From the quiz for prospective parents in Dave Barry’s Babies and Other Hazards of Sex:
"When is the best time to bring your baby to a nice restaurant?
A: During a fire.
B: On Easygoing Deaf People’s Night.
C: After the baby graduates from medical school."
:dubious: $25-$30 is *hardly *fine dining. Now if you’re paying upwards of $50-$100 a plate, then yeah I’d agree with you.
I’m not fond of kids, beyond certain exceptions, but even I wouldn’t say kids don’t belong in a museum - and I love going to the museum.
Very young babes in arms, ones who are too young to comprehend where they are and what is going on, fair dos. But Museums, art galleries, libraries - they’re all places that I think kids should be welcomed and taught how to behave in. I may not like kids, but I believe that education and cultural enrichment is damned important for them. And museums, art museums and libraries are places that they should be.
Of course, alongside that if the PARENTS can’t control them, then the parents need to be strung up by their heels and used as tetherballs.
Brothels, unless the kids are there for instructions.
This would be a great rule - except no parent on the planet is willing to admit that their child is anything less than a perfect precious princess. What we really need is a No Moron Parents rule.
Or the Mariana Trench, which I have it on good authority has received even fewer visits and for a shorter duration than the Moon. It was however visited earlier.
(my bolding.)
Nonsense. My two are generally safe, but there have been occasions when they have been an embarrassment. At which point leaving is a good idea, unless that’s not practical (e.g. in the middle of dinner) in which case taking them outside for “a bit of a chat” usually does the trick.
But what parent is self-aware enough to know that THEY are a Moron Parent? I’m pretty sure even the bad ones with bad kids think they’re doing just fine, or they’d stop doing what they’re doing.
I was in Girl Scouts – we were always going to museums. I remember my cousin taking me to the Carnegie when I was about eight. I love that place. Now in the Natural History end, they have a little area where kids can pretend to dig for fossils.
It helps if you don’t eat them alive. They don’t like that.
Came here to post the same thing. By late afternoon, most kids want to sleep or return home after spending all day at the parks. Parents do everyone a favor and return home (or hotel room) with your whining and crying kids by that time of day.
Some parents are aware, and they try to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there are plenty of parents who either aren’t aware of a problem, or who are actively trying to ignore it while they go on shopping or eating or talking on the phone.
If they’re self-aware enough to understand their little precious is causing a problem, and to take steps to mitigate that or at least minimise the suffering of those around them, are they then still a moron parent?
Those kids are crazy. Being kids at a place that’s not designed for adults.
Because they don’t like sitting still and quiet for a couple of hours straight, and start to get antsy and wiggly, and talk in normal voices.
I recently attended three different recitals of various community groups, one of which I performed in as well, and all three of them were negatively affected by children who were not able to sit still for the entire performance and started to ask questions of their parents in normal tones of voice. Which the parents responded to, in normal tones of voice.
Now, we can have a conversation about whether or not those constituted “well-behaved children” and appropriately-intervening parents. However, I attend a LOT of recitals and performances in the classical music and opera genres, and I cannot remember the last time I was able to enjoy an entire performance without at least one ill-timed, ill-behaved, and ill-intervened outburst by a child who had been kept their past their endurance.
Why is it not okay for there to be SOME adult-only spaces in society (other than, you know, adult-themed joints like titty bars)?
The problem here is confirmation bias. There are probably three times as many kids as you notice in restaurants, museums and live performances but the one sthat stand out and stick in your memory are the loud obnoxious ones with clueless or pandering parents.
The next time a kid annoys you try looking around to see if there are a couple more in the area who are behaving. It’s likely there are.
I gotta 2nd or third bars. I am regularly astonished by the numbers of very young mothers who brought infants and toddler with them to Happy Hour.
I haven’t decided whether that’s better or worse than bringing slightly older children who get loose and run around the tables. But it’s more shocking seeing a mom with an infant in one arm and a maragrita in the other hand.
Being quite familiar with confirmation bias, I actually DO look around to identify children who are behaving and/or parents who are intervening appropriately with children. In all of the three recent events I mentions, there was a 10:2 ratio of children behavior badly to children behaving well throughout (and the 2 that were behaving were babes in arms), and zero parents intervening with those children.
In other events I’ve experienced, I’ve also been keen to overcome my own confirmation bias and pay attention to the ratio of children misbehaving to children not misbehaving. It’s always been at least the above ratio (10:2) if not greater.
And keep in mind that as someone else has pointed out, when parents do have to intervene (and do so appropriately), that intervention itself is often disruptive . It’s difficult to take a crying child out of a classical music concert quietly, or in a non-disruptive manner.
I find it hard to believe that-- as replies seem to indicate-- there’s lot and lots of parents who are completely oblivious to the opinions of others as to whether or not their kids belong in a venue. For instance, I was pushing the stroller on the sidewalk, and people showed their approval by smiling at me and my kid. I pushed that stroller into a bookshop, people got a lot less smiley. I shouldn’t browse for books with my kid? I gotta get a sitter for that?
It gets even more apparent when, say, I take my kid into a church, or-- worse-- a plane. I think the church thing probably has to do with the fact that I only took my kids into one because of a Christmas concert, which seemed like a fairly kid friendly event to me. I certainly didn’t find it hard to stick close to an exit in case the baby started to fuss. Obviously, I can’t do that on a plane but believe me I wouldn’t take a small kid on one if I thought I had a choice. For one thing, they stick you in the baby ghetto at the back of the plane. For another, well, it’s its own punishment. I don’t need dirty looks from the insipid blonde only child bitch in seat 7D to let me know that my baby is crying. I can hear it. Not a lot I can do, really. All this bouncing her up and down and playing with the air phone is mostly for show. She’s going to cry for a while. Sorry.
I suspect that a lot of the standout incidents people remember of crying babies or kids out of hand might have a lot to do with unusual circumstances. New parents are figuring out what are and aren’t good places to take the infant. Childless aunts and uncles taking somebody else’s kids to a theme park won’t see signs that indicate their fun cute niece is about a half hour away from a fatigue tantrum. The parent who is experienced and normally keeps discipline but is having troubles unrelated to their kids maybe will let them cut loose just to have a chance to relax and think.
I don’t like the idea that there’s an unofficial set of rules of where I can and can’t take my kids. If I was a big foodie I might want to take my kids to fancy restaurants, even though there’s a risk of social embarrassment. I’d certainly like to take my kids into a bloody bookshop without seeing patrons acting put out. I really don’t get that one. Nobody mentioned it in the thread; it’s just something I ran into once.
A display of nineteenth-century musket fire.
Those buggers are loud. Even though the sergeant warned all the parents that the firing part of the display would be very loud, and they might want to go and look at some of the other attractions for a few minutes, there were still some parents with push chairs and toddlers who stayed. They didn’t stay after the first salvo, however, as the crying of their children was able to demonstrate how true the warning had been.
“I don’t like the idea that there’s an unofficial set of rules of where I can and can’t take my kids.”
In my view there isnt.
People here are talking about the frequency of moron parents, and not considering the frequency of moron child haters as well. Its a bit of a wash as far as Im concerned.
Once bookstore issues and the like vanish, etiquette about where you can take your children might matter more.
Otara