Now you know why the spartens their some of their kids off cliffs.
Behind every responsible parent are ten more who are busy yakking on their cell phones, obliviously pursuing their own needs, or figuring that since they don’t have the energy or balls to require decent behavior from their kids at home, why should the rest of us be spared the shrieking and carrying on in public?
I’m the same way. Some people believe it is threatening if a stranger talks to their children. I think it’s ridiculous.
I remember my grandmother’s favorite tactic for getting us to knock it off, whether we were roughhousing or crying or whatever. She’d say, “Please be quiet…there’s a woman with a sick baby downstairs.” Well, we could be in a store, a car, or our own home. But we’d have to stop and think about how there could possibly be a woman downstairs when we didn’t even HAVE stairs! Taking 10 seconds to ponder that would usually make us forget what we were carrying on about.
Sometimes, it’s very effective to just make eye contact with the kid and say, “Stop that.”
Kalhoun’s post made me smile–that was one smart Grandma.
The kid needs attention, not ignoring.
I almost dread shopping at this point. Kids climbing over displays, kids shrieking in the store (has noone really not heard of “inside voices”?), kids crying–either distress cries or “mommy, I am exhausted and cannot do shoppinganymore” cries.
What is wrong with parents? This stuff doesn’t happen as much in the older sets–but preschool on down–they shouldn’t not be going to the mall with you for 5 hours. It is too much.
And how about engaging them when you’re in the store? Point out colors, and letters etc. Make up a quiet game. What the hell? This is not rocket science.
Seeing how kids are indulged and yet so dis-serviced by parents today makes me ill. Has there been a disconnect of common sense in the coming generation?
My kids are 15, 13 and now 7. NONE of them acted up in stores as described above. But then again, they went in with known expectations as to time and behavior. They are far from perfect kids, but they know how to behave in public. I fully blame the parents for allowing this behavior to continue.
Sheesh.
I was in a restaurant with my fiancee. There was a family eating dinner. The kids, probably ages 6-7, were exceptionally quiet and calm the whole time. My amazed fiancee told the parents how well behaved their kids were. Thier faces lit up with delight.
Turns out they had a deal where if anyone ever comments on how well-behaved the kids are in public, the kids get $1 each.
I used to say stuff like “that’s an interesting shade of purple you’ve got going there - did you plan it that way?” and other critiques of their technique. they’d often stop in mid yowl to ponder that.
Shreiking loudly is not an easy behavior to extinguish. It is not quite the same as a tantrum. Sometimes it is to get attention, but it often starts as just fun and when it gets strong reactions, then it becomes a tool for manipulation. We do time outs and they work well, and even surprisingly well over the ong term. Immediately the advantage of the time out is she can’t see me cringing and hiding under a pillow. My daughter is two and every so often goes into a shrieking phase. As far as I know, she has never shared this behavior with the public, not even at a playground.
The thing is, we have been teaching her to behave in public all along. We praise her for good behavior and give her lots of attention or privileges and responsibilities, allow strangers to praise her good behavior, tell her what behavior is an is not acceptable, and remove her from the store if she continues unacceptable behavior. An example of a privilege and responsibility is to allow her to hold the shopping list. Man, she eats that up (not the list itself) and has since about 8 months.
Some people don’t try to explain things to children under age two or one. Many of these also start with whatever disipline method they are using suddenly at what ever age they think is the magic age, and their jobs are hard indeed then. Loren has been given short time outs as soon as she was old enough to bite while nursing. We explain things far before we expect her to really understand and she continually surprises us with how much she can understand and do.
It must be much harder for parents who need to bring their children along with them to the store even when the children have had enough of outing for one day and just want to play or wind down. The store itself is a reward for my daughter.
“Indigoes”?
When my nieces start to cry, once in a while I’ll start bawling right along with them. That confuses them into silence and the looks on their faces are priceless.
Indigo children, “a new kind of evolution of humanity.”
That’s absolutely right. And as an added bonus, it actually will become quite helpful as they get older. When they’re little, you can pull the cart over to the cereal boxes or whatever and tell them to put one in the cart…but they memorize Every. Inch. of the Store. in no time, and when they’re bigger, you can send them for a couple cans of tomato sauce or grab me a bag of onions or what have you. They are truly a second pair of hands.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I was happily ignorant of this until just now. Grr.
Well, I understand what you are saying, and children should obviously not be routinely ignored, but the other side of this is that parental attention is reinforcing. And almost the First Rule of Parenting is to reinforce what you want and extinguish what you don’t. Demonstrate, in various ways, what the ways are that work in getting Mommy or Daddy to pay attention to you (as lee described). Or engage them in the process as Kalhoun mentions, and be sure to praise every little thing they do at first, and subsequently intermittently. But sometimes nothing works.
