I think, as a parent, that the entitlement dripping from what these women are saying makes me want to punch them in the mouth.
"You go to a coffee shop or a bakery for a rest, to relax, and that you would have to worry the whole time about your child doing something that children do"
"What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?"
"I'd love for him to be responsible for three children for the next year and see if he can control the volume of their voices every minute of the day."I mean, seriously, what the FUCK
( ... )
Re: Honestly?sciroccoNovember 9 2005, 20:39:25 UTC
So, uh, yeah, everything my wife said up there, yeah, you can guess I'm on board with it. Hell, I'll even go so far as to say I'd probably make a POINT of taking Widget to a place that gave off some anti-kid vibes, just to show them not every kid of a yelling ball of suck in public places. Then again, that's just me. :)
Do you feel there's any reasonable way to police outrageous badly-behaved kid/parent behavior without making all parents/kids feel unwelcome?
I think that generally, a parent who feels unwelcome because of a sign or a note on a menu is a parent who's not going to keep a firm hand on their kid's behavior. I already work hard with Widget to make sure she understands how to behave - a restaurant publicly posting a request for for good behavior is one more tool that I can add to my toolbelt in teaching her.
I've never felt "unwelcome" bringing Widget anywhere, really - but that may be that I have the sense to recognize places that aren't suited for children and respect that. It may also be that we generally have zero tolerance for mis-behavior in public and remove her should she decide to act up, generally. There are places that generally make me feel more welcome, but that tends to be more a factor of individual waitstaff and such - people who go out of their way to say Hi to Widget or address her directly, that sort of thing.
I was a little less enthusiastic about the last line of the article, stating that the owner only hired people who could walk to work. I think that's a good thing for employees to seek to do for the environment (or other reasons, like hating to drive). When it's the employer, it's just another form of discrimination.
I can't know for sure how I'll feel about this when I'm the parent of a toddler. Right now, I'm somewhere in the middle. It is NOT possible to always control the sounds a child makes. Before I had a baby, when I heard children shriek in public places (the only places I would encounter shrieking children), I figured this was a conditioned behavior that the children had learned to get attention. Now I know that shrieking is a natural sound that children make to express a variety of emotions. We certainly don't reward our baby for shrieking, we mostly ignore it
( ... )
I absolutely agree with everything you've said here.
There do need to be places where children are welcome, if for no other reason than they need a place where they can LEARN how to behave, and mistakes and failures won't be met with draconian punishment. But even at kid-welcome places, kids shouldn't be left alone to do whatever they want.
And yes, other than at the most kid-inappropriate places, people bothered by small amounts of kid noise do need to lighten up - just like the world can't be a place all kids are welcome, neither can it be a place where no kids are ever tolerated.
I think the problem really is parents who say "I can't control everything my kid does, so I'll not try to control anything, and it's YOUR problem if you don't like that." who cause problems for the responsible parents among us.
And actually, a lot of states don't have laws protecting women's right to breastfeed in public, and that's a shame since we obviously need it. But a "feminist" book store not allowing breastfeeding? That's ridiculous.
Comments 15
"You go to a coffee shop or a bakery for a rest, to relax, and that you would have to worry the whole time about your child doing something that children do"
"What are we supposed to do, not enjoy ourselves at a cafe?"
"I'd love for him to be responsible for three children for the next year and see if he can control the volume of their voices every minute of the day."I mean, seriously, what the FUCK ( ... )
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I think that generally, a parent who feels unwelcome because of a sign or a note on a menu is a parent who's not going to keep a firm hand on their kid's behavior. I already work hard with Widget to make sure she understands how to behave - a restaurant publicly posting a request for for good behavior is one more tool that I can add to my toolbelt in teaching her.
I've never felt "unwelcome" bringing Widget anywhere, really - but that may be that I have the sense to recognize places that aren't suited for children and respect that. It may also be that we generally have zero tolerance for mis-behavior in public and remove her should she decide to act up, generally. There are places that generally make me feel more welcome, but that tends to be more a factor of individual waitstaff and such - people who go out of their way to say Hi to Widget or address her directly, that sort of thing.
Reply
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There do need to be places where children are welcome, if for no other reason than they need a place where they can LEARN how to behave, and mistakes and failures won't be met with draconian punishment. But even at kid-welcome places, kids shouldn't be left alone to do whatever they want.
And yes, other than at the most kid-inappropriate places, people bothered by small amounts of kid noise do need to lighten up - just like the world can't be a place all kids are welcome, neither can it be a place where no kids are ever tolerated.
I think the problem really is parents who say "I can't control everything my kid does, so I'll not try to control anything, and it's YOUR problem if you don't like that." who cause problems for the responsible parents among us.
And actually, a lot of states don't have laws protecting women's right to breastfeed in public, and that's a shame since we obviously need it. But a "feminist" book store not allowing breastfeeding? That's ridiculous.
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