I must admit; my eyebrows are at this point about halfway up my forehead.
Your dog passed inspection with flying colors yet both the cops and the animal control have a problem? Excuse my eyebrows, please.
No, animal control didn’t have a problem, but since they got a complaint they were required to come out and look. They said he looked healthy and was friendly, and that they didn’t see any problems. I actively sought them out later to inquire about the laws.
ETA: I rescue, so I’ve had dealings with the local humane offciers before. I invited them in to inspect the house even, and they said everything looked good to them.
In small doses, both for the child’s sake and for society’s sake. Very young children can’t be expected to be on good behavior for hours at a time. Therefore, do not take them on all-day shopping sessions. Or other all-day excursions. Very small children need to eat and rest and excrete far more frequently than adults or even older children do. Don’t drag them around past their naptime/bedtime, make sure to feed them adequately and at the proper time, and make sure to visit a bathroom far more frequently than an adult would need to. Adults can be far more flexible about mealtimes and bedtimes, but little kids need their routines. Adults can understand that they’re hungry, but they want to go visit another store, and they can deal with it physically and emotionally. Kids might want to visit another store, but they really and truly DO need to eat properly and at regular intervals. They WILL get cranky even if they’d prefer to go to the toy store right now rather than eat. They just don’t have the reserves that adults do. Similarly, kids might want to play rather than take their naps, but they (and everyone around them) will suffer if they don’t get their rest.
Sometimes, Life happens, and the kid can’t get whatever his routine calls for. More often, the parent decides that his/her agenda is more important than the child’s needs, or the parent is clueless. Being a good parent means that the kid’s needs (not wants, but needs) trump the parent’s wants. And most of the time, the parent does have the choice as to how much time the kid spends out in society.
And for crying out loud, if a kid says he needs to use the potty, take the time to get him to one! If he’s using this as an excuse to get some rest, maybe the parent shouldn’t be taking him on such long expeditions.
Nobody wants to sniff YOUR crotch, because you stink…rotten from the insides and all…Boni Maroni…
I don’t think the human race is in any danger of dying out :rolleyes: there are almost 7 billion of us. I fully believe the choice to parent or not parent is a personal one, and I don’t like the guilt trip that some of the posters here have tried to lay, “well you should just have to put up awfully-behaved children, because they’re the future, and they’ll be taking care of you in the nursing home.”
Because no matter how much you think your privacy is worth, you don’t have the right to harm other people, even by inaction. You can’t set booby traps, or leave hidden dangers around. Do you think it would be OK for me to shoot someone who stole my pencil? Just because someone is doing something wrong doesn’t mean that they give up all their rights.
What if a rescue worker needs to cross your property and falls into your uncovered well? Or a neighbor has a misdelivered package and gets electrocuted by hanging wires when she is trying to put it on your doorstep?
And to make it more relevant to this thread, if you have something that you know is attractive to kids and is dangerous (a pool, a swingset, a fun ball pit with hidden punji stakes), society has determined that you need to be even more cautious.
So yes, even if you personally don’t seem to have much empathy for people, our society has decided that we don’t live in a hobbsean state of nature and that we all owe a little bit of human fucking decency to one another.
And part of human fucking decency is trying to make sure that the fruit of your loins isn’t consistently annoying other people. I don’t think that anyone is saying that ALL kids must be perfect little angels ALL the time. However, I do think that many parents either don’t understand or don’t care that their pweshus widdle snowflakes are annoying the other people in the area. It’s one thing to have a kid cry for half a minute. It’s quite another to listen to one whine that he needs to go potty for half an hour. If the kid needs to go potty, then take him. Don’t make him and everyone around him suffer.
And no matter how much the parent might think his convenience is worth, he doesn’t have the right to inflict a whiny, bratty child on other people, even by inaction.
I’m not talking about obvious dangers like hanging electrical wires or giant holes in the ground. I’m talking about normal, everyday stuff. Society can’t make me fill every little hole or keep my dog inside all day long, and if somebody is too stupid to watch where they are going, that’s their problem, IMO. I am within my rights to keep a dog restrained outdoors on my property, and if somebody walks up to him without asking first and gets attacked, the fault lies with them. I should not be held responsible because somebody trying to break into my bathroom window tripped in a hole I had dug to plant a rosebush in the following day and broke his leg. That is, as I said, ridiculous. If somebody walks up to my fence and sticks their had through it, and loses a finger to the pack of rescued dobermans I’m keeping back there, that is THEIR FAULT, for TRESPASSING and for BEING STUPID.
Yeah, I understand and agree. The trouble is, too many people do NOT understand the difference (like our OP), and they refuse to see where one draws the line.
And in the example **Kalhoun **gives below, well that’s what one takes on when one becomes a parent. It’s NOT convenient. If a person has a meeting with a contractor, or some other job related thing they need to do, they shouldn’t be scheduling a shopping trip close to that meeting. And NO, I don’t mean that every single time a toddler has a meltdown in a public place that a person has to immediately and effectively deal with it. BELIEVE me, my 17 year old was an absolute monster when he was a boy!
There were a lot of “this is how we behave in public” lessons that I went through with him. He threw a temper tantrum when he was well past child stage (about 8 or 9 if I recall), in a restaurant. Nine was well past the stage where I had the physical ability to deal with him (that is, pick his little butt up and transport him to the car). He wasn’t being loud, but he was being a brat, refusing to leave, hiding behind a potted plant and generally being a little PITA. I finally had to threaten to call his dad and tell him that his dad was coming down to get him.
