What is going on with parenting these days?

[whocaresaboutbeingpopular]

Ok, so as my name change suggests I am aware this won’t be popular. My children are almost adults, youngest is 17 this year.

me and OH are away this weekend, we went to a place that to be fair we were aware would be full of kids; but we didn’t think that would matter as we don’t dislike having children around, however, since when did it become a thing to….

put your kids in front of a screen when they are having a meal? Not to mention having full volume of Peppa Fucking Pig?

let your kids shriek at high pitch continuously?

let your 18 month old walk themselves down the stairs despite a massive queue of people behind t? Ffs pick them up!

yes, no doubt I sound a right miserable bastard, but come on - is this how people are raising their kids these day? Bring on the entitled generation.

Mine are 4 &6. I don't take them to very very formal adult restaurants or expect them to sit quietly for 2 hours while adults chat.

We don't use tablets etc. We go to family friendly restaurants and don't expect to linger over a meal for aeons.

When they were at that awful age between about 9 months & 2 we just essentially didn't eat out with them - its not a suitable activity for children that age, they don't understand why they need to be quiet & stay seated.

Yeah, but then the generation that thinks it's OK to slap kids for spilling a drink/ have latch key kids from age 7/ left their kids in front of the TV whilst they parked their arses at a pub raised them. They're just doing what they were taught ie fuck all

Londonloves - 'sound set low' is also infuriating, headphones or mute

Agree on the 18m on the stairs and the shrieking kids.
But Yabu on the screens, maybe those kids on the screens would be shrieking if they didn't have something to occupy them, volume should definitely be on low though.

You just have one 2 year old? who probably gets all your attention? Try 3 kids after a long nice family day out, nipping into a resteraunt because you need to eat before you head home. In my experience a threenager is far more difficult than the terrible twos goodnluck with that!! We let them have a screen but only towards the end when they have finished eating and we haven't and we're all knackered and they are delving into overtiredness and the chaos that ensues from that. You sound extremely judgemental and I'm sure there are many other things you turn your nose up at other parents for but I wish I could be there when you cave and do all the things you swear you will never do and judge other people for. I wouldn't let them run around screaming....that's why we use a screen get your head out of your own arse. I guarantee there are hings you do as a parent that other people don't agree with!

This was meant for this poster

I'd rather a child on a screen at a restaurant that being bored and playing up/shrieking. But no one wants to hear what they're doing so it needs to be ear phones or on silent, that's just basic manners to others.

Why didn't the person behind the 18 month old and parent say 'excuse me could we squeeze past you please' - it really pisses me off when people complain rudely about other people's manners rather than actually use their own manners to just alert the person to the issue and move past it.

Well, when I was a child my mum would leave me and siblings in a hotel room (when we were just a baby or toddler) while she ate in the restaurant downstairs so we wouldn't disturb other adults. As I got older, I sat through meals in restaurants good as gold because otherwise I'd be in huge trouble and throttled afterwards. I sat there well behaved through fear.

I was the perfect child. No tablets needed, no running around, not even there sometimes. I'm sure other adults in restaurants would have found that pleasing and thought 'oh what a lovely polite child', if they'd even noticed me!

But times have changed. We now realise that ruling children like an iron rod and through fear is not a good idea! Leaving babies and toddlers in a room alone while you dine with adults only is not a good idea.

My children are loved. They are not scared of me
They are not left alone. When we go out they sometimes talk too loudly and I ask them to use their inside voice. Often they continue, so need reminders. Sometimes when they were little they'd watch a tablet at the table so as not to disturb other people. Now they are older they don't need the tablet. They can easily sit through a meal and engage in conversation. 3 and 4 yr olds haven't learnt those skills and if they have and are sitting there silent, something is v wrong as it was for me as a kid.

There is something to be said for dividing up a restaurant and have an area where children are not allowed. I like children as long as they are well behaved, but don’t particularly want to eat with them! They used to partition off areas for smokers, why not children.

Lmao, who are they exactly?

Our daughter and her husband are fantastic parents and are not raising their little boy in that way.

There have always been lazy parents.

Because the restaurant might be doing themselves out of customers if the child free or adult free area is full and they have space elsewhere?

I imagine a children’s section of a restaurant would be as successful as a smoking area in terms of keeping the annoying behaviour sufficiently far away from those who are annoyed by it. Smoke, like noise, travels

but in any case, I and my well-behaved children don’t want to sit near annoying children any more than someone who isn’t eating with children.

Maybe times have just changed. I was brought up in the 80s and 90s when it was considered rude for kids not to sit nicely with their parents at the dinner table and eat a meal and chat and then ask to get down once the meal was ended. This to me is basic manners and my kids (now teenagers) have been raised the same, so yeah, I do think tablets at the table or kids who are allowed to get down and roam around while other people are eating are bad manners. If you give kids the expectation that they're allowed to do these things, they will obviously think it's normal and not bad manners at all. But judging from eating out in family friendly restaurants, most parents now think kids running around while they're eating or yelling or sitting on a tablet - with the volume up - while eating is perfectly acceptable behaviour. It's actually really irritating for everyone else - there is a point to good manners - and letting your children think they're more important than anyone they're sharing a space with will create entitled kids. Of course, ND kids are different, but most kids aren't ND. You don't need to yell at kids or being an overt disciplinarian to get well-mannered kids, it's just about setting the standard for good behaviour and boundaries for bad behaviour and being very clear about that.

“I was brought up in the 80s and 90s when it was considered rude for kids not to sit nicely with their parents at the dinner table and eat a meal and chat and then ask to get down once the meal was ended. This to me is basic manners”

it’s still the case that this is considered basic manners, hence all the fucking threads about it with everyone agreeing that children running around and being noisy is annoying! Times haven’t changed that much. Everyone seems to think they are some kind of old-fashioned kook with these views, but you aren’t, these are normal opinions and these “current parents are shit threads” are full of them, with some tokenistic “apart from ND of course”

"Everyone agreeing that children running around and being noisy is annoying!" - except the parents of those kids, who are full of excuses for them.

On here? No. Everyone on here goes on about how important table manners are and how impeccably their children behave in restaurants (including me). No sign of people having different standards to parents of previous generations on here.