PLEASE give me examples! Finally! That’s all I want. I would like to know what you mean by “ill-behaved”. And what kind of children do we talk about? Teenagers? Of course many are ill-behaved. Children under 12? Honestly, I don’t see this very often. Never, actually, as far as I remember at least.
And let’s stick with public places, as the OP said. I know lot’s of children who are ill-behaved against other children. They don’t want to lend their toys. When 3 kids are together, 2 of them unite against the third kid. This kind of stuff. Character flaws as we all have them, adults included. Not the things you see in a super market.
Just give me examples of kids freaking out in a supermarket. Examples YOU saw. Let’s get concrete examples, let’s see what is such huge problem here.
I have no intention of going back through every instance in my life, but I will give two examples from the last month or so.
A child of about 10 was roaming the grocery store driving one of those motorized carts that are provided for disabled customers. I’m guessing he was about ten and the girl with him (sister?) was about eight. He was sitting on the edge of the seat to work the steering and she was sitting behind him on the same seat. I passed them in several aisles as I was shopping. No parent in sight. Running into displays, swiping shelves, causing a pileup of carts when people were trying to get around them, etc etc. They could have easily hurt themselves or someone else. Sadly, the supermarket would have probably been sued if they did.
-A six year old boy (his mother said how old he was when a fellow customer asked “is he old enough to go to school?” insinuating that maybe he should be there) was running around Bath & Body Works spraying samplers and rearranging displays and opening cabinets and trying to crawl inside. His mother glanced at him and said “Don’t” just once and then ignored him as she shopped. While I was checking out he’d decided to go behind the counter and ask the cashier if she had candy.
I could give you a few examples (from work) of children messing with expensive medical equipment, but I’ll leave it at these. How this helps you, I have no idea. Certainly you’re not doubting that there are some ill behaved children in the world, right? Since I stated it was a small minority and not a huge problem, I’m not sure what difference my examples will make for you.
I don’t have a supermarket example, but here are three from recent restaurant visits. These are all from the past couple of months.
The girl I mentioned before who was taking drinks from a glass and then leaning over the booth to spit it on the floor. Her parents finally stopped her after the third time. This was at a Sizzler and the girl was about 4.
Two boys running around, playing tag or something. They got bored of that and started climbing in booths to stand and lean over other diners. The staff had to track down the parents. This was at a Chili’s and the boys were around 6 or 7.
A girl about a year old was full on screaming while her parents ignored her. (probably five minute or so). They finally left. This was at an Olive Garden.
You people must live in places with a more lively population. I don’t think I’ve ever seen young kids actually unattended by adults running amok in stores. The worst I’ve seen is parents who let their kids cry without soothing or removing them - and that, very infrequently.
Well, except for the grocery store part & wanting to have the man around, you are right. There are oodles of mothers out there who had their babies without bothering to get married or any other sort of commitment from the “baby daddy”. Why do you think we need that term? And I am not even including the divorced ones, tho God knows there are plenty of women who married just so they could have kids. Teens are the worst for this, and teen pregnancies are on the rise again.
Frequency and increase are not necessarily the same thing, you know that right?
Here again- you are aware of the great range between something happening once and something happening constantly?
In France I actually never saw small children (under 5) in restaurants and I don’t think they have high-chairs in restaurants here, fast food restaurants excepted. I brought my son to a small Lebanese restaurant recently when he was about 5 months old, and this was only because of a misunderstanding*. We took him there, and left after 20 minutes.
*(my sister in law had made a reservation for her birthday and for some reason I thought that another sister in law, crazy about our small guy, would take care of him at home, nah, apparently not crazy enough)
As for stores, kids don’t behave like that here. We do have teenagers killing each other with knifes because of the way they ride their bikes (yesterday in Paris). Kids climbing into shelves? No way. Kids moving shelves, dropping items? No way.
What I saw yesterday, though, on the airport in Lyon: waiting in the line to show my passport in front of me was a father with his son, about 1 1/2 I guess. The little guy escaped and passed through the controls and left behind the plastic screens, w/o showing his passport of course. The father jumped past the police officers shouting “I will come back”, got his son, and regained his place in the queue.
I found that rather funny. And the police officers were not disturbed a single moment.
That’s not well behaved, but I would have laughed, its rather cute.
What difference??? I wanted to know what we are talking about here, just as I said. Objectively, I can see 3 possibilities only:
We have different perceptions: I just don’t see these things happening here because I don’t really care
We have different perceptions: you are easily disturbed by kids and perhaps, let’s say, slightly exaggerate situations
These things happen in your neighborhood and not in mine.
Btw, we don’t have motorized shopping carts, people can walk
Actually, no - did you bother to read that thread? No mention was made of my husband until suddenly someone pounced and said something along the lines of “OMG you love your pets more than your husband”. Something they plucked out of the clear blue sky. As happens here. Its not like this is the only subject where people are irrational and confrontational.
