The other side of "naughty British kids"

[AngryGreasedSantaCatcus]

I'm posting on AIBU as this is where most of the threads about how awful British kids/parents/parenting are , and this is a "reply" to all of them.

Just came back from holiday in a resort that is not really aimed at Brits. As a result, there were only one or two British families there beside us. The majority were German with some French, Russians , Turkish and Romanians.

Well, guess what? Plenty of "naughty" kids despite their lack of British passports.

Plenty of screaming and screeching.
Inconsiderate splashing/jumping in the pool getting people on sun loungers and their belongings wet.
Running all over the place , include in restaurants. Several falls and accidents.
Trying and sometimes succeeding to throw the entertainers in the pool. Even an adult did that.
Recklessly picking up cat/kittens, chasing them, annoying them, carrying them about etc.
Dozens of dropped plates.
Ignoring safety signs and lifeguards, diving, jumping and hanging off the bridge, railings etc.
Swimming in the pools after hours, or when one was shut for emergency cleaning or in the 18+ ones.

Probably more that didn't register as we were busy having fun ourselves. None of this actually bothered me(bar the cats situation) and we really enjoyed our holiday.

However, I really wanted to make a point that no, it's not just British kids and that no, other nationalities don't have better (behaved) children as a rule.

When I was at school we did a French Exchange. We took the kids shopping in London on one of the days and they were showing us what they'd shoplifted. (There were no adults there, we were 16 and went on our own)

Too true! Kids on holiday are going to be lively and noisy. From any country. Unless it gets completely crazy, live and let live!

I get that from some of the y6's about the lower ks2's."We were never like that/that loud/that annoying/that rude".

Yeah, you were mate. 😂😂

Also far too many who do not understand the difference between European (as in the continent of Europe) and EU (political, legal, economic entity) I have seen threads talking about 'EU children' in comparison to children from the UK/Britain. I voted remain but the 'evil, thick, fat broken Brexit land' rhetoric on here drives me mad.

Lol, my kids have said the current yr7s are the worst ever, every year, for the last god knows how many years. I'm wondering where the point is that they just can't get any worse (is that when one of them burns the school down 😆?)

@PipinwasAuntieMabelsdog , I've noticed on a lot of those threads , posters slagging of the U.K. are from the U.K.! , ironically the posters who say " hang on they are not that bad / only ones "
Are normally from different countries!

Too true, @MorvernBlack and@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus !, ! It just shows how perception gets skewed.

My daughter was moaning about the new S1 intake to me the other day. She's in S3. 😅

@UnctuousUnicorns 😂

So, OP has seen foreign kids even more unruly than her own.
We can stroll around Europe with heads held high.
😉😁😁😁

Slightly off topic, but a similar vein. I've often noticed a MN bashing of only British parents let their small kids have access to tablets/ phones. Equally irritating. I've spent the past few months in France, Italy and Germany. Guess what? Parents of all nationalities pacifying their kids with a tablet / smartphone in supermarkets, restaurants, museums etc. What a shocker that was for me. I really believed everything I'd read on MN about how it is only British parents who do this.

Yes, you'd think it was only British parents allowing that, @waggawaggawoo according to these threads.

Ermm , excuse me I’m a MN poster, DD was impeccably behaved obviously. 😬

Oh yeah, plenty of that too, especially for little ones. But I find that particular argument quite daft so didn't even bother mention it. I definitely don't see it as "bad" behaviour.

@MumblesParty

It’s not a UK thing, it’s a MN thing. It mainly flared up after Brexit, when MN decided British people were evil, their children were vile feral creatures, and we all wanted emigrate to idyllic mainland Europe except we couldn’t because of Brexit. Ever since then, MN is overrun with posters saying that everything, literally everything, is better in the EU.

Well you say that, but in fact it’s the pro Brexit right wing press - the Mail, the Express, the Sun, the Telegraph - that are constant pushing the narrative of Modern Broken Britain (single parents, feral kids, lawlessness, PC gone mad) VS the sunny idyllic past.

