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??!

*My experience of French adults is that they are arrogant wankers who will make fun of your attempt to speak to them in their own language instead of being "that Brit" who only speaks English abroad.

They also have a culture of hiding disabled children away, which goes a long way towards the perception of French children as "better behaved"*
Gosh I hope you've decided never to put a foot in the country again. Your disdain of France is clear to read!

I can only describe what I experienced. Being humiliated in public by people openly mocking me for making a grammatical error, by different people on different occasions, didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat.

If I did similar to a colleague or visitor at work, I'd be rightly hauled over the coals. We have a lot of colleagues here on Tier Four visas and, whilst my team sometimes have a giggle about other people's odd word choices in the privacy of the back office, we make sure they and anyone else outside our team don't hear us doing so.

I have to admit this did crack me up despite my usual dislike of hearing kids roar 😂

If we're talking about children misbehaving, that's nonsense.

Just because it has a soft play doesn’t mean that the children can behave any way they want. Full on roaring and screaming is unacceptable anywhere.

I'm not from here but live here and have had vrits make fun of my english skills to my face several times in the years I've lived here.
My anecdotes don't mean brits as a people are rude and unwelcoming just that those people were.

More French people than not have mocked me, as a teen and so lacking the confidence and vocabulary to issue the French equivalent of "go fuck yourself". Then a recent encounter in the UK with a French group of tourists who did similar confirmed that the French are arseholes and put me off them for life.

I don't like the Germans either, anywhere that had legal brothels and off-the-scale street harassment of women can fuck right off.

Poles, OTOH, are always welcome, I've not met a bad one yet.

Interesting. Complete opposite experiences I've had with French people. Always super friendly especially when I've tried speaking (emphasis on tried, I'm very very bad at it) French.
Germans I find lovely they just don't do small talk
Might be a cultural thing too. When I first moved to Britain I found the fake politeness super rude and annoying. For example when you go into a shop and the person working there says hi how are uou and then walk away. Like why ask how someone is if you don't actually care. I've gotten used to it though so now I just find it annoying rather than rude.
I think some nations probably understand each other better than others.

I was at a really solemn Easter service in a cathedral this year. And someone was letting their kid do this. You could hear it all over the cathedral. Crying/upset, fine. This wasn't. Parents did nothing.

I was in France this week and I noticed that too.

I have noticed this too. And when walking in the French countryside/country park etc, every single child you pass looks directly at you and says a polite ‘Bonjour’.

It's not just children, since the weather has finally warmed up and more people are out and about. I don't know if its me but where I live the standard of behaviour this year seems to be worse than before. People with cars with loud bass music driving around with their windows and their music up so you can hear them coming on the side streets, people on buses having the most inappropriate conversations, a noticeable increase of people getting on the bus and saying I have no money let me on. Some very aggressively.
It seems like you have to walk around with noise cancelling headphones on all the time. I feel so sorry for older people who do not use headphones and have to listen to it constantly all the time.
My NCH are my best friend and come everywhere with me as you never know when you need them. Trains, buses, cafes. It's like people just wander around with no filter and if you object you are the prude.

I agree. I have been to France a lot and no one has ever been rude. Children are most definitely better behaved. Germans don’t do small talk, I agree. I prefer that actually, for the same reasons .

The problem is it's very context dependent. A two year old having a tantrum cannot be helped, and you've just got to let them get on with it sometimes, as much as you try to comfort them. Screaming seven year olds who haven't been taught about inside voices is a different matter.

I must have seen this thread pop up on my “I’m on” threads 20 times since I posted on it and I still giggle when I see the title pop up

“Surely you shouldn’t let your child ROAR” 😂

I agree OP but your title makes me giggle 🤭🤣

But if my 2 year old was having a tantrum in (as mentioned on this thread) a cathedral,
restaurant, supermarket etc I'd pick them up and take them outside until they calmed down. I wouldn't inflict that behaviour on the general public. My mother didn't, my grandmother didn't...this is just the basics of parenting, surely? You don't just let a toddler scream the restaurant down until they're finished or ruin the Easter service...you take them out.

Absolutely Perky

People can’t win. If they’re given a screen in a cafe/restaurant the parents are shit. Let them play and use their imagination? Still shit.

Also I don’t believe to was actual SCREAMING ROARING. Sorry.

If it were any of mine I’d remind them of inside voices. 😆 it’s what we always said at work when the noise got too much!

But this a totally different scenario…. In a church yes the parents should have intervened and done something, a cafe with kid play area means the cafe is ok with kids making noise

In the days before screens, parents managed to take their kids to places without their kids screaming, running around and misbehaving. Or parents thought about whether a venue was appropriate or not before going.
I was at an exhibition about Van Gogh not long ago where much of the exhibition was audio visual . Many people brought quite young children , some of whom just ran about shouting , ruining it for the adults. The parents did nothing until the young attendants asked them to control their children .

At a workshop I attended recently which involved meditation and quiet contemplation, one woman brought a young baby who quite naturally cried and became unsettled. It spoilt the whole session as she kept going in and out of the room , or tried to calm the baby but she clearly felt her desire to bring her baby trumped everyone else’s need to enjoy the workshop.

It feels like individuals consider their right to do what they like dominates the wellbeing of those around them these days .

Something else that made me think was a journey on cramped public transport recently. OH has hurt his knee , making standing for long difficult. On a crowded shuttle at an airport, a Japanese couple insisted he have their seat. Not one other person offered, neither would it occur to us that they would. In fact on a coach earlier he was left struggling with luggage, clearly in pain and people just pushed past him and left him on the coach to manage as best he could.

I am wondering whether kids who run around screaming in public areas behave like that in their own homes so they don’t realise what ‘indoor voices’ are?

I know it sounds unbelievable but I promise you it was actual roaring. Like

ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
(takes breath)
ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
(takes breath)

repeated without pausing for at least 10 minutes. It was a whole body roar, I can't see he could have been louder if he tried.

As I said it seemed to be a game - the other children were screaming in response (also very loudly, but it was the roaring that really got me).

The mothers were literally sat a couple of feet away (god knows how to be honest).

I actually really like hearing children playing - the sound of a primary school playground in summer almost makes me well up! I'm definitely not in the seen-but-not-heard camp. But this was unreal.

Almost as if children want eye contact and interaction from parents and will do anything to get it…

I do a ‘scary eyes’ face that in the past has shut up e.g. a noisy brat just behind me in the supermarket queue.😈

When a lot,younger dds would say, ‘Do your scary-eyes face, Mum!’ - and then hide, squealing, behind the sofa cushions.
Highly recommended for dealing with obnoxious brats in public. There’s not much the useless parents can object to, even if the child says, ‘Mum, that lady looked at me!’ 😂

Indeed