Shrug. All I do is reply.
No, the sad thing is that those parents that think it is ok to let their little heathens run amok will continue to do so; those parents who cannot imagine that any child could be bad will continue to assume we are talking about them; and the very few intelligent responsible parents will remain uninvolved. When the first and second types of parents proudly proclaim that their hellspawn will be the ones to take care of me in my old age - I shudder.
Didn’t you say that anybody having kids in an overpopulated world is selfish? Well, you should be consistent and not accept care in your old age, these people being kids of selfish people and all… And, chances are, if we believe your remarks on “random people” (GD thread), that you will probably be taken care of by axe murderers and child molesters anyway.
You all are just unreal at times. Where did I ever say that I never went to the store, and/or that it was because I was poor? What I said was that my brothers and I did not go to stores and sit down restaurants until we were old enough to mind our manners. So, as babies & toddlers, yes, we never went but that hardly translates into I “never went to the store”.
As for the “because I was poor” part, that was just a guess as to why it might have been different for someone else. OTOH, I don’t really believe that anyone close to my age was allowed to scream their way thru a store, since back then we didn’t have the cult of the child that we do now.
See, there is another difference between now and when I grew up - all of the neighbors knew each other and took each others kids when a mom needed to run errands. There was even a spinster lady in our neighborhood that handed out home baked cookies to the kids every Monday after school - can you imagine that going on these days?
Not my problem. Simply because far too many parents just blither into having kids willy nilly doesn’t mean that they should expect that it is OK for them to take their misbehaving herd to the store every time they need groceries. Part of being an adult is being responsible for your own decisions - not expecting the rest of the world to deal with them.
I probably couldn’t either.
The pathetic thing is, I can no longer shop - not in the way that most folks do. I don’t do our grocery shopping and haven’t been in a mall in years. I meet most of these “fun” children when I am on the road to and from the various dogsports I do, or the classes I go to, or in my own neighborhood. I’ve already written about the pool parties that went on all last summer that I assume will start up again this summer, where it was apparently OK with all the parents that some small girl child happily screamed blue murder the whole time she was in the pool. I believe I also wrote about the little girl (last week I think?) that yelled MOMOMOMOMOMOM to her mother who was ignoring her five feet away. Yesterday there was a little boy on the sidewalk across the street on a wheeled plastic something, angrily screaming about something that was wrong until his dad finally came out of the house and fixed whatever was the problem.
And it isn’t just the yelling. Its the running around stores pushing into people who get in their way, the heelies, the racing with carts, the damage to things in my front yard, the ones that are left to wander about parking lots and side streets. And the mess! Here, they like to whack pinatas for Easter, so the local parks are filled with all of the paper and candy wrappers that come out of them now. These are just what come to mind and all is shrugged off with “kids will be kids”.
I believe that I gave examples much earlier in the thread. However, here are some new ones just for you.
I used to work in a women’s clothing store. We had little “darlings” who would climb on the clothing racks. This was unsafe for the children, unsafe for any customers who might want to be around those racks, and usually the kids damaged some items of clothing each time this happened. Sometimes we could fix the clothes, sometimes not. Mom’s response? “Kids will be kids, and they need to run around a lot.” Not in the store, they don’t. And mom didn’t bother to correct her kids, either. This happened too many times to count, with many different parent/kid combos, and the kids were all ages, from toddlers to teens.
We had pantyhose packages on display. Some kids really enjoyed opening the packages and pulling out the contents. They usually damaged the pantyhose too. Sometimes, if we got there quickly enough, we could prevent the damage, but of course even if the pantyhose were perfect, we had to sell them basically at cost. Mom’s response? “Oh, he just loves getting into everything.” Mostly the kids were preschoolers, and again, the mothers involved didn’t bother to keep a closer eye on the child, or tell it not to do that.
One of my favorites, kid is whining that he needs to go potty. Mom says to just hold it. We could count on getting at least one kid each week telling his parent that he needed to go potty right now. My very favorite is the time when Auntie was trying something on, and Mom asked us for a little plastic bag. She held it, and told her little boy to pee in it, which he did, right at the front door. There was a public restroom right next door, not 50 feet away, but she couldn’t be bothered to take her son over there. Then she tried to hand that bag to me to dispose of. I told her to get out, take her son with her, and never come back. Of course Auntie didn’t buy anything, and left the rejected clothes in a heap in the dressing room (and she hadn’t heard me throw out mother and son, either). She stormed out, promising to never darken our door again, which was quite a relief for us. I actually don’t blame kids for whining if they have to go to the bathroom and have had their requests repeatedly ignored.
Children do NOT belong behind the counter. Nobody belongs behind the counter except store employees. That place might not be safe, plus it’s a security risk. Do YOU want some kid digging up your CC receipts? We didn’t appreciate kids ransacking the area behind the counter, scattering our records. We sure didn’t want someone (adult or child) checking out the cash register. And asking strangers for candy is NOT cute, except at Halloween.