For some reason, this kid just hated restaurants, and on unexpected occasions, he’d let it be known right out in public (we tried not to subject him to them often, but as you say, sometimes it’s necessary, if only to teach them). So, there were several such incidents throughout his growing up period that were unpleasant for both of us, and the general public (which is why I took care of it rather than make strangers suffer longer than necessary to remove him from the situation). There were several times he was misbehaving such that I had to have the waitress box up what we’d ordered and we left.
The incident when he was 8 or 9 was thankfully, the last, or next to the last, such restaurant incidents. But NEVER did I decide, as some parents do, “well, that’s just kids being kids, screw people who think they’re being inconvenienced by my angel’s expression of self”.
That is the problem with so much of society today. People that are raised in a “cult of the child/my angel can do no wrong” atmosphere, are the ones who grow up thinking that the world owes them a living. They don’t magically get the appropriate life lessons merely because they physically become adults. That HAS to be instilled in them by responsible, PRESENT parents. And yeah, sometimes that means that the parent, rather than the public, is inconvenienced.
:rolleyes: Yes, the OP wasn’t directing his comments toward people who constantly complain about children being in public, but was actually talking about everyone who has ever complained, and somewhere in there I think he mentioned that kids can do no wrong.
I’m sorry, but you’re kind of an idiot if you can’t even get sentences like “No, not just people who don’t have kids, but the special group of asswipes who actively hate children.” For the love of fuck, there is a whole paragraph that does nothing but give examples of the exact sort of people who take it to extremes that the OP is discussing.
There is no “deciding where to draw the line”. If you’re the kind of moron who has mental anguish every time you hear a child and hop online and rant about how you were mindraped by these tots, you fit under the OP. If you’re the kind of person who says “There was a baby in the theater crying and its parents didn’t take it outside and I am annoyed” the OP is not talking about you.
The line is pretty fucking clear, and trying to come off as the reasonable middleman is just making you look like a retard. And yes, I am telling you this in a mean way because you have conspicuously failed to do more than skim a post and respond with a patronizing and frankly just plain wrong construal of the OP.
It’s great that you are in the mind of the original poster. Is there something wrong with letting him/ her explain the position- or are you defending the position you have taken?
You must have missed the line about people who decide not to have children living sad worthless lives.
No, I am promoting the ability to use the skill known as reading comprehension. It was perfectly clear when he wrote it. That’s the whole point of written communications. I am sure the OP, if he feels like it, wiill tell you the same thing.
If the OP said “My favorite color is blue” I do not need to be “in his mind” to tell you that his favorite color is blue.
Is this such a difficult concept for the (self-proclaimed) world’s smartest message board?
ETA: and no, I didn’t miss the line about people being terrified of life’s trials. But it is clearly implied that he’s still talking about the same group:
“Those childless-by-choice folk who bitch and moan incessantly about children, who tirelessly support their great ‘decision’ need to realize that they are just a bunch of spectators sitting life out in favor of a less risky, less traumatic, less valuable, less human experience.”.
How is this not fucking clear?
If this is the worlds smartest message board, I sure don’t need you to tell me how to interpret a post.
Pretty easy huh?
Well, obviously you do, since you apparently don’t get this whole reading thing. Or maybe it’s just because you’re an overemotional hug machine overtaken by your passionate crusade against anyone that has wronged you, and can’t be bothered with what the OP actually said, because that would get in the way of your indignation.
To me, it is clear that someone who deems childless couples “less valuable” has issues. And still to me, that’s the point of the OP where the mask drops and the previous justifications, clarifications and qualifications are rendered moot and meaningless, and when it becomes clear the OP is really writing at anyone who bitches about kids for any reason. When it becomes apparent the lady doth protest too much, if you will.
Your mileage obviously varies, and that’s the beauty of life and diversity ! 
Dear me- exactly where do you get that from? Precise quotes would be handy.
Otherwise I would think you were talking out of your arse.
This might be a reasonable interpretation. Still, I question the utility of reading so much into two words written during a much longer rant. Even if he does think that people without children are less valuable, it doesn’t follow that he’s ranting about them, nor does it follow that he thinks kids can do no wrong. It’s perfectly logical to believe (for example, if one is a catholic) that people who choose not to have children are less valuable without believing that children should be excused any misbehavior. I think it’s dishonest to attribute a viewpoint to the OP that he isn’t expressing and that doesn’t logically follow from his post.
(Because, Cicero, you’d have to be reading the OP’s mind to do so.)
Look…LIFE isn’t convenient. Who are you to say who should inconvenience themself so that you don’t have to see their children on an off day? You don’t know how close anyone’s schedule is and you don’t know what the circumstances are surrounding the trip to the store, and if you have kids that you regularly cared for during day-to-day activities, you’d know that schedules don’t mean a helluva lot in everyday dealings. A person may be at the grocery store picking up a prescription. Or replenishing a critical dietary item. Or maybe the parent got hung up at a previous errand. If you expect a tight schedule to be followed every day, you’re going to be disappointed most of the time.
Children are a necessary part of society and it’s not the obligation of the parents to make sure you don’t see or hear things that *you personally *don’t like, particularly in places like grocery stores. It takes years for kids to mature into adults and they (and their parents) will make thousands of mistakes along the way. If you don’t like the way that feeeeels in your world, you need to adjust your schedule accordingly. Nearly every community has all night grocery, gas station, pharmacy, and other services. Far fewer children will be frequenting these places after 9pm. Have at it.
I merely asked you to support your accusations about me. As you haven’t done so I guess you have nothing to add. I don’t really have a dog in this fight but I do like logic.