To think you don't let your toddler play with noisy electic games on a packed train?

[Hammy02]

Or any train for that matter. I was on jam packed train at the weekend (no spare seats, aisle full of people standing up) and one woman was sat with her small child playing with a toy that said 'triangle', 'square' etc when the kid pressed each shape. I was a couple of seats in front & could hear it! AIBU to think this was utterly selfish of the mum? Other people were giving her the evils but she seemed oblivious.

It's public transport. The clue is in the name - it is never going to be quiet or suit everyone who is on the train.

Best travel by car if you want are easily annoyed by other people.

Forgive my probable ignorance, but can't kids that age wear some kind of safety headphone type things with limited volume? If noise is ABSOLUTELY essential that is.

Maybe some people just aren't annoyed by repetitive electronic voices/noises. I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with me - if I was on that flight I would be close to tears with frustration. What about watching a film or cartoons?

I think OP and thos who agree with her should be introduced to UP

But karma you can easily turn that round and say "it's public transport - it's never going to be ok for your child to make a noise. If you are a noisy person, travel by car".

Why should the loud take precedence over the quiet?

I don't want to say anything except that environment of MrsDeVere's bubble (see her post on page 3, at 15:51) should be made compulsory in all public places.

People en masse are always going to make noise. If we day the child cannot play a noisy game, then equally we need to say that no one can make a phone call, play music or talk on the train, because all those things will irritate someone.

Why Brain?

I am actually really tolerant of people, groups of teenagers etc talking loudly, laughing, being stupid, kids shouting etc. I'll happily play with or make faces for small kids who wander over or turn round in their seats to chat. It's the piercing electronic stuff that carries right through a quiet (they are usually pretty quiet in the day time) train carriage. For people saying "you don't know how far they've travelled" well actually I often visit a railway terminus with no real place to go beyond it, so it's safe to say people getting on there and racking up the gadget volume instantly haven't been travelling for more than say 20 minutes. The thing is that people are doing it on purpose, they could choose to do something else. Same with the clickety texting thing someone else mentioned. I asked a girl sitting opposite me to turn it down/on silent recently and she looked daggers but did. I don't know why some people can't picture just what they're doing to others.

Also there are adults on the underground who play noisy games as well, with the volume on. I wonder why they can't hear themselves. You may think I'm a total catsbumface but it IS whether you like it or not antisocial to make a big noise for no reason in a quiet(ish) public place where people can't escape you.

God knows why people on this thread are assuming that we are just child-haters who are on the other hand thrilled at adults playing music, beeping incessantly, talking loudly etc etc. It's all really selfish and IMO knobbish.

Just to be clear, UP = unconditional parenting. Wait until you meet someone who does that on a train.

But I do also think that mobiles and music on a train shouldn't be allowed! It's nothing against children.

And it's not like the quiet carriage is any better. There are ALWAYS people making noise in them. Always.

YANBU, OP. People who let their (or their children's) electronic gadgets play out loud on trains are fucking antisocial.

Those vile iPod headphones are bad enough, you know, the ones that leak music so you can hear tsss tsk-a-tsss tsk-a-tss tsss tsss as you jam your miserable commuting arse into your alloted 4 square inches of sweaty carriage. I have a near uncontrollable urge to wield a pair of scissors whenever I come across them.

But there is a special circle of Hell reserved for the designers of squawking toddler tat, and people who let their children use said tat on a packed commuter train are inconsiderate twats. I would absolutely rather hear a noisy child than some horrible piece of plastic braying 'boink! boink!' at me.

I agree that you are definitely NBU. And I don't see how it comes down to a choice between incessant fucking beeping or a toddler meltdown - surely in the days before toddlers had access to iPhones and the like they did not spend all of their time having tantrums? I mean, there are plenty of other things you can do to amuse your child without having them disturb a carriage-full of people. And IndiansInTheLobby if I was on that flight with you I would complain about you.

What about tolerance and patience? Honestly, when did something like this cause any real damage to anybody?

You were on that train for a minuscule amount of time in the great scheme of your life. Yes, it was noisy and probably irritating but jeez, was it really that big a deal that you needed to post on here?

