One of the biggest sources of irritation for little kids is precisely the lack of logic of the world in general and the rest of humanity in particular. Polysemies, synonyms, irregular verbs; “everybody” (parents, teachers, media) says that “trees lose their leaves in the fall” but it’s spring and a tree just dropped a leaf on your head :dubious:; and of course that favorite, people who have one set of rules for themselves and one for everybody else (having different rules for different-sized people is generally considered ok or at least ok-ish, because the child can see that there is a correlation between size and physical ability). Learning the world would be so much easier if it was organized properly, damnit!
You’re right. I’m not and never will be a parent. This situation is why.
I can’t understand why you think I’m the annoying one. I didn’t snarl at the kid or her family, or reach over and smack them, or glare at them, or anything. I just ate my sundae and let the shrieks go through me like a knife. Was I supposed to enjoy my consoling treat being ruined?
I would hope if I had a kid, I would talk calmly to her or him, and try to set an example of proper behavior, and do other than just not respond.
I’m sorry, and I no doubt sounded crass, but kids are kids. Sometimes they are wonderful and enlightening, and sometimes they’re horrible. But they’re kids.
Yesterday I was in a bar/restaurant and there was a cute little girl, maybe 18 months or two years old at a table behind me. She was loud and adorable. When they left the little girl kept saying “bu byeeee.” It melted my heart.
YMMV
It’s an ice-cream parlour. A little kid was pleased with her ice-cream.
When my daughter was 2 I took her to a movie on a weekday afternoon. She was the only kid there for some reason, but it was near the end of the showing and we had an entire row to ourselves. She loved the movie, and cheered every time her favourite character came on screen but was otherwise fairly quiet. She stood up and walked up and down our empty aisle. We got lots of shushes and angry looks from the few adult patrons.
The movie was Toy Story 2.
There are some places where little kids are allowed to act like little kids. If you go to one, you shouldn’t be surprised to see little kids acting like little kids.
Yeah, sometimes the little jerks are happy about ice cream and respond like an excited kid in an ice cream shop. Can you imagine?
Good bars have ice cream, how else could they serve a Guinness float?
ETA: if you’ve never had one, I urge you to enjoy a scoop of French vanilla in a glass of Guinness.
I don’t like going to bars by myself. And loud happy drinkers are not more pleasant company than loud happy kids.
I can see why the sound would bother people like the OP, but I also understand why the father didn’t silence the child.
It is immensely satisfying to see (and hear) your kid experiencing joy over simple things. If you’ve spent all day policing their behavior and forcing them to do things against their will, you’re going to take every opportunity to let them have feral, happy moments in low risk settings. As a parent, it gives you a break, and it gives the kid a little freedom.
For all we know, that ice cream she was squawking over was a reward for sitting still and using her inside voice all day.
I didn’t expect the father to “silence” the child, just perhaps quiet her down. Or at least acknowledge her delight, which might’ve gotten her to stop screaming for Daddy, which is what she probably really wanted.
Some kids are better than others. It’s not so obvious with small samples such as one to four kids, but in the kindergarten classes I teach, out of 25 children, there will be kids which don’t respond. It’s quite a bit more complicated than simply saying because you happened to have children that worked well with your system, then it would work for all children.
In one of my classes, there is a difficult boy. He is maturing, fortunately, but started off pretty rambunctious. It turns out that he’s the son of the 15-year veteran teacher. She’s a damn good teacher, but just had a wild child.
There are many cases where there is bad parenting, but come on, not a high percentage of babies will rarely cry if they their needs were just met. That’s absurd.
I’m both a parent and a teacher and actually I’m sympathetic to what you went through.
For out kids, we never let them just cry or shriek in restaurants. For crying, take them outside. For playing, if it got loud enough to disturb others, then it was the same. There were many times were I quickly ate so that I could get them outside and my wife could enjoy her dinner.
She had a friend who wouldn’t discipline her kids, and would let the run around yelling and such. We only went out with her once, and then I told my wife never again.
I also really don’t understand why the father was ignoring the kids. For fuck’s sake, interact with the kid for a bit. Take along a book, or whatever. Kids that are old enough to understand inside voices, and if you are one of the parents unfortunate enough to have children with no self-control, then it takes a lot more work, but that’s part of the job.
This is exactly what it’s like to be on the brink of a bipolar depressive rage episode. Empathy, which ought to have allowed you to take up at least some of the tot’s joy, sours instead into a flavor narcissism that makes it reasonable to assume the rest of the world owes you a wide and reverent berth, even when you go out in public. Nothing is good, and every stimulus seems engineered to work your last nerve. I say “brink” because man, BPD is just one step away from that wicked mindset, and it is a long and intense drop. Not diagnosing Too Many Cats, just judging and rambling: that’s pretty messed up to hate on a happy kid.
