Mum on the train

[MumTrain]

Yesterday I was coming home from a day out with DS, aged 3 on the train. We had been out all morning and he was in top form but by the time we got on the train he was understandably tired.

It was a modern train you can walk through with no doors and spacious, wide aisles but still some seats free and no one had to stand.

DS was in the window seat and was standing up so I asked him to sit down and to keep him occupied I gave him my phone to watch a video with on silent so as not to disturb the other passengers. When we were nearly at our stop, I asked for my phone to check the time of our connection and he proceeded to cry as he was watching a cartoon.

A mum who was sat behind me heard all this and came to the aisle, bent down beside us, leaned in. I thought she was going to offer DS a toy or a sweet to cheer him up but instead and said “do you think you could be quiet? My baby is asleep”.

I told her in no uncertain terms that I would not be asking him to stop crying and that we have a baby at home too. She isn’t the first person to have a baby asleep on public transport. She could easily have walked the baby in the buggy further down the train.

AIBU to think that asking a toddler who is crying and having a tantrum to not cry is batshit crazy?

You were both BU, though I have more sympathy for her because people have to be pushed pretty far to confront someone about their parenting, so I’m guessing it wasn’t a mild 1 minute cry.

YABVU for thinking people are coming over with sweets and toys for your child. There’ll doubtless be people saying this happens on the continent or whatever but on the continent people are allowed to comment on your parenting, so…

@mam0918 😂 of course they don’t!

And so can 16 year olds! Teenagers also think they are the only person in the universe! Again though.. consistency, standing firm in your approach, not rewarding unacceptable behaviour tends to be what nips these things in the bud.

Full disclosure, my children are 23 & 21 so I wasn’t in a position to give them a phone and Nintendo DS came out when DD was about 6 so I’ll probably be told I don’t understand. But I have dealt with tired children and tantrums, never throwing themselves on the floor, hitting or biting major incidents-reading some PP I got off very lightly.
What I genuinely don’t understand, and this is probably generational, is why anyone gives a toddler their phone because as we know toddlers can be volatile and they’ve only got little hands I would be worried about them either dropping it or worse throwing it mid tantrum. iPhones and alike are 100s of pounds, I’m not risking my phone getting broken.
*ducks for cover!

I agree about phones. Never gave mine my phone, there's not many things I won't share, but my phone is my personal belonging that I just didn't want to hand over to a child. Nothing against screens, I mean fgs that's all they want as teens! But my phone was mine and not their toy.

I often ask my son to stop crying so that I can understand him, I remind him he can use words now etc. It works for us, when he can tell me what the problem is then I can fix it or if it's not fixable he's quietened enough to listen to a bit of reason. If he's overtired and overwhelmed and just needs to cry then sometimes I've reminded him that he can cry without shouting. So from my perspective yabu to not ask your son to stop crying.

However, I think the other woman was BU too, like you said I would have wheeled buggy to next carriage if I thought it would wake baby.

You don't ignore your child having a tantrum on public transport. Ignore it at home or when with family if you want.
Don't subject members of the public to it. It really annoys me.
I have a 2 year old and I use distraction but not something I will have to take away for him. Why on earth didn't OO take a toy with her?
And OP was rude. I won't ask my child to stop crying. Why not? No one u going to be happy with that reply. If you have a baby at home you should be nore understanding of how the other mum was feeling.
You probably are sleep deprived if you don't attempt to stop your 3 year old from tantruming and so he wakes the baby.

Very entitled of the mother with the baby! She's not crazy, just one of many who think the whole world should revolve around them and their needs.

YABU - just letting your child scream is anti social , but clearly from your responses so far you think that you are right and that the world revolves around you.

So when the baby gets woken up on public transport and maybe starts to cry and can't be shushed and cry's relentlessly ( and sometimes they do - a lot of us have been there or heard it ) -

What if another mum with a sleeping baby comes over and says " please be quiet".....and so on.