I’ve never considered that British kids are in any worse behaved than anywhere else. But I still know Brexit was idiocy.

It's the same narrative,but from different perspectives. One is the rose tinted glasses , the past was sooo great. One is the special,better than, bougie "ughhh I can't even..." types. Both just as negative, when all our kids hear is how feral,savage ,badly behaved, unwanted,hated ,begrudgingly tolerated they are.

I do think Britain has always had a problem with children and believe in the 'seen and not heard' approach. That doesn't mean our kids are worse than anyone else's though.

I remember years ago bring in Germany for 6 months with my small dc. Shops and public places were honestly more welcoming of small dc. But equally plenty of mothers eyes my reins with envy as their kids darted out out of supermarket (they weren't widely available in Germany circa 2003)!

@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus

It's the same narrative,but from different perspectives. One is the rose tinted glasses , the past was sooo great. One is the special,better than, bougie "ughhh I can't even..." types. Both just as negative, when all our kids hear is how feral,savage ,badly behaved, unwanted,hated ,begrudgingly tolerated they are.

I agree. I think that the extremes of the woke, identify obsessed “left” (I use inverted commas because they actually hardly represent any traditional left wing views/philosphy) are basically the flip side of the hysterical “Broken Britain” right wing. As you say, they’re both defined by rose tinted glasses view of things and constant hyperbole which has no basis in reality.

We have hundreds of threads about childhood obesity, spending too much on screens, short attention spans and not being able to entertain themselves.

At the same time there's one running with people moaning about kids playing outside. Too noisy, too disruptive,too annoying.

The irony of it all . That's what I mean about the "vibe" on MN lately. Kids' place seems to be in the wrong , purely for existing and daring to share space with others.

It's offensive if they're on a screen, it's offensive if they play, it's offensive if they stand up for themselves, it's offensive if they're weak, it's offensive if they're confident,it's offensive if they're shy/anxious. Hell, there was a thread today about feeling uncomfortable because kids acted as if they were afraid of a random stranger.

So true… Whilst in a French eurocamp my 10 year old DD was hauled off a swing and trampled on by a Dutch kid. She called out to her younger brother for help and he dashed over to wrestle him off! 😳 She was extremely shaken up by the event.

Don't get me started on French kids lack of ability to queue up in an orderly fashion for anything - a huge generalisation but is my lived reality!! 😩

In Britain there is plenty of the type of person that believes that children should be seen and not heard. A lot of us Brit parent do try and make sure our children are well mannered as much as possible to avoid judgement I suppose. I know I'm always making sure my kids are well behaved and not too loud etc. Even on holiday. I suppose other countries probably believe that kids will be kids and don't put restrictions on them etc. So they might seem more spirited than Brit kids!

@LadyBird1973 , how true. I don’t know why so many English* people are so keen to slag themselves and their country off - I’ve lived abroad and have found the opposite in most places - locals so keen to tell you how great everything is.

NB, I don’t say ‘the British - I don’t hear it from Scots, Welsh, or N Irish.

I was on a (french) train the other day with the most ineffectual mother I've ever encountered sitting opposite me. Her 8-9yo daughter was kicking and swearing at her for most of the journey and all she did was whisper 'on ne tape pas, ma chérie, ça me fait mal' (we don't hit, darling, it hurts'). In my nearly 50 years I've met many English varieties of such parenting, but never a French example. I was impressed, it was like encountering a lesser spotted woodpecker - you know they must exist theoretically but have never seen one out in the wild.
😂
And yes, obviously french kids can be little shits just like English ones. The noticeable difference is how likely their parents are to whack them when they play up. Which obviously doesn't turn them into nicer kids, just ones who are only arses when their parents aren't looking.

I was impressed, it was like encountering a lesser spotted woodpecker - you know they must exist theoretically but have never seen one out in the wild.

😂😂

I spend a lot of time in Spain and I'm always baffled at the behaviour of Spanish children. The parenting is horrendous - they tend to wind up the kids until they're hyper and being naughty, and then smack them to get them to calm down. Also letting kids cause distraction, as you've described above, with no discipline.