And we don’t know what was going on in Daddy’s world. Seems like the kid wasn’t afraid of him or nervous around him, so he’s probably established himself as a source of happiness to the kid. That he was perhaps not so in this moment can be explained by a million adulting challenges.
Naw. It can be that hard. I don’t recall my son crying except when he had a reason to, but my daughter had colic, and cried all the time. In retrospect, it’s possible she had stomach aches due to severe lactose intolerance, but it’s also possible she was just a crier. Anyway, we would hold her, walk around with her, offer her food, check her diaper, bounce her, try to soothe her… nothing worked, she just kept screaming. Not all the time, but pretty often.
She was our first.
I have a friend who’s second was a crier. He said when he had the first child, he felt smug. “Parenting is easy. If you meet their needs, they are happy.” Then he had the second one and realized that didn’t always work.
The only cure for an unhappy screaming child in a restaurant is to take the kid outside and walk up and down the sidewalk until they quiet down enough that you can finish your food. (Or until the spouse finishes his food, and can take over hold the kid while you finish.)
I do think that children can be trained to use their “inside voices” when they are happy.
Still the only thing that would have bothered me in the OP’s story is the father ignoring his child. And frankly, it sounds to me like she was being loud in an attempt to get his attention. One thing all children crave is their parent’s attention, and while parents need some downtime, too, I bet he could have met her need in this case.
Yup.
Most likely, the father’s threshold for what’s considered unacceptable levels of joyful noise is a fair bit higher than Too Many Cats’. I’m willing to bet that the father isn’t some ignoring negligent monster, having just bought an ice cream sundae for his kid and her approaching him in glee about it. Not the sort of thing you can really debate though when all we have is the situation through the lens of the OP.
Great. Now I’m not just annoying, I’m a raging bipolar ticking timebomb. Bravo Straight Dope Message Board. I will contact the authorities immediately so that they can stop me before I start the killing spree. Sound advice.
I’m a store cashier. If a child gets too loud at the register, I just say “Please use your indoor voice in the store.” It usually works. If they are screaming and dancing in joy, I say “You do that Happy Dance” and start dancing with them. They usually stop screaming in absolute surprise.
Once a woman had three daughters at the register. The youngest (around eight) was screaming and acting like a brat. The older two will standing by the register, being nice and silent. I rang up the purchases, did the transaction. and said “Thank you. And thank you to these two ladies for acting so nice.” The brat’s jaw dropped and the mother, bless her soul, said “See, I told you people notice how you act in public.” I said “Yes, and those two young ladies are behaving prop-er-ly.” The y broke into huge smiles.
The brat calmed down, helped me put the bags into the shopping cart, and said “Thank you” in a nice, quiet respectful voice. I said “Thank you for behaving right.”
I think that youngest child learned something that day.
Silly. The authorities won’t do anything about it. We live in a free society that is happy to let people destroy themselves and their human connections with untreated mental illness. And seriously, the remark was more an observation of something I’ve known and could admittedly be completely not your sitch. But if it sounds right, there’s help.
Annie, I hope you have kids – you sound like you’d be great at it!
“Colic” doesn’t mean “baby screams frequently because”. It means “baby screams frequently because of a (usually medical) problem that isn’t being solved”; she was crying because she had needs that weren’t met. What’s different is which needs each baby has and how easy it is to meet them. It’s like looking for gifts, or like the weight loss equation: we all know “calories in, calories out”, but mixing that with your own activity levels, allergies, anxiety, stress, food availability or food preferences ranges from “very easy” to “a total bitch”.
Actually, I don’t have children. But I worked in day care and learned a lot about making them behave right. And while they might argue with their parents, how can they argue with a person in a position of authority at the store?
In another register incident, a boy wanted a toy and his parents said “NO.” He said “Well, I sitting on the floor until you buy it.” He then sat.
I rang up the purchases, gave the father back his credit card, acted like I was seeing the sitting boy for the first time and said “We don’t allow sitting on the floor here. You have to stand up.” Boy stands up, his mother grabs his arm and marches him out of the store (while biting her lip to keep from laughing) and the father mouths “Thank you” to me.
Two Many Cats, I’m a parent and I sympathize. My kids are grown now, but I’ve always had a low tolerance level for noise. As you said in the OP, the Dad could have handled it way better.