🫣

But she didn't tell him off. She asked him to stop crying and explained the reason why. That's not a telling off.

Ok, you’re that aggressive person on a train
you could have of course acknowledged its difficult etc and phrased your reply to be less confrontational. You didn’t
you told her in no uncertain terms hmmm well that’s a euphemism for aggressive.
Well done nobody puts your toddler in the corner

If it looked like you were doing nothing to try to stop the crying then it wouldn't have been reasonable for her to ask you to try to do something. I used to know one mum who let her son scream it out for 20 minutes or more without doing anything to stop it/ distract etc ( would say I will ignore you until you stop). It used to upset lots of other children. But if you were doing something then she should expect to put up with it as something that happens.

I think you are getting an unfairly hard time, OP. Of course it's exasperating when your baby is asleep and someone's making a racket that might wake them, but the mum addressing your clearly upset toddler and not you, their parent, was an overstep in my book. Unless you were sat there with your fingers in your ears going 'la, la, la' while your DS screamed, she must've realised the situation was fraught and her thinking she could just calm him down with a quick word smacks of 'I can do this better than you'. I would've been annoyed too.

Definitely an overreaction by the other mum. Toddlers cry and babies need to be able to sleep through some noise - you’d be forever tiptoeing around if they weren’t accustomed to some background noise! That’s how families with a mix of older children, toddlers and babies cope.

I’m reading this thread wondering if there is something wrong with either my parenting or my 3 year old DS because if he was mid-tantrum and I simply to him to “stop crying” or “calm down” it would have the complete opposite effect.

If I witnessed a toddler on public transport having a meltdown I wouldn’t dream of going and complaining to the parent!

Nope. You are a normal (and good) parent, and your son is a normal 3 year old!!!

You don't know what's going on in her life, (she could have been up all night or have PND) and she doesn't know what's going on in yours (you could also be sleep deprived or depressed).
We could all do with a bit more tolerance and understanding in this world.

Exactly this. I have 4 people in my life right now who have babies under one year old, and when I am with them and their baby, there are sometimes 3 to 6 adults there (and sometimes 3 or 4 kids aged 3 to 6, playing together and squealing occasionally, and laughing!) The babies just sleep right though any noise or commotion or giggling and chatting, when I am with all these people.

Most babies (including my own some 25 years ago) sleep/slept in the pushchair or pram next to me (or in my arms,) right though me and friends and family together laughing and chatting. You can NOT expect people to be quiet as a mouse around your precious iccle baby-boo!

It's rather lame and pathetic and precious to be on a train, and say 'shut your toddler up, MY baby is trying to sleep.' WTAF? IT'S A PUBLIC PLACE!!! As I said, who does she think she is?! I'd say NOTHING, but she'd get an eye roll, and a 'LOL fuck off!' kind of look from me.

The only person who's come across as smug on this thread is the OP imo. Suggesting the woman must somehow be a mum with her PFB for a start. Well how does the OP know the woman only has a baby? She could have 3 kids at home for all the OP knows and from my experience, new parents aren't confident enough to go and actually talk to an upset toddler in the way this woman did so calmly, unless she had older kids herself. The OP has a toddler and a baby at home.. I used to find parents who had a second child, in the early days of said child being a baby, they'd suddenly look at those with one child and almost think they were a bit superior because they were more experienced with two children whereas the other person only had one "pfb." 🙄

You could flip that, and say EXACTLY the same thing about the OP, and that the intolerant woman on the train (with the precious boo boo baby who can't stand ANY SOUNDS,) is the one who needs to be more tolerant and understanding!

What a rude person you are. I have a 2yo, and if I were you, I'd apologise and try to talk to my child and explain there's a sleeping baby near us. I might even ask the lady to ask my child to stay quiet in case it helped.

If we all thought like that, none of this nonsense would ever happen and there would be no Mumsnet.
Not sure I want to live in a world like that.
😉