To think that if you can't control your children, you shouldn't come to hotels?

[HomeIsWhereTheGinIs]

DH and I are currently staying at a very nice boutique hotel in the countryside. It's been a hell of a busy year and so the idea was to treat ourselves to a couple of days somewhere luxurious and to do lots of reading and sleeping. However, we're staying at a place that's converted old outbuildings into suites, two suites to a building. And the family next door have the two noisiest children on the face of the planet.

Yesterday morning we were working up by the children shrieking to one another and then for their mother (it appeared she'd pushed them out into the communal stairwell to play). A phone complaint later to reception and the noise ceased (and they glared at us every time they passed us in the hotel). But damage done, we were already awake (and given that I am exhausted all the time from this pregnancy, it was awful not being able to go back to sleep). Yesterday evening, exactly the same thing. Screaming children sent to "play" on the stairs and landing outside our room where they screamed, ran around and then got into an actual fight (complete with shouted insults and wails for a parent). It happened again this morning at 7am (there goes our lie-in) and this time the call to reception had no effect.

I'm really cross that I haven't been able to have a lie-in because of their lazy parenting. I remember going to hotels with my family when I was small and my mother coming down on me very hard when I was too loud and in danger of disturbing the other guests. They're the only children at the hotel and their running and screaming in the library yesterday was attracting frowns from every other couple there. AIBU to hate the parents of the noisy brats for being so selfish and entitled? My feeling is that when you have kids, you don't get to just ignore behaviour that might be ruining an experience for other people.

Lol come back when you have your own dc op and talk to me about children being quiet.

paxtecum I don't think the OP was insinuating that the children should be unrealistically well behaved, nor does it sound like she's expecting that her own children will be perfectly well behaved either. I don't think having children or not is an issue in this one, it's about using manners. The children were not being supervised and they were allowed to make a racket in the communal area. The parents should have taken responsibility and tried to entertain them, if the OP still didn't like the noise then that would be a different issue.

YANBU, I'd have been furious.

YANBU and this is quite different from a baby with colic crying through the night, which usually can't be helped. Those parents should have got up and taken the children out for a walk.

I think gidliegh park do this brilliantly, they have a specific family suite with no adjoining rooms and also a small famy cottage adjacent to the main hotel. They are welcoming to families but also quite clear in what they expect from them behaviour wise which I think is great. Unfortunately they are eye wateringly expensive but their good ideas could easily be implemented by other hotels . Also, I manage my children's behaviour when in hotels/restaurants, would never dream of allowing them to behave as you describe. As someone up thread described, my parents & grandparents used to take it in turns to take us out for a walk early early morning walk on holidays.

BalloonSlayer: at "diddums".

YANBU OP. The parents were irresponsible and in the wrong. Children will play up sometimes if out of a routine but as a parent you manage it- you don't shove them out the door and inflict them on others! I think some people are mistaking annoyance at some parents for allowing their kids to be annoying, with those parents who try to be responsible when their kids are acting up.

It's all about the shitty parenting in this case. We have a baby (now toddler) above us, she woke us up sometimes but we just put in headphones and got on with it. It wasn't the baby or the parents fault, that's what babies do. The mum always used to apologise to DP and I and we told her not to worry, that we barely heard the baby and it wasn't a problem. The kids that shoved my small DN out of the way when I took her on a kids train, whose dad was drippy as fuck and just murmured 'play nice boys, they're only little' and then looked gormless while they carried on pushing and shouting at the driver- it was the dad's fault. He should have disciplined his kids, they shouldn't have been bashing toddlers out of the way and being rude to the driver but because he stood there like a limp dick they behaved that way.

PansOnFire: you get me :) thank you! Exactly. I'm a bit baffled as to why so many people seem to think I'm saying children shouldn't be noisy at all. What I'm saying is don't bring them to a hotels and let them lose in the corridors if you can't control them (and ignore them waking other people up).

PinUpGirl: not quite sure what you mean by that. Again, what difference will it make? I'll still be annoyed if this happens again once I have the baby. I don't like this insinuation that only mothers understand bad behaviour. I have no doubt my children will be noisy and hard to control, but I can tell you without hesitation that I will never ignore bad behaviour and I certainly won't just shove them out of the hotel room to bother other people. Again, it comes down to the fact that we plan not to take them anywhere that we can't be sure is child appropriate until we know they can be trusted, and that we'll act to curb tantrums, not leave them to their own devices.

Motu: thank you for the recommendation, I will look it up once the baby is here!

