Didn’t realise my mates wouldn’t take their wailing kid out…. defriend?

Also, they did take the 4 year old out didn't they? Just not quickly enough for your liking. They tried some other things with him first, which for all you know might have worked with him at other times. And he was told off for hitting your daughter. So it's not like they're not parenting him. Just not to your exact specification and timeframe, which you presumably haven't communicated to them either.

I think you would be unreasonable to not be friends with them anymore, as it sounds like they are doing their best with him.

But yeah, maybe keep it some things that are more likely to be successful for the 4 year old.

I've had to drag my 4 year old around lots of family things this Christmas that weren't suitable for her, and deal with the looks and tutting from my family while occasionally she complained or cried. I had suggested other plans or not coming but they wouldn't hear of it. So we went and the predictable things happened and I dealt with it as best I could.

Perhaps they value your friendship and wanted to be involved, maybe they just misjudged this one slightly thinking he'd like it. I think you'd be unreasonable to significantly cool a friendship over this.

Do you have absolutely no concept of the fact some children are neurodiverse and can’t control their behaviour at 4?

I think however much you like female friends it’s the parenting styles that sort the wheat from the chaff.

I found it infuriating to be around those indulgent dopes who let their kids create havoc, so I ended up gravitating toward women I might not necessarily have been close to, but whose children were well behaved and we could all enjoy a relatively civilised and happy day out together.

So yes, quietly defriend.

Goodness I would say that wasn't a super enjoyable experience for you or your children.
I was discussing this very thing at work with a colleague recently we are both late 50s. My colleague was born and brought up in London me in a rural and tiny village, neither of us were taken to the cinema or to a restaurant by our parents until we were teens!
I guess our parents had their reasons for keeping us under house arrest!
I didn't have pizza until I was 16! I have made up for it since.

Are we reading the same thread.

Whatever issues he has, a four-year-old is capable of knowing he mustn’t hit babies (or any other children). His parents need to do something more drastic to stop him, e.g. warning him beforehand that if he does it he will be taken home straight away, and then actually do that.

People used to be mortified if their parenting (or lack thereof) meant that their child’s behaviour had an impact on other people in a public place. Shame had a very important purpose - it meant we all considered other people’s feelings as well as our own and our children’s. ‘Defriending’ is a new term, but it was in fact very common to distance yourself from people with antisocial behaviour. In fact, once a few people had done it, that antisocial behaviour was usually changed. This is why we talk about the ‘culture of entitlement’ - because it is genuinely new.

So why did neither you or your dh step outside with the baby? Could it be for similar reasons as your df not leaving the cinema?

Why should they take the baby out? The baby wasn’t the problem, the child doing the whacking was.

If they were attracting that much attention then it sounds like this kid's behaviour was outside the range of normal (and normal behaviour at the cinema for both kids and adults is generally pretty bad, which is why I don't go anymore).

Defriend?? That's a bit weird. Just adjust your outings for a bit if you genuinely like them. Make practical changes to avoid head bashing and cinema moments perhaps. If she is a genuine friend and you are you can ask why she didn't just leave out of interest and an attempt to better understand? But 'defriending' is odd - friendship isn't usually like an item you buy and then get refunded when it's not perfect as it were.

I don’t think sitting in a seat in silence for an hour + is an ideal activity for young children.. and a restaurant is the same setting really but with more chaos - I think cinema is ridiculous idea, restaurant less so but couldn’t the kids have just been sat separately? He shouldn’t have access to her head and certainly not at a restaurant. Was he not sat down? And not next to your child seeing as he is much older and boisterous. If you see them again, take some stickers and when he starts being bored, give them to him and make him sit down and engage in something for a while until the situation moves on. Sounds like crap parenting from your friends and just general overwhelm all round!

You can go to relaxed performances at the cinema, you can’t hear much of the film though 😆

Sympathetic?? He whacks your kid on the head!!

Absolute revelation to me that his parents were the type to ruin 20 minutes of a cinema screening with a wailing kid.

This is so dramatic. It’s Moana 2. 90% of kids screenings are noisy.

It was annoying yes but you did a cinema and restaurant with over tired small kids on a busy day, it was always going to be hard work. You said the kid who hit your child is awaiting diagnosis for additional needs, so it’s shitty to ditch the parents as friends over this. Just meet without the kids or pick more child friendly events. You are in for a rough ride though if you ditch friends every time you don’t like their parenting.

Absolute revelation to me that his parents were the type to ruin 20 minutes of a cinema screening with a wailing kid. I just can’t relate to the rudeness of it when it’s easy enough for one of them to take him out.

Even more mental to “defriend” someone over one single parenting moment you disagreed with, which overall was out of character for them.

Do you think all the people who had paid for a cinema ticket should also enjoy the chaos of a screaming 4 year old for 20 minutes, or just the ones who happen to be friends with the parents of the screaming 4 year old?

Agree. I wouldn’t end or demote a friendship over this. It’s just a kids cinema trip.

I feel like cutting your friends off because their 4 year old during a busy Christmas Day out was badly behaved is a bit dramatic.
Maybe you don’t really like them anyway and are just looking for an excuse.

This. Posters on here seem incapable of thinking ‘Well, that was annoying’ and then forgetting about it, or raising it and moving on. It’s ’minor annoyance to cutting them out of your life’.

I think you do have to accept if you’re meeting up with parent friends that they parent differently. Obviously we all think our approach is the right one and it might be for our child. I don’t agree with everything my friends do with their children but I’m sure I do things they don’t agree with.

In my experience friends like this only get worse. Wailing becomes behaviour issues and in the end parenting styles clash and it’s miserable.