Wouldn’t bother me in the least if it was a guy that did it.
You are misunderstanding. After lesser efforts have failed,
Meh. Water is harmless, doesn’t stain, easily cleaned up and gets jelly off of things. The kid could easily have spilled it himself, as wild as he was. Granted, you need to be pushed to the brink to do it, but it is effective. I once did it to my own child after a particularly awful few days of her not being reasonable during a hot summer when I was nine months pregnant. In Georgia. With no air conditioning. We both cried afterwards, but by god, she never repeated that awful behavior again. She’s 28 now, and I just mentioned it to her a few months ago. She has no memory of it, of course.
I guess this is where I am coming from.
You had a problem. How did you choose to resolve it? Well, you:
[ul]
[li]Muttered something indirect and non-specific[/li][li]Sat around watching the problem escalate, letting yourself more and more angry[/li][li]Glared at people[/li][li]Tried to get someone else to handle it, failed[/li][li]Tried to make it the responsibility of someone who’s not even in the room[/li][li]Tried to remove yourself from the situation (the only really effective strategy thus far, which for reasons beyond anyone’s control failed)[/li][li]Staged a one-man unpublicized hunger strike, and act whose significance was no doubt lost everyone, but probably made you feel pretty righteous.[/li][li]Blew up in a confrontational manner[/li][li]Finally directly addressed an involved party in a way that identifies the concern and proposes a solution- but inexplicably choosing to do this with the child, who probably wasn’t going to change much.[/li][li]Threw a cup of water on a kid[/li][/ul]
If you have a problem with someone, especially a stranger in public, your options are generally:
[ol]
[li] Identify the problem and propose a solution in a non-confrontation but direct way[/li][li]remove yourself from the situation[/li][/ol]
As you’ve learned, sitting around glaring and stewing doesn’t make your life better, and the feeling of righteous martyrdom really isn’t as awesome as it seems. Throwing a cup of water on a kid because you chose to confront your problems in a passive-agressive manner and let the tension rack up until you were out of control is not cute or reasonable.
Chances are the entire thing could have been solved by, at the beginning of a the meal, saying “Excuse me, I’ve noticed your children are getting a bit restless. I know this restaurant offers kids crayons with the kids menu…perhaps I could ask the waitress to get you some? It’s really sweet seeing a family out together like this, but they are bumping my seat quite a bit. Could you try to keep them in your seating area? I really appreciate that.” and perhaps putting in a pre-emptive request to be seated elsewhere. if you misjudged the situation and thought they would go away before it would bother you too much, well that sucks, but that’s no excuse for continuing not to deal with it.
A common mistaken assumption.
One of Jackmannii’s Laws of Dining Out states that the more obnoxious/loud/clueless/feral child-filled the party at the next table/booth is, the longer it will take to achieve critical mass and exit the restaurant.
This is quite logical when kids are involved, as you are dealing with Short Attention Span Theater, and the uncivilized offspring are provoked into loud shrieking rebellion by their parents dawdling over the remnants of the meal and/or the complexities of settling the bill.
To be fair it sounds like the waitress did care. She just couldn’t actually do anything about it.
Somebody has been hanging out with Muslims too much lately.
The child’s behavior was ridiculously provocative. He climbed over the bench and spilled the ops coffee all over the place.
To start with, being seated somewhere else wouldn’t matter. The children were running amok. And more to the point, your suggested dialogue was nothing but a thinly disguised passive aggressive attempt at humiliating them in public.
I am aware of the ‘he started it’ defense, but generally consider that to be a childs defense in these kinds of situations.
Otara
IME, she wouldn’t have been able to finish the first sentence of that before the parents would have started screaming and threatening. Unreasonable people do not respond to reason.
I knew you don’t live in the real world, sven, but this is way beyond what I would have predicted from you. Just out of curiosity, how would this scenario have played out in Cameroon?
What a shocker. even sven doesn’t understand the situation and yet gives us another of her holier-than-thou rants.
Out of curiosity, LurkerInNJ, the parents are obviously the real culprits here. If “tossing water on someone” was a reasonable action given how you were provoked, why didn’t you do it to the parents? Wouldn’t that make a lot more sense?
Oh, yeah, right, because that would have some balls. You chose instead to “solve” this problem by throwing water on a kid and then lying and saying it wasn’t intentional. Way to stand up for yourself there! You’re a class act.
Well, at least it’d stand a chance of being effective. If you’ll remember the OP, his method basically ruined his meal and left him very angry for a long time. He only got some relief when he finally broke down and chucked a glass of water on someone’s kid. Sounds like a textbook “bad way to handle the situation” if you ask me.
And what a great lesson for the kids, eh? “If someone is bothering you, hold it all in until you finally get so angry you commit a minor act of assault on their children, and then avoid responsibility by saying it was an accident! That’s the way adults resolve things!”
To be perfectly honest, Jesus would have probably given him the period version of a spanking. It may have involved a piece of grape vine as a lash. Spare the rod and spoil the child does NOT mean to not correct them and give them ice cream when they misbehave, it means that if you do not properly raise your children with respect for rules and other people, you will be raising little wild entitlement whore animals.
they’re sociopaths. and unfortunately, they’re raising more.
The story does sound rather… um, extreme.
In my experience (parent, but also ‘not a fan of disruptive children in a restaurant I’m trying to have a meal in - unless its a McDonald’s Playland’), MOST parents do. The ill mannered mouth breathers who don’t are really the exception. MOST parents with kids who misbehave regularly avoid restaurants until their kids outgrow the “wild animal” stage of toddlerhood and preschool (which generally happens if the parents don’t let their ill behaved brats have privileges like dining out). Those with “generally good” kids who get a surprise USUALLY remove them from the restaurant if things get out of hand (although they might take a few minutes to see if things calm down - carrying a full tantrum, kicking and screaming toddler through a crowded restaurant is a risk in itself - trust me).
The remaining people can be lumped in with other restaurant patrons who impress me with their lack of manners and boorish behavior. Couples who think excessive PDA in a booth is appropriate, loud drunks, people who decide to fight or break up with their significant others in public, people who are foul mouthed, those that cheer for the sports team on the barely visible tv in the restaurant bar, and people who insist on describing their medical procedure over dinner at the next table over. Kids for these people are merely a prop - not even a necessary prop with the exception that they provide a distraction for their OWN boorish behavior.
nah, I’ve seen kids that wild. not that there are all that many, but they’re the ones you notice 'cos they’re pissing you off. the rest of them you don’t notice 'cos they’re not pissing you off.
Some people are just crap at being parents. My kids would have been out of there in two seconds but you were on edge the moment you saw the kids, what does that say about you? Maybe you don’t like kids much do you?
Ah, we’re gonna get this argument now? Well:
Try again.