Surely you shouldn't let your toddler ROAR in a cafe?!

[Worrieditsamistake]

Sat here trying to block it out but good god it's hard! Cafe in question has a very small soft play area in the corner but is is definitely NOT a softplay cafe. It's quite busy and I would say 80% of customers do not have young children.

There are around four young children playing (all under 4 I'd guess) and a couple of women who I'm guessing are the mothers are sat on the table next to the play area.

The children are having fun and there is a lot of excited screaming, which is fine. But one of the boys has been stood for ten minutes literally roaring at the top of his voice. Little fists bunched up, arms back, leaning forward and ROARING. He's definitely not upset, it seems to be part of the game (they are playing monsters or something, and the other kids are running up to him, squealing in excotemt and running away again). The mother (I assume it is the mother) is smiling on indulgently.

WTF?? What has happened that allowing a child to roar continuously i a public place is OK??!

Whilst normally yanbu in the sense it's a cafe, the very fact they have small soft play area means yabu in this instance, they are courted the parents and young kids market. Very few cafes have soft play small or otherwise

I have ND children you can absolutely help them to understand this is not appropriate in many cases some parents seem to assume autism etc = no boundaries they are horrified to meet my child who has them YES he took WAY longer than other children to learn and understand YES at age 11 he is still a work in progress but I never stop working with him to gain understanding and to be a "good citizen" (concept he learned in primary school) he isnt perfect but he is getting better at the word "no"

I think it is so important for people to step in and say: 'Behave' to a child who is not being properly parented. It's not their fault. How can they possibly know their behaviour is wrong unless people tell them. If their parents won't, society should. If we all do it, the child learns.

The fact no-one else is having fun is just not on their radar, it is a very selfish attitude.

Thank you. Same here. Autistic child who took roughly a thousand times longer to learn anything than his NT brother did. No exaggeration. 1000 repeated instructions, explanations, repercussions instead of about five. But he got there and he is thriving. You have to put the hours in.But it is massively worth it.

I was literally typing the same thing, 1000 times more!! I couldn't agree more @Theunamedcat

Those brats at the vets are horrible. Vets are often for very sad events or for treating pets that are in pain. It’s not a day out for kids to mess around and make a nuisance of themselves.

What is it with these parents. The candle idea is lovely btw

Isn’t it just. They must be horrified when they come to the UK.

Why didn’t the vet go out and tell them to be quiet?

YABslightlyU if this cafe had a soft play in the corner. Adult centred establishments would mean a different set of social rules.

However, something has happened in the past five or so years where asking children to lower their voices is seen as an impingement on their human rights. Keeping eight year olds from yelling out whatever they want to say in the middle of a lesson is now what I spend half of my teaching day doing.

We’re on holiday atm and a child took DD3’s toy from her in the child pool. His dad tried to reason with him to return it, to no avail. I had to go over and use the teacher voice to get it off him. The dad actually thanked me, and said ‘oh he never listens to me’!

I went for lunch today at a local walled garden, it was a gorgeous sunny day and he outside tables were full of older people enjoying lunch, one table was a couple with their 2 children aged maybe 7 and 10. After the children finished their meal the left the table and walked to a small grassed area about 4 tables away from their parents and spent the next 10 minutes booting a ball against the wall and screech the noise was horrendous and the poor people at the tables close were very uncomfortable as the ball kept going their way. In the end the manager came out and told the parents to leave. Everyone cheered as they left.

I tend to agree really - the parents chose that specific cafe because of the soft play. You could have specifically chosen one without a soft play, presumably. If you don’t want the cafe of your choice to be child-friendly, then don’t go to a child-friendly one? Just like I swerve dog-friendly cafes.

The roaring is annoying and my kids would be told to zip it, but if I didn’t have my kids with me I wouldn’t be in a cafe with a soft play area.

YABVU OP, but only because lots of excited screaming is not acceptable either.

@InsomniacIda she did. They didn't, and carried on playing and yelling

@spikeandbuffy

that is absolutely disgraceful

sorry for your loss 💐

Frequently on here there are threads bemoaning how chid unfriendly the UK is compared to France, Spain, Italy - yet those moaning cannot make the connection that the reason is the very different behaviour of children in those countries compared to the UK.

Parents (and not just the child's parents) in those countries would not tolerate children behaving the way a number of them do in the UK. That is why they are more child friendly because the children know how to behave in public.

That's all very well and worthy, but judging by some of the parents you're likely to get a fist in the face. The world has become very self absorbed, entitled and pretty unbalanced.

