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.

YANBU I have a friend who I won't meet in public with her kids because they're an embarrassment.

I am blessed with one, usually super we'll behaved, child.

If you can't control your kids in a cafe, you shouldn't really be there.

Oh but I don't agree with the statement that cafes are 'predominantly adult spaces'. You expect there to be children in cafes and child friendly restaurants. That's normal

YANBU OP
I try not to be judgy but it's really hard when you see other people's kids running around a cafe or restaurant. I'm not talking about a crying baby or a loud chatty toddler but general bad behaviour we see everywhere. Either teach them how to behave in that environment or don't bother taking them out to these places. It's about having respect and showing consideration for others. There's a time and a place for play fighting.

toomuchtooold You are probably right, just Andrew trying to see some good in everyone.

Children should be neither seen nor heard!

Probably all been said, but Grumpasaur, I so agree with you.

I see the OP hasn't been back.

I admit I started this thread in a rant.

For those saying that I hate children being children, that is very clearly not what I said. I understand that children are noisy- I really do- and I don't have any problem with children who are just being children.

Where my problem lies, again as outlined clearly in my post, is when kids are clearly misbehaving and behaving inappropriately in a space (in this case, for example, by throwing their food on the floor and stomping on it with their new shoes to see whose shoes are better, and touching all the croissants and cakes which sit on an open table, and then a second set of parents with only one child who sat on the other side of the cafe whilst their daughter played on a wooden and metal chair on her own, naturally fell off the chair and hurt herself really badly, and screamed bloody murder- rightly so- which could have been prevented had the parents been watching their child!!!)

Those who accuse me of threatening physical assault- I think you are being deliberately obtuse.

And those who think I will be a bad parent and am an annoying know it all because I don't think it's appropriate for children to be allowed to run riot with no boundaries, attention, or care- I don't agree with your point and think I will actually be a good mum when I decide to go down that route.

It's the lack of attention that gets me. In my area I see it a lot.

Permanent record-

Two points, showing I think we agree!

1. it's a child friendly coffee shop. This one isn't. It's very small, there are open cakes and pastries out on a table, alcohol is served, and they don't cater for children with books, crayons, baby chinos, etc. in fact I asked the guy at the shop afterwards what he thought and he said it makes him really mad when parents don't watch their kid and his job is harder because he has to then clean up after them.

2. in terms of you guiding, that is what I mean, precisely! That is good parenting. You bring your children out and interact with them- sometimes with varying levels of success I am sure, but you TRY. That is good. Leaving them to run riot scream stomp food in the floor and touch other people's good is different!

Grumpasaur

In that case I think your op does you a disservice. When you omit specific details that give context, use generalisations and refer to parents as shitfucks you are inevitable going to make yourself look like one. A snap shot of someones life is just that, there's no doubt lots of things we all do that make us look like twats for a day

Why are you on a supposedly supportive parenting forum, OP?

Just to tell us how fucking shit at parenting we all are. I suggest you fuck off MN and find a forum for people who don't like kids.

With you on your OP. Screaming brats do my head in. People should keep their children under control and realise that the world does not revolve around them.

I hate these fucking smug parenting threads on MN.

Again. why would you come on a parenting forum to moan about kids?

It doesn't make sense to me.

Why not? Kids aren't all sunshine and rainbows, why pretend that they are?

usual, the OP didn't come here to complain about children. She is complaining about lack of adult supervision. It's a completely different thing.

She came on to tell parents on a parenting forum how shit at being parents we are.

Why would you do that?

I've never read such a self important load of bollocks in a while.

I didn't see her say anyone here was a shit parent. I saw her comment on behaviour she observed in real life. You seem a tad defensive. I understand where she is coming from. Some parents let their kids run wild and it can be annoying as fuck.

And smug know it all posters are just as fucking annoying.

Who is being a 'know it all'? There is nothing know it all-ish about pointing out that letting your kids run wild is obnoxious and fucking annoying, it's common sense.

Op - if you wanted to moan at the bad parents, you had a golden opportunity at the time you witnessed all this awful behaviour. We on mn are not whipping boys ready to make amends for parental sins. You had your moan with the cafe owner be content with that.

Of course it is possible that parents are worse today than they have ever been. They are certainly more judged and scrutinised, undermined by continual revaluation of good practice, high expectations and social pressure. I had a low tolerance of child noise and chaos when child free. Still do and I take great effort to ensure my children behave considerately in public, they have an unfortunate tendency to police other children in fact. But I find that children are like small versions of people and some are noisy and irritating just like the scaled up kind. But it is the loud obnoxious full sized ones that give me the rage when stuck on the late night drunk train with them. The ones that run the country often piss me off as well and I don't think they were allowed to run around cafes when they were in nappies... But I digress.

Off to find a petro head forum to complain about shitty drivers...

I don't see the kind of behaviour the OP describes often. But recently we went to a Nepalese restaurant. There were a family with a baby and two under fives. The two under fives spent nearly the whole time running around the tables and shrieking. We were glad we were seated far away from them.
There were other kids there, hardly noticed them. So not common, but it does happen.

Why so uncomfortable about a poster pointing out that some parents do not parent their children effectively? It's not exactly unusual for people on MN to post about parents blissfully ignoring the havoc their DC are creating and being impervious to the impact it's having on other people.

exactly Lavender

(though now I'm wondering how many more Chaletians I'm going to spot on the boards, lol)

it is actually a good question for a prospective parent to ask because when you do parent you will have the joy of explaining to your children why you ask them to behave well when apparently many other parents don't give a hoot

and all the OP asked was why she sees it so often. Given some of the responses on the thread, I think we know why...!

Lavender, except the post itself is goady