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?

The responses on here lol.

Just be safe in the knowledge she will be eating her words in two years time. We all go through the PFB stage. She'll be posting on here in a year asking what's happened to her placid baby.

She's a judgy twat but probably stressed with her own baby not sleeping or something. You've done nothing wrong and your kid is normal. These days if I hear a kid having a tamtrum, I'm just glad it's mot mine lol

She sounds a bit crazy but you overreacted.

In any case, sometimes the shock of being talked to by a stranger can stop misbehaving/tantrumming children in their tracks when the parents aren't having any effect so in your shoes I would have been interested to see whether this happened.

Really people? @LibraryFairy you think asking someone to shut their kid up is trying to be helpful and a distraction?
No, a kid having a meltdown is not going to stop because the parent simply asks him too, though I assume OP that you were taking measures to calm him down.
No one wants a crying kid to stop more than the parent of that kid. But a stranger telling you to stop the child from crying is hardly helping the situation and would make me angry too (though I would have said something along the lines of 'I'm doing my best here thank you'.

*normal as in acting as he should...as annoying as he is

Ah. Well yeah you can't becuase people's emotions don't work like that do they? And if you were upset and someone told you to stop crying it would be completely unacceptable behaviour. But for some reason we're supposed to teach our kids to suppress their emotions if they are inconvenient.

Like you were doing it on purpose! Next time someone rolls their eyes at her crying baby I hope she remembers.
It's very hard for parents with babies / toddlers on public transport and it's very hard to be near/in a compartment with someone with a baby or toddler on public transport.
Unless your child is wandering around approaching people and disturbing them, she shouldn't think her shitty situation trumps yours.

I don’t know why you wouldn’t try and stop your 3 yr old from crying or tantrumming.

She didn’t say ‘ask him to stop crying’ according to your OP. Perhaps she thought you could be trying to calm him down or distract him. Your response seems completely unreasonable.

She was being entitled but you should have already known the time of your transfer and, if checking again would only take a minute, why not do so after you disembarked the train? (I would have left the toddler to watch cartoons to avoid the stress and hassle to everyone of confiscating the phone part way through whatever he was watching).

Baffled as to why you can't interact with your child to stop him crying. It's not like it's rocket science

I’m amazed that some posters think I went on a day out without any resources to keep him happy, that I would happily let him cry on a train and not do anything about it. Of course I tried to stop him crying.

I just think it’s bonkers to ask another mothers child to stop crying. I left my own baby at home with DH and I’m a sleep deprived mother myself.

This ^ talk about over reacting

I don't think she should have come anywhere near you nor asked your child to stop crying, it's public transport and if that's how she's travelling then she has to accept other people will behave in a way she won't necessarily like.

She was batshit to think this was ok and quite rightly got an earful from you for interfering.

You over reacted. She was probably at the end of her tether and exhausted if she was that desperate for her baby to stay asleep on a train. Empathy would have gone a long way, or failing that, politeness and an apology.

This! When my kids cried I'd stop them if I was in a place where it would disturb others

I was once on a train where there was a screaming toddler and this woman materialised and started blowing bubbles on the train. One of the most bat shit things I've seen, there were bubbles all around the carriage.

Sometimes it does help when strangers talk to them more than their parents. My DS was shouting a song instead of singing it and I had failed repeatedly to get him to be quiet, when another passenger asked him to be quiet he stopped shouting immediately and continued singing quietly. So it does work sometimes.

OP this could have been a brilliant opportunity to say to your DS “See, other people are on this train and need to have some quiet time, you are disturbing them” and teach him a lesson in being considerate.

But what you did was validate his tantrum, tell him he has the right to scream in public and disturb other people and it’s their problem to sort out if they don’t like it.

Unless you want to travel on the path to a very entitled and selfish child, I suggest you tell him to consider others next time.

She was overstepping to ask you to ask your dc to stop crying. She could've offered sympathy/ a distraction etc.

Why can’t you ask a 3yo to stop crying? She got involved as you weren’t doing anything. There’s nothing else than seeing children crying and the parents apparently don’t notice.

You completely overreacted to a perfectly reasonable request. And why do you 'ask' your son to sit down, stop crying, etc? It's your job to tell him to behave.

I don't actually think you were being unreasonable. Mumsnet is always a pain for 'stick up for yourself, don't let people walk all over you' then when you do you're always unreasonable.

The train was delayed so we had missed our planned connection.

So did you try and stop him crying or could you not ask him to stop because it was only a minute while you were checking your transfers?

I think you massively overreacted and as a mother of two should have a little bit of empathy.

A 3 year old can absolutely be asked to stop crying so they don't wake a sleeping baby, especially if they're used to being around a baby.

You wouldnlt have liked what I said to the woman with a similar aged child that kept screaming its head off about a metre away from me in a restaurant yeasterday. (the Mother hadn't made any attempt to quieten child, and appeared to be making it worse by teasing child with the disputed toy)

A 3 year old can absolutely be asked to stop crying so they don't wake a sleeping baby, especially if they're used to being around a baby.

If people are that worried about their sleeping baby then stay at home. People can be so bloody precious.

100% this. It may well have worked.

You essentially told your ds to carry on screaming.