Try living in a residence hall where the hall director has two children ages 2 and 4. Staggering drunk around your floor and seeing a wet naked 2 year old runing screaming up the stairs makes for a bizzare afternoon.
Well, I can’t say I have much experience with staggering around drunk in the afternoon, but it does sound like it’d be weird.
About a year ago I went to a Rob Zombie concert and saw not one, but about 4 couples with children under the age of 10 there. You have no idea how much this pissed me off. Not only was it late & on a week night during the school year, but it was loud, smokey and scary!! Never before in my life have I wanted to just smack the shit out of so many parents for being such complete and absolute morons.
Thanks to everyone for their applause and votes of confidence.
The trick is to realize that all children have limits in terms of attention span, interest, and fears, and a responsible parent is reasonably attuned to these limits. I know that Aaron is okay with maybe 90% of what goes on around him, but he’s been frightened by loud voices and sudden noises, and so movies and live performances are not a good idea. I have a fairly good idea of what will keep him quiet and entertained, and I am prepared to exploit these when/if need be.
And when Airman and I (or just I) want to have a nice time alone, well, that’s when we get a sitter or Gramma to watch Aaron. Everyone’s happy. 
Robin
Hmmm, children are a priori not inclined to eat Japanese food? This leaves me wondering… are Japanese children born with some kind of immense embryonic sac attached that they derive nourishment from until they are old enough to eat Japanese food? Of course, this may explain the whole “Hello Kitty” phenomenon…:smack:
Maybe it’s just me, but I think you may have left a valuable detail out of that story. Otherwise, I have no idea to which people you are referring.
I have yet to see a scary movie without a crying baby, Halloween:H20, Halloween:Ressurection,The Ring. All of them with crying kids.
Last time I visited my aunt, I took all my cousins out to see the sites of Philly, she has 5 kids one’s 16,another 13,another10, one 6 and one 3.When we went to the please touch mueseum, that was for the little ones, but independence was for the rest of us, the mueseum with the Declaration of independence was for the older ones too,then later I took the littles ones out to a kids movie.
i think that the point of my huge Hijack was that thw whole time we were out, the little ones didnt squirm once,and because of that, i gave thewm a treat.people were amazed when we made it through the entire museum and the whole tour without them complainingf once.
BTW: The Please Touch Mueseum is a kids Mueseum in Philly were the kids get to play with all these different adult things while the parents take pictures.
Okay, I will FREELY admit I’m evil, but here’s a suggestion. You don’t have to acknowledge that you even SEE the family with the brats. And this is even better, since you aren’t openly accusing the perps, they CAN’T unless super bold, really “attack” you back.
What you do is…
Start looking around in a perplexed way… Say (loudly enough to be overheard by the “perps”) to your date, or mate or other family members. “My Gosh!!! It’s 7 [insert bedtime here} oclock!! Does someone actually have a small child out at THIS hour??? That poor little thing!!! I can’t believe someone that could afford to eat here couldn’t get a baby sitter for the poor little mite”
See, the trick is, you never make eye contact, you don’t get obnoxious and/or use profanity and you keep your tone “nicey-nice” and Oooooooh so concerned. Then, you LOAD your “perplexed” comments with thinly disguised “shame on yous”.
I’m always amazed at how quickly the perps eat and leave.
Yes, I understand that many people don’t have that choice, we are really talking about people who are over the top inconsiderate with where and when they bring their children.
Insofar as “they’ve got to learn somewhere”? That’s what McDonalds/Wendy’s/Chuck E.s are for. Then, once they master that, you “step up” a bit to Village Inn (like an IHOP), and maybe Red Robin’s and so on. We should not, for a 50 dollar a plate dinner, have to listen to the raucous screams of a 5 year old (who SHOULD be able to sit through a dinner) at the local Dinner Theatre or 4 Star.
Errands are one thing, and yes, sometimes kids just go off for no reason (even the best of them). But the whole point the OP was making was that there are SOME places in which children DO NOT belong.
Then you’re NOT one of the parents about whom we’re griping. You are one of the “good ones”.
Remember the OPs OP? hehe
In the weight room? No. But my gym has a huge daycare area and they have their own swimming pool (open only during special “family hours”) and so at least at my gym, they DO belong there.
Our gym also has a family room and big signs that say “no opposite-sex children in the dressing rooms” and for the most part that is followed.
I do get pissed when parents don’t keep control of their kids in public. Dominic is 7 and he’s never gone running amok in a store or restaurant, etc. I don’t understand why some parents don’t take care of their kids.
In college, my philosophy professor once said that the best form of birth control was a visit to Eat N Park on a Sunday morning for brunch.
(He described one kid grabbing scrambled eggs off of his (my professor’s) plate!) EEEK!
He was joking around, of course, about it being birth control, but he was more or less musing at how inconsiderate and downright rude some parents can be.