As a customer, just last Friday, I was out at a local diner. Two mothers and a couple of other adult women came in after I was seated and served. They had a few kids in tow. Most of the kids were loud and happy but tolerable. One was singing at the top of his voice. Another was throwing a hissy fit about the food selections. And there was one who was screaming about not being able to bring his favorite toy. Note, please, that this kid was about 8. Also note that he was screaming AS THEY CAME INTO THE RESTAURANT. So the adults decided that they were gonna have a sit-down meal in spite of the fact that Junior was throwing a major tantrum.
Also, as a customer, I see kids running around the grocery store, playing with the toys, and their parents (I assume they’re the parents) not insisting that they act appropriately. Who cares if the toys are broken? The parents weren’t going to buy them anyway. I have been run into many times. I walk with a cane or staff, and there’s a reason for that. I fall down easily, and I require some sort of assistance in getting back up, either from the cane or from a person. I really, really hate falling down, especially in public. It’s embarrassing. It doesn’t seem to embarrass either the child who ran into me or his parents, though. Nor do they offer to help in any way.
Yes, it’s natural for kids to want to run around and play. However, it is not appropriate for them to do so at all times.
I was using the restroom some years ago. While I am not a particularly modest person, I do rather like my privacy when I change my tampons (this was several years ago, before I got myself spayed). One boy squirmed under the door of my stall, and got an eyefull. I very nearly explained the Facts Of Life, Menstrual Cycle Version to him. He was quite old enough to go to the men’s room on his own, and quite old enough to understand that a closed door means that someone wishes privacy. His mom said that he was a very curious boy. I told him that he had come into the stall just as I was inserting my tampon, and that she might wish to enlighten him on the subject, as I’m sure he was very curious as to what I was doing.
I can come up with more instances, if I search my memories. Mostly I try not to remember, and just let it go.
See, this is the problem. We have a growing number of people who are partial to children, don’t see/hear them doing any wrong ever and who totally overreact to any negatives about them.
I’m not going to go back through a 20 page thread to find every instance. Here’s one from this page:
I don’t know about you, but to me, calling a person “a little heathen run amok” is insulting and belittling. I have no doubt that a further search would glean more gems like this.
See, this is the problem. We have a small but vocal minority of people who are totally intolerant of children, see/hear heathens running amok in every locale, and who totally overreact to any instance of their benighted presence.
How am I taking it way too far? The number of children that I state are misbehaving without consequence? The volume of the noise? The frequency of occurance? If those, have you noticed I’m not the only one saying these things?
I don’t plan to need to be “taken care of” by anyone other than maybe my husband or perhaps a home health care person. Neither of which would have been born in the last five years.
The thing is, you parents try to claim that you are oh so selfless in having these kids by claiming that I will need them in old age to “take care of” me. As if every person ends up in a nursing home, which of course they don’t. Out of all of my and my husband’s relatives (that I know of), only one ended up in a nursing home and she only because her house was way out in the boonies and she was alone. The rest have all died at home or in a hospital. One thing about not having children is that we tend to have more money to put by, meaning it is far more likely we will be able to live and die in peace at home. Or in a hospital if it happens to go that way.
But, even if I do end up in a nursing home, it isn’t like you all need to keep pumping out the kids to make sure that home is fully staffed… :dubious:
Which makes this a perfect example of why parents cannot discuss any negativities about children rationally. Those children are acting like heathens running amok, hence that descriptive term. Are you of the opinion that children are always angels, no matter what they are doing?
The fact that you assume there are “oodles” of mothers who would prefer to raise a child alone shows a profound lack of common sense. I can’t even speak to this because it’s mind-numbingly ridiculous.
Really?!
Of course I know that. My point was that gripe is—well, you seem to have a lot of gripes—but the one I’m thinking of here is that you have that “these kids today” sort of mentality. Kids in your generation were so much better behaved and now they’re off the tether, running amok. So, allow me to clear up the semantics and you can actually argue the meat of the issue here:
We’d both agree that a child crying, now and again, is natural and acceptable, right? (I can’t believe I have to ask). You take issue, if I’m reading right, with the fact that it’s happening in public and you feel that it’s happening more frequently than in did in your day. You also take issue with children who are older and who are “running amok.” You believe this is happening more often. I used the word “constant” because your posts left the impression that you live in a town of sugar-addled, rough-housing lunatics. I’ve been to every state in the union and I’ve never seen this town. Perhaps it’s well hidden.
My point is this: you portray the world as teeming with out-of-control young’uns. The FREQUENCY which you see these children is incredibly important to your point. If you see them twice a year, it doesn’t mean a thing. If you see them twice daily, then you’d have a point. It’s just that my personal experience and most people on this thread’s personal experience is that the world is filled largely with polite, decent tykes and that you’re hyper-sensitive or simply making shit up.
