To think parents need to start parenting?!

[grumpasaur]

Dear Parents,

I understand that you love your children. I do. More often than not, I love your children too, and am happy to play with them and indulge their childish whims and imaginative fancies.

However, I do not understand why more and more, you are seemingly immune to the noise and disruption your children cause when you allow them to run rampant in predominantly adult spaces.

Kids make noise. I get that. Some kids make noise no matter how much you try to quiet them. However, you will get a significantly increased amount of support and understanding from me if I see you at least TRYING to keeping them quiet- again, in predominantly adult spaces.

When I see you calmly eating your sandwhich whilst your two twins run around the small café, talking loudly on the phone, screaming at each other, stomping their new shoes to show them off, and indeed even BEATING EACH OTHER UP, and I see you do nothing...well, I want to take your children, discipline them for you, and give you a proper telling off for being a shit-fuck of a parent. I want to give you a spanking and tell you to smarten the fuck up.

Parenting is hard. So I hear anyway. I chose not to have children because I do not wish, yet, to have to disrupt my life with the responsibilities of parenting.

May I calmly suggest that you respect my decision not to have kids just as I respect your decision to have yours. I'll help you as much as you need...really, I will, just ask my friends with children.

But seriously. This lazy parenting which impacts not only the way that your children are treated but also the way parents in general are perceived has got to stop. It's ridiculous, indulgent, irresponsible, and annoying as fuck.

Seriously. STOP IT.

Or go to soft play, where your kids can scream all they like and I am sip my coffee in peace, far far away.

This should be interesting.

I agree with the op and I do have a child.

A cafe is a predominately adult space? It's not. Most of them cater to the family market what with their high chairs, baby change facilities and sometimes books or colouring in for the kids. A cafe is a place serving drinks and food to paying customers, that includes kids. Maybe you'd be better off going to a naice pub for your coffee.

Yanbu - some parents are like this. However Yabu to address all parents this way. I take exception to be told because some parents are shit then I must be shit too.

Oh, OP, how you'll laugh at posting this, when you do have kids, just as I am laughing now.

I have some sympathy with you, OP, because there are parents out there who do let their kids run around and scream in cafes and restaurants without trying to stop them, regardless of what some people here might say.

Apart from being irritating, it makes parenting that much more difficult for everyone else. I get very tired of having to tell DS that no, just because other kids are dashing about a restaurant and making a huge noise, it's not ok for him to do it.

I have children, and I agree with the OP, and Jassy.

There's no need for all of us to get defensive, and to deny that the parents the OP describes don't exist - they do.

Yanbu and I have children. Yes they can be naughty no one expects angels but too sit and do nothing whilst they are being naughty or shouting is not parenting. Seems to me like sometimes parents just....give up.

I'm guessing all those that disagree are happy for their kids to run about disturbing people no matter where they are?

Yanbu. At all.

Sadly there seems to be a trend for parents to believe that their darling offspring automatically trumps the rest of the world and little Tarquin's desire to stand on the table and scream is something that everyone else needs to just put up with.

Worra!

I was with you until "shit-fuck of a parent" and then I realised you're just a ball of frustration, resentment and rage.
Not my problem.

But my children don't run about disturbing people - so I don't understand why I'm being physically threatened by the OP.

pictish

Yes, I think the tone of the OP is a massive rant in the midst of whatever was going on...

Some people can get their children to behave. Some children are a joy to be around.
Parents should step up and act like parents.

Persicacia

She was ranting, I think. I don't actually think she will hit anyone.

I clearly don't get out enough. I've never seen children running around being irritating in a cafe. And I've worked in one. Mine don't and I have a reasonably laissez faire attitude to parenting....

Maybe you need to move OP. It could be where you live. Or I am sheltered. Or hearing impaired. Or there are really only a few parents who allow this?

Unless the OP works in a coffee shop or sits in a coffee shop all day every day surrounded by rioting toddlers, there is no way that her reaction/rant is normal or proportionate.

in all fairness it's not hard to notice if other people using the same space are being annoyed by your or your children's behaviour.

It's not very hard to work out if that annoyance is reasonable or not and if so deal or leave

Perspicacia I agree.

Suggest OP dis-spell her disproportionate anger elsewhere. How rude.

Where the fuck are all these badly behaved kids and their, ahem, "shit-fuck" parents? I go out to cafes and restaurants all the time and have never ever seen any of them. I've seen far more "shut it Courtney you little shit" type of parents but never the now canonical lazy parents who ignore their offspring. They must surely be some kind of urban myth? if anything I think we are highly intolerant of kids in the UK. Our lifestyles just don't seem to fit in with the needs of children (compared to other European cultures for example). For instance the use of 'predominantly adult spaces' - what does that mean? A space that people use? And children are just people, albeit at an earlier stage of life. All very weird and wrong to have such intolerance for them IMO.

Parents do need to be mindful of others and adequately supervise their children's behaviour. I don't see that is unreasonable. In return I expect adults to behave appropriately in the company of children irrespective of whether an adult oriented environment or not.

I sometimes feel like I live in a parallel universe, because I really don't see children behaving in this way! I literally can't remember ever in my life having been annoyed or upset by a child in public. And children in the UK are much more quiet and subdued than in other countries. Go to Italy and look at how kids behave there - in cafes, trains and town centres in the day or even quite late at night they're allowed to run around and do their own thing in a way that is unheard of here. Personally I like that attitude more than the British one. I agree that the anger you occasionally see on MN is disproportionate and seems to say more about attitudes towards children than the behaviour of the children themselves. But in general I would say that children are people too and have the same right to public space as the rest of us. I strongly disagree that cafes etc are adult-only zones.

And ftr my two are little angels (I've been complimented on their behaviour eating out several times). It pisses me off when we get snooty glares because ds1 is laughing (at normal 3yo volume) whilst sitting nicely at the table and eating his lunch. You wouldn't glare at an adult who was laughing am enjoying the conversation so don't pick on my son who is brilliant lunchtime company!

Yanbu, however why are you on a parenting site if not a parent!?