy NEEDS to see Grandma’s orchid or she will never hear the end of it - then we can get out of here. Behave yourself for THREE minutes while I find it!” (then under her breath something about Mother In Law, better things to to with her time than go look at damn flowers).
In my experience, both before motherhood and during, is that what people really want is for the parent to seem as though they CARE that their kid might be disturbing someone. People in general, even those without kids, know that a mom has to bring their kids to the library or to the bookstore every once in a while, and they also know that babies sometimes start crying, and older kids sometimes get rambunctious. What they want is for the parent to make some attempt to stop the behavior, leave (at least temporarily) if it gets to be too much, and maybe offer an apology to people who might be bothered by it. It’s just basic social courtesy. Even on airplanes, I’ve apologized to people when my daughter has cried, and people almost invariably say, “don’t worry about it.” Sometimes they even offer to help…they know you have your hands full.