you yourself became a parent?
Obviously anyone can answer in the thread. But I’m not going to provide an option for non-parents in the auto-poll, partly because there’s no reason to and partly because I’m a dick.
Yes. My name is Julia, and I am a (somewhat reformed) child-hater.
I think my kids are great. Yours, I am not interested in. However, sometimes when I’m in a public place and a kid is having a meltdown, I sort of want to go over and help. I feel like maybe I’d be better at it than the mom, who is probably all out of patience. Of course, this isn’t necessarily true, and I would never, ever do it, but it’s a big change from the days when I was mentally cursing them both.
I was pretty sympathetic to/about children before having them. I’ve always liked them, remember being one fairly vividly.
However what I’ve become most understanding of, since having my own children, is parents’ lack of sympathy for their own children.
I’ve noticed that since having a kid I’ve become much more aware of kids generally in public, and particularly unsupervised (or poorly supervised) kids who look like they’ve doing something risky.
Last weekend I noticed a small kid playing at the bottom of an escalator - fascinated with the tread disappearing into the ground - who was trying to stick his fingers in there :eek: And no parent in view… and, oh yeah, a shop assistant looking on blithely. (I gently growled at the kid who backed off from his dangerous investigation).
On another occasion, noticing a lost child at a mall I was considering what to do when a woman (who from the interaction was not his parent/guardian/whatever) took the child and started leading him away, so I just trailed them until she handed the kid over to the information center so they could page his folks.
Being a big scary looking guy (and having anxiety issues) I’m concious of how my interactions with a stranger’s kid could come off – but given the choice between that and having a kid stick his fingers in a escalator or wander lost… I don’t see there’s really a choice involved.
Parents: has your affection/sympathy/patience for other people’s children changed since… I met them.
Yes. I think I always liked babies/small kids, but I always felt uncomfortable around them – since I wasn’t around kids much as a teen/young adult, I didn’t really know what to do with them, and this manifested itself as not having a lot of affection for them.
Since I’ve had a baby, I’ve realized that my whole mental state of mind is pretty comparable to that of a small child, and conducive to having fun with them. (“You think putting a stuffed frog on my head is hilarious? Well, so do I! Let’s do it! You wanna tell me all about your Lego collection? OK!”) And now that I have more fun with my friends’-and-relations’ kids, I have a lot more affection for them as well. It’s kind of weird, because I’ve had to come to grips with this redefinition of my personality – I thought I didn’t like kids that much, but it turns out I do.
I also am a lot more patient with other kids, both because I now have a much better idea of what the poor kid is going through (last time I was on a plane, there was a 3-hr delay and a year-old baby screaming her head off much of the time, and I was really sympathetic because you know? my 17-month-old is an extremely mild-tempered kid, and she would not have been happy with the whole situation and probably would have behaved worse), and because I am now much more inured to much rote repetition (I read Goodnight Moon four times this morning alone!)
I used to be really annoyed with other people’s kids yelling and crying. Now, I’m just so relieved it’s not my own kids’ noise, it doesn’t much bother me. I have a lot more sympathy toward noisy kids on planes, too. But of course I am also secretly judgmental about the abilities of the other parents.
No it didnt change. I’ve always had patience with children um, because they are children.
Male here. My son is 10 months old and represents the best millions of years of evolution have to offer. I do not particularly care for anyone else’s kids, nor did I before I became a father. I do like some of my friends’ kids, though I probably would have before I had one of my own.
My patience definitely decreased after becoming a mom. And then decreased again after becoming a grandmother.
WAY too much “pwecious snowflake/purple pen brigade” mentality out there.
I’ve become much less affectionate for kids since my youngest son began to get severely bullied several years ago, and it hasn’t stopped yet. Now that I’ve seen what absolute shits kids can be to each other, I just don’t like them that much anymore.
I’m more sympathetic to parents, but I have less sympathy for asshole kids. I WILL put other people’s kids in their place if they’re being rude in public. Small ones 4 and under shrieking in the store barely even register on my radar now.
Yes. In my 20s I was generally in the ‘who needs them’ school, even though I changed diapers in high school with a younger sister 16 years behind me.
But being a parent opened me up to parenting all children and caring for them. It’s a feeling of responsibility I have for them. Whether it’s guiding them out of dangerous situations or simply rolling some back when they play too rough. Part of that ‘it takes a village’ thing, I suppose. But it’s definitely there.
Heh. The other responses have reminded me that while in general I’m much more sympathetic to other parents than I used to be (e.g., when I see a kid melt down in public), I am often less sympathetic as well because I’m more sympathetic towards the kid.
For example, there’s a kid we go to church, Vicky, who is an entitled little brat; she’s always demanding this and that in the nursery, and seems to think everyone is there to serve her. In the past I would have just thought Vicky was a little brat – and although I still do think that, I have to say I have a bit more sympathy for her than I would have before, because I can see that her mom really does feed those tendencies.
There’s another kid at church who bounces off the walls (he’s got autism/ADHD issues), which might have annoyed me previously, but aside from his total hyperactivity and boundary issues he’s a really nice kid, and I can totally see that his parents are really trying to work with him. (And there I’m way more sympathetic towards his parents; that must be really hard, and I can appreciate that a lot better now.) Especially when I compare with Vicky, who has no such issues and is much less likeable.
I’m more patient with kids in public now that I’m knocked up than I was before, but for me the biggest thing that I’m noticing is just how horrifyingly bad so many people are at being parents. I started really paying attention in April and since then I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard a parent tell their child to “shut the fuck up” or seen them smack a kid in the back of the head. I’ve also noticed lots of people who appear to be pretty good parents overall, but mostly I see people who push baby strollers out into moving traffic without looking to see if their kid is going to be smooshed by a car. It is making me very, very aware of the fact that every single decision I make as a parent and many decisions I make as an individual will impact my child and just how important patience is to making sure a child knows they are safe and loved.
'Bout the same here.
More patient with kids in general, more patient in general, but with many more patience-trying situations happening to me all the time so I think maybe the next visible effect is that I’m less patient-seeming. Does that make sense?
I used to be way less tolerant of kids screaming, and now I feel sympathetic unless the parents are clearly not trying at all. Even then I try to give them the benefit of the doubt (on my good days) and remember what I’m like on my bad days.
I’m more patient because now I know how hard it is to deal with a baby, and how much work it is.
More sympathetic to kids and both more and less sympathetic to other parents. I have been trying to phrase the dividing line for that for a few minutes and I’m afraid it boils down to I’m a judgemental asshole 
If I think they’re trying and not being idiots I’m sympathetic and supportive. I’ve grabbed stuff that was falling, blocked a runaway toddler from escape and just offered sympathetic smiles to people who were needed one. I’ve also not hidden my reaction to idiot parents who are handing over control to their kids. I’m having a little trouble with the fact that this doesn’t seem to bother me.
Probably evens out. There are times now when I’m less sympathetic toward kids because I know that with some kids (including mine), sympathy causes them to exaggerate the problem…the “oh my god I think maybe perhaps I might have stepped on something metal so I’m going to get tetanus” syndrome.
I’m much more attuned to how much kids’ personality differences and quirks affect a situation now than pre-parenthood.