YANBU. I am in total agreement with you.
and yes - I have had 3 lively children, and, because I knew they were lively and not likely to be silent, I wouldn't go away to a place where I knew they would disturb other people. We always self catered when ours were little for that very reason - far too stressful to try to stop them disturbing others.
Sadly there are too many people in life who think the rest of the world should revolve around their pfbs (you only have to look at the weddings threads )

backforgood: that's what we plan to do too. Rent somewhere self-catering, preferably in the woods, where they can't disturb people!

I'm with you OP, they should never have been allowed into the communal areas at that time but LOL at "we'll act to curb tantrums". As with all new parents, you'll learn. Good luck.

Yabu with the title 'if you can't control your children you shouldn't come to hotels' as no one has complete control of their children 100% of the time. There is bound to be odd instances here and there, it would be worrying if young children were consistently angelic IMO.

However, Yanbu that they shouldn't be sent to play out on the stairs. That is unreasonable and dangerous.

OP, YANBU about this circumstance.

But I agree that you seem a bit unrealistic about what parenting is going to be like.

It sounds as if you are going to have an interesting learning curve when your DC gets to the tantrums phase. You can't actually stop them having a tantrum, you know. In practice, parenting with boundaries is about being clear that no amount of tantrumming is going to make you do what the DC wants. So sometimes you do just have to weather it.

Hope you have a better night tonight.

Errrm, HomeIs, I can pretty much guarantee that you will sometimes ignore bad behaviour, for your own sanity and possibly that of your other children. Or indeed ignore low-level bad behaviour when the other option is much, much worse behaviour...

(Parent of one with ASD here, though, so my standards are pretty darn low!)

What PinupGirl said. Seriously I understand your frustration but as a PP suggested. Sometimes parents have to go with their DCs where they really would rather not (the grandfathers wedding).

"We'll act to curb tantrums'. Good luck with that OP. Seriously.

What misspixie said, absolutely.

Becoming a parent does not mean you want to spend all your time "in the woods".
Good luck with acting to curb tantrums, do come back and tell us how it's done. If you wrote a book it would be a best seller!

I do think, though, that some parents have their view warped by being with their own children so many hours of the day. Quite possibly, 7 a.m. was a long lie-in for them.

I remember complaining to DH when ours were small that I used to wake up to The Archers on a Sunday morning, but these days we were lucky if we slept in until Farming Today...

That's around 5 in the morning, from memory. I'm not much of a 5 a.m. starter these days, thank goodness.

we'll act to curb tantrums

Reminds me of a friend of mine that years ago (before she had children) said "I'll NEVER allow my child to be plopped in front of the telly as a babysitter." Fast forward to tiny baby in a baby swing in front of cbeebies while her desperate mother races in to take a quick shower.

Reality check. Kids are not toys. You can't take out their batteries (oh how I wish) or just switch them off. You have to deal with things as they come, and they don't always follow the rules.

Yes, some parents are inconsiderate. But many are not, it's just an unfortunate circumstance that they're doing their best to deal with.

Curious sudden curve on this thread to my thoughts on parenting (which seem have been misinterpreted). I'll make my point for the third time. I'm not saying children don't have arguments or tantrums, nor that my children won't. I'm saying that if your children are having a tantrum or argument, it's unreasonable to send them out to a communal landing and to ignore them. And that I'm really cross that the parents in the room next to ours did just this meaning that we were woken At 7am on a Sunday.

Again: yes, children can be noisy. But if you can't control them, don't bring them. And if you bring them regardless, keep them in your own room. Don't kick them out to terrorise everyone else.

The fact that the children were chucked out to play in communal areas and annoy other guests sounds selfish and anti social. Since the hotel failed to address the problem I'd be looking for partial refund at least. Unfortunately the lazy and selfish will always be with us, and it means that parents dealing with unavoidable child noise and doing their best get a hard time of it as a result.

I was just about to put what misspixie said and then i saw she'd put it!! ('Never ignore bad behaviour/ curb tantrums' !!

Children playing unsupervised in the hotel corridor is surely a breach of our old friend " elf and safety" ?

It's too late now but I'd have knocked on the bedroom room door of the parents , two ways it could have gone.

1. You're children have woken me so I'm waking you to deal with them.

Or

1. I was really worried you might not know your children are awake and out of their rooms. I thought they might come to harm or perhaps you weren't well? ( accompanied by sweet smile)

Oh and to all the hand wringing apologists I frankly don't care what the reason is. Your enormous sense of entitlement that you are free to spoil other people's holidays is just not on. And yes I did once have a small baby.

YANBU OP.

I don't think there's any 'but's' or caveats to what you are saying. I've got three kids (all 2 years apart) and if they were noisy before 7am in a hotel i would get them to shut up!

The OP isn't talking about a sick baby crying in the night, or even a one off tantrum. She talking about parents putting their noisy kids in a communal stairwell at silly o'clock in the morning more than once. No excuse.