There was none of the screaming described in the OP in the Shodan household. And when I say “none”, I mean there was a certain amount. And there was about a month during which it was difficult, because we were trying to get across the notion that Daddy can’t hear you unless you use your Big Boy voice. And they don’t always catch on right away.
We did what we could to communicate what would work, but screaming sometimes worked with other people, so they tried it more than once. And sometimes, after you have explained, “No, you can’t get out of the shopping cart and crawl around”, and we can’t go home immediately because there is no food in the house, and I realize you are tired and cranky and hungry, but if you pitch a fit, I will turn away and disregard it. Think of it as putting Junior on your ignore list. He may irritate others, and I am sorry for that, but I am not going to hit him, because that is attention and therefore reinforcing, and I will not try to calm him down, because that is attention and therefore reinforcing, so all I can do is go about my business until he calms down or the shopping trip is complete.
Sorry if that upsets you to hear Shodan Jr. scream. It’s no walk in the park for me, either. But I have to shop in the same stores as you, and I want to raise a reasonably civilized adult, and this is how I need to do it. Sorry.
Regards,
Shodan
But they’re special.
You see, unlike all previous generations of kids, they “come into the world with a feeling of royalty (and often act like it)” and they “have difficulty with absolute authority (authority without explanation or choice)”, and furthermore they “simply will not do certain things; for example, waiting in line is difficult for them.”
Gosh, and to think I was under the mistaken idea that brats had existed for hundreds of years.
Read the Houston Online article connected to the Skeptics’ Dictionary entry. It’s hilarious. You see, her children are special. Because they draw rainbows. And don’t like to do their homework.
Man, nothing makes me laugh harder than wacky new-agers.
Ha! I did that with an ex-boyfriend’s kid one time too. He was about to throw a fit, and I hollered right back at him. He didn’t know what to do; nipped that tantrum right in the bud. 
I feel sorry for you and your children when they discover drugs and alcohol.
You should really use the sarcasm smiley when you are being selfish and rude without any real regret.
Another one that worked for me is when my kid fell, and “the face” would start materializing…I’d just ask him, “Did you hurt my floor?” “I hope that floor isn’t broken!” and he’d check to make sure the floor wasn’t broken, and all would be well in Kid Kalhoun’s world again.
That’s…ingenius, though I daresay you didn’t think so at the time. Wow, I salute your mom! It may be harsh, but it sure got the point across well.
Egad, I’ll have to bookmark this thread for when I need some creative solutions! I love the $1 bribe - shoot, now I can’t find the post, but that was a good 'un.
I had the twins @ Ikea yesterday, only b/c I was meeting my mom & sister there, I’d never try it alone. What Kalhoun and lee was saying really held true - my son was only happy when we let him help push the gigantic monstro car-cab-affixed-to-the-front-of-it cart (and no, he didn’t run into anyone’s ankles, so don’t anyone start carrying on about those monstrosities, when you have twins or 3 little kids, it’s the only way to fly). He was a real trooper helping out!
The point about kids’ needs being ignored is so true - how can people expect their kids to be civil for hours & hours of shopping? Amazon.com is the way to go.
But OTOH, sometimes you’re just screwed. I tried to go to Whole Foods w/them once, to get organic produce like good mommies are supposed to (they’re not open late, so that’s not an option). And I can’t even get the fucking double stroller up & down their aisles, or through the checkout lane. And then my son starts pulling his sister’s hair, and she’s screaming, and I’m giving him my sternest “No!”, and the other shoppers are staring - OMG, that lady’s yelling at her kid, somebody do something! Some days you just can’t win.
Yes, sometimes when a child is screaming, it’s a situation like you describe. I got the impression from the OP though, that this wasn’t the case this time. I’ve seen people who were so selfish, and paid more attention to their own needs, and not the intellectual/emotional health of their child. The poor kid is so starved for attention, if you give them a kind word, they cling to you desperate for more interaction. This kind of parenting style is what some of us are commenting on. Children who have parents that do this will try to get attention by doing things that are described in the OP. Not crying, or shrieking alone, but calling to their parent and asking incessant questions in a whiny high pitched LOUD voice. It’s different than when the parent is not condoning tantrum behavior, it’s got a whole other vibe. You can see that the kid needs attention, just wants to be talked to, and acknowleged because they don’t ever get the nurturing they need, unlike a tantrum thrower who is testing the limits of behavior.