I remember going to church once, when I was about seven years old, and I was kneeling down after Communion to say my prayers, with my hands folded. The three year old in front of us proceeded to grab at my wrists and try to pry my hands apart! The whole time, his mother just smiled and said, “Honey, no, she’s praying.” But did NOTHING to stop him.
Eh… my son’s bedtime is 9pm. That gives him 10 hours of sleep every night, which is enough. There are times when we’ve gone out to dinner late, especially on weekends or other times when he doesn’t have to be up in the morning.
Before he was school age, he went to bed when we did–late. As we are night people and his father worked late shifts, this made a hell of a lot more sense than having the kid on a totally different schedule. And yes, this meant that we went to restaurants late. Sometimes even REALLY LATE! Imagine that, midnight at a 24 hour restaurant with a 2 year old. My, the scandal. Nevermind that he’s behaving himself perfectly well and that he’ll be getting plenty of sleep… I suppose because we didn’t live on your schedule of “acceptable hours” that we’re bad parents.
Dominic is always well liked in restaurants. He gets special treats all the time. On several different occassions we’ve had the server sit down at our table to chat with him.
Whilst I personally agree with most of you about where children should and shouldn’t be taken and as a child I wasn’t taken to scarey movies, restaurants etc and I didn’t expect to get a toy every time I went out shopping, I think there are some cultural differences here.
In New Zealand, for Maori people, it is perfectly acceptable for children to run around freely whilst adults are having a conference or whatever on the Marae. I think this is then translated to other situations such as supermarkets, restaurants etc. Many Maori and Pacific Island parents don’t have a problem with this, they have more of a community minded way of bringing up children. They expect other adults to help parent their children. This is even more necessary now that NZ has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy for a developed country, and most of these pregnancies are in the Maori and PI communities.
This doesn’t explain the white kids who remain mostly unsupervised in public.
Oh, right. So only fat darker-skinned people can let their kids run amok? Wonderful.
People who want to “expose” their children to the finer cultural activities in their community shouldn’t also force the public to be exposed to their children. I don’t mind a child in a restaurant as long as I am perfectly unaware that he is there. The same way I am able to ignore the other patrons. I don’t go out to eat so I can listen to loud obnoxious screaming children…and since any adult who is loud and obnoxious and screaming would be thrown out of said restaurant, it seems a bit much that, just because the perp is five years old, I have to suffer through it.
And this is particularly directed at the people who let their children come up and sit at my bar–by themselves!–and play the touch-screen game on the bar. It’s on the bar for a A REASON, people–that game has all kinds of nudity all over it, and it’s for adults only! And, more importantly, I AM NOT A BABYSITTER! I am a bartender, for God’s sake!
You should see all the parents who get all annoyed when I tell them that, unless they are present to supervise their child, I cannot allow said child to remain at the bar. “But he’s just playing,” they whine. “I can see him from where we’re sitting!”
And they’re usually sitting about thirty feet away with their backs to the bar.
grrrrrr
Ooh, lemme play…
Tip to parents who want to take their kids on vacation: Don’t. Unless you’re SURE that they’ll be well-behaved and controlled. And if you can keep them supervised.
I was on a cruise for two weeks, and good god, on a boat with 2,000 passengers, a quarter of those must have been under the age of ten. I’m surprised none of those little freaks* got thrown overboard.
(*Leopold reference, calm down.)
Lot of well-written, well-thought-out posts here.
But I hope all y’all are taking into account the fact that, with a very few exceptions, kids don’t want to be in “grown-up” places like Chateau Maison any more than you want them there.
I wish I’d had parents like Siemsi, Opal, Robyn et al. Unfortunately, my mom was one of “those” people who, for instance, dragged me to weddings and such, in blatant disregard of “no kids” stipulations. I’ve sat in the foyers of expensive restaurants, waiting for my parents to finish their dinners (after finding nothing at all on the menu that I liked). I’ve been in office conference rooms and break rooms. I’ve sat through meetings and lectures. I was dragged hither and yon and wasted hours of my life. I don’t believe I ever ran amok, but that’s because I was generally a quiet kid, unless there was another kid to inspire me into acting up. What I did do was stuff like look at the books on peoples’ shelves. Maybe I shouldn’t have done even that. But who was more wrong: me for not going catatonic or my parents for bringing me places where there was nothing at all for me to do?
Disclaimer: I know I’ve said this before. But hell, so have many other people in this thread said what they’ve said.
Forgot to say: Guin, Audrey Levins and SPOOFE all get :eek: s.
I find myself in the supermarket with screaming kids a lot. Sometimes the parent is making no attempt to control the spawn. Here’s what I do:
When the parent is not around (these parents always let the brats roam free), look at the kid and say “hey kid, shut up.”
They ALWAYS get real quiet and go stand next to mom. Then when you see them as you shop, make eye contact. They get real scared that a stranger confronted them, they cling to mom’s coat and they stay shut upped. Viola