2yo at ballet Aibu to say this too young

[Madeyemoodysmum]

I am a regular but have name changed as I felt my old name could reveal my ID. Today I took dd 6yrs and parents to see the nutcracker for a birthday treat. Parents enjoy ballet and dd does lessons so I thought it would be a lovely day for them. Cost best part of £70 for 4 tickets.

On arrival I noticed a mother with 3 kids one of which was only just 2yrs old or maybe a little younger. May first thought was is she mad Bringing a child that young to professional ballet but settled down to watch show.

After 20mins or so 2yo got louder and more fidgety. This was annoying but tolerable. However after another 20mins I got irritated as parent seemed happy to let this disruption continue dispite frustrated looks from others in her vicinity I whispered to the usher that the child was very distracting and her response was to nod and laugh. Hello! It's your job to deal with this.

Eventually child had full blown tantrum and was removed by parent to relief of audience. The next few scenes were enjoyed but then she was back and got in and out of her row of seats 3 times in all during second half. The poor people in her row were up and down like a yo yo

My dd is six and I had reservations about taking her to ballet for fear of her getting bored. As far as I could see most children were 4 or older. She enjoyed it but am I alone in thinking it's ridiculous to expect a 2yo to sit through a 2hr show and then not even remove the child when she is clearly bored!

I'm so annoyed £70 is a lot of money to spend to have it ruined by inconsiderate parents!
Rant over...........

Well, it depends. If you have it in your head that I drag the squawking hallion in, strap it to a chair and demand silence on pain of death, while making loud shushing noises and demanding attention - that would indeed be stupid.

But as he sits nicely, perfectly happy, laughs at most of the right bits and doesn't bother anybody at all AND has the advantage that he is short so the people behind him can see the stage - then it's not stupid at all.

I probably wouldn't take him to see King Lear, but wouldn't think twice about the Nutcracker. They've all been to daytime gigs as well (adults are too badly behaved to bring the kids to evening gigs. Why does nobody try and ban them?)

You are the one using the word force not me. " but they have been forced to sit through shows etc since they were extremely tiny"

Well, yeah. It's tricky to get out of a sling when you're 6 weeks old!

Crunchy, I am not sure what your point is, clearly your children are not behaving unruly and distracting, and clearly your children are not ruining the show for others who have paid a lot of money to see a performance, so I dont get why are making this about you and your children. I dont care about your situation and your children. What I do care about, is paying a lot of money to go and see something, and then have toddlers behaving like toddlers naturally do, and parents insisting they have the right to sit there, and let others suffer their childrens behaviour. But I dont think you are realizing that this is the point of the thread, and not perfectly well behaved babies...

Many posters responded to the OP with the assumption that 2 year olds are not capable of behaving appropriately in the scenario, I was just pointing out that IME that is not so.

Sorry in general I feel you should be able to take babies or toddlers any where and feel that people should be more tolerant than they are.
I dislike grumps about young children at school events, shopping, church, children's films and restaurants at lunch or early evening. I didn't have Granny on tap the DDs had to come and had to learn to behave.
But the Ballet is different, it's totally optional, very expensive and totally out of order to disturb it for other people.

YANBU. Some people just don't get that once you have young children, you actually can't carry on your life exactly as before. Either get a babysitter (Sitters excellent for those like us with no family nearby), or just give the ballet a miss for a few years. It's a few years out of your life, not forever!

(Yes, parents who dumped their kids in the softplay on Sunday morning then sat in the cafe having coffee reading magazines and pretending you don't have kids at all and have no interest in how they are not at all behaving I am Talking To You.)