YANBU

A lot of parents are just arseholes these days and actually reward screaming, roaring, running around under wait staff’s feet etc. I’m ND and was taught to use my “indoor” voice from a young age. Shrieking, roaring, bad behaviour and I’d be taken straight out with no fussing, given an opportunity to try again and be better behaved and if the second attempt didn’t go well it was straight back home on the bus.

As previously mentioned, I’m neurodivergent so very sensitive to noise. I was in physical pain the other day when a woman decided to sit her toddler on the basket bit of the self service checkout and have a shrieking competition. This joyful little tot had obviously discovered his voice and was determined to use it as loudly as possible, which was annoying but he was only about 15 months. What I didn’t need was his late 30s/early 40s mother excitedly screaming back at him to get him to scream louder.

Baby: Waaaaah-ahhh-AH,

Mum: YES ARLO!!!!! WHAT A CLEVER BOY WAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA

Baby: GAAAAAAaaaaaaaahhh

Mum: WEEEEEE ARLO!!!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!! C’mon, LOUDER than mummy you CLEVER BOY!!!!! You can do it ARLO WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

This went on for the whole time I was there. People were getting really fed up, it was ear splittingly noisy. She was looking at him adoringly then looking at us all as if to say, “isn’t this just the most wonderful beautiful sound you’ve ever heard?”

See also the mother and father who thought it was a good idea to bring a newborn in a pram and four other children between the ages of 2 and 8 into a small Aldi, with each of the kids on scooters. The 2 year old went flying into the fridge section, cut her leg, the 8 year old dumped his scooter to run to her aid, which led to one of the middle kids going flying off their scooter and the next youngest still zooming up and down and into the legs of a frail elderly women doing her shop, hurting her and leaving her and some of the other older shoppers looking really scared. Blood and milk everywhere. None of us could move for scooters, trolleys, injured kids and elderly person, food scattered and Mum and Dad just seemed oblivious and were still discussing what dips to buy. These parents did absolutely nothing. Mum sort of glanced and said “Oh dear Harrison, have you said sorry to Ava? Kids you can ride on the scooters but try not to go too fast or bump into anything. Max, what sort of yogurts do you want this week? Scoot over and show Daddy!”. Dad did bugger all except tell a store assistant they needed to clean up the milk before someone slipped. This sort of thing just didn’t used to happen. We were expected to be considerate, from a young age. The supermarket was never a playground and we were expected to behave in coffee shops, wether or not there was a play area. Hell, we didn’t carry on like this in the Early Learning Centre or Toys r us, let alone cafes.

Kids will be annoying or do inappropriate things…they’re kids. But some of these things are just really poor parenting and there are appropriate interventions that should be at least attempted and definitely not rewarded.

I wonder how children used to play and have fun without disrupting adults before.. I guess we were better parented back then.

If that was my cafe I would've told him to pipe down myself. We have customers whose children climb all over our outdoor picnic benches, standing on the seats and tops. I pop my head out, tell them not to and the parents smile at me and say thank you! Parent your own bloody children!

I'm so sorry that happened to you. Disgusting that the parents didn't put a lid on that. Glad you complained about it.

100%. I still remember my DH's reaction when i took him to my home country to get introduced to my parents. He still thinks it was the best holiday - culturally unacceptable to make noise whether you are adult or child, otherwise given very stern look by others.

I still give my 'disgusted' look to parents who can't calm their kids down and kids lying in the middle of roads with traffic having an absolute tantrum. Urgh, make me shiver thinking what will grow out of those in 20 years.

worst thing is that those types will be our future taxpayers! I may as well be saving on pension privately, because these type will never work in their lives because they used to get what they want from mummy and daddy.

The kids here, roughly 5 - 11 years old have totally destroyed the small playpark that sits between the houses. . They have tore down the fence surrounding it and damaged the obstacles in the park. Broken toys lying all around outside the park.
Where are the parents? Inside not giving a damn that their kids are vandalising the very place they live.

I never allowed mine to behave in any way that impacted others.

Yesterday, in a dinosaur museum, a small boy (3, maybe?) was screaming at the top of his voice for a good ten minutes. Cue much muttering amongst other parents, all wondering why one of his parents didn't just take him outside to calm down a bit. It's obviously a child friendly place (although there were adults without kids too), but even the other kids were confused by the level of noise. More than one was visibly bothered by it.

Finally, one adult with him yelled "Octavian! Will you be quiet!". Needless to say, he didn't.

I'm always flummoxed by this - child is obviously annoyed / upset for some reason. There's lots going on in your brain at that age. But why would you leave it that long to do something about it? So confusing.