Btw, I suffer from regular migraines and am not good with loud noises, but even so...........

YABU. With toddlers you do what you can to survive, if you haven't had a difficult toddler you have no idea.

I know someone who does UP in first class. I wouldn't advocate that.

I don't see why anyone should tolerate or be patient about another person's bad manners. NB I am not saying that the toddler has bad manners, but rather that the parents do if they take a noisy electronic toy onto the train. Just get a sodding colouring book, ffs. Or talk to your child. And I was not aware that raising toddlers was a death-sport, so talk about 'survival' is over-egging the pudding a little.

Have you had a toddler Wallinson?
Mine had an attention span of 5 minutes. Colouring book - 5 minutes, talking -5 minutes - then what?
It felt like survival to me and I'm sure to many others.

Bad manners? It was a parent with a toddler on a train playing on a loud game. A packed train, with no doubt lots of other noise. Things are irritating but the world would be a nicer place if everybody was a little more tolerant.

The mother did not set out to annoy fellow passengers, just to keep her child entertained.

What would be ideal, a silent train? In what world would that happen?

I don't get the bad manners thing, the kid wasn't swearing, nor was the mum, or talking loudly on the phone, running around, causing damage, nor were they whining or screaming.

I like absolute silence on a train. No mobiles, no headphones, no keytones. Absolutely no slurping and loud chewing. And noisy breathers need not apply.

I also prefer people to remain absolutely still at all times.

I am, however, aware that none of this is going to happen and I have learned to live with it.

A Vtech toy, however, would probably send me into an apocalypse movie style rampage and there would be few survivors.

"Hello Puppy calling....aaaargh,no,help,aaaarghubf"

I always let DS1 have electric toys whilst commuting - the Ipad was a lifesaver - but I made sure he never knew it had sound!

It is bad manners to deliberately do things that will disturb your fellow passengers. Taking a noisy electronic toy onto a train falls into that category. You know it's noisy, and you know it will disturb people.

And no, of course I haven't had a toddler - my son fell out of my womb aged 21.

A child playing with a childs toy is bad manners? Really?

So on a jam packed train during rush hour you will have,
People coughing
Talking on phones
Playing on ipad/kindle/phones
Listening to music/ headphones
People talking to each other

^ A child playing with a childs toy is bad manners?

Yes, that's exactly what I said. OK, so I used different words which when put together had a totally different meaning to that sentence, but it was code for that which you cleverly managed to decipher.

Once again, for the terminally hard of thinking. It is the parent who has bad manners, for deliberately taking a noisy electronic toy onto a train in the full knowledge that it will disturb other people. There, that's three times I've said it.

'I can't stand this' is still a catchphrase with my parents for any annoying sound after a man left the train carriage with those words after listening to them reading Topsy and Tim to me in the late 70s! He must spend a lot of time apoplectic on trains these days!

Wallinson, if your son is 21, then there wouldn't have been electronic games, gadgets etc for a toddler. Also, mobile phones, iPods etc weren't around either. If he us 21, can you remember clearly what having toddler is like?

If you have had a toddler in the last 5 years or so, ignore that last para.

Fwiw, my 2 have Nintendo ds and iPods and in a public place, the sound is always off or very low. This is something I like to do as I don't like to draw attention to myself or children. Same applies for talking on the phone etc.

I still don't think its healthy for anyone to let kids toy noises irritate or annoy them, life's too short.

My son is not long out of toddler years. I managed to entertain him just fine during them, including on trains and planes. [Does 'I'm a survivor' fist-punch]

i am 28 and when i was a toddler i am sure we had noisy toys, might not have been electronic, but you have vtech tambourine, then you have tambourine, you have toys you push a button and they sing, and toys that you pull a string and they sing, my brother had his little duck with a string you pull on his pram from birth until 3 as it soothed him. I had a doll that sung. we often traveled by train, no one cared, they all said look at the cute fat baby. and there was no volume control on the toys we had.

Once we were 5 or 6 we read books and left the noisy toys, we traveled on the train daily.
Also I am still confused to how their is the room for doing colouring on a packed train?