The obsession with children being loud in public and disturbing others...

[floweplantpot]

On here, is incredible.

I'm nearly 40 years old and I don't think any child has ever disturbed me while I was out in public. I just don't understand how easily irritated people on here get ?

Do we go to different places or something ?

Does anyone else relate to me or do others also often encounter children that bother them in public ?

Think, being on their iPads / phones watching ' very loud ' videos that have ruined your trip out to lunch, or kids running around places etc.

I've never really seen this or even noticed it.

Same on planes.. I've been sat near babies and they sometimes cried, but nothing unbearable.

On here it's like people absolutely despise kids out and about being loud/ existing and being kids...

The only people that have ever bothered me in public have been drunk adults who were threatening people in a tube carriage / a random man in the supermarket calling me a slut / another random man shouting at me for no reasons once when I was sitting in a parked car.. never kids..

Generally I can tune out of kid noises and have no objection to happy playing kind of noises, in fact it's sometimes nostalgic to listen to. What I cannot cope with though is the often very loud ineffective parenting with repeated threats which are never followed through, just repeated louder each time. That is way more annoying to listen to. If you are threatening to take the child out to the car (or whatever) then either do it or shut up!

I don't mind background noise and can tune it out l and know kids are noisy, but I did just have an experience I found a bit much. In supermarket and 2 women with 5 young kids between them, 3 of them under 6 and the youngest at a stage where they found emitting a ear-piercing squeal the funniest thing ever, and their sibling found it really funny to make them make that sound. I know it can be hard to make little ones stop doing that but I didn't see either adult try to discourage the small one from shrieking, or the older one from winding them up, or to stop all 5 blocking aisles or knocking one another over and rolling around on the floor. That was all a bit much TBH.

Children are loud. People need to get over it and stop being miserable bastards.

I work in retail. My colleague and I agreed that we preferred Christmas to the summer holidays. Products are constantly pulled off the shelves and left on the floor. Parents of children doing this make no attempt to stop them.

I grew up in Ireland as part of a big family, always around kids so maybe that's why but kids noise etc has never annoyed me even a tiny bit. I'm 42 and my own kids annoy me at times because I'm responsible for them 😂 someone else's kid I don't need to keep safe/comfort/feed? Nope not annoying

Ok, so a group of kids were ... Being kids somewhere you were. That's all that happened there.

I have two small DC and can count on one hand the number of times I've genuinely been irritated by random children in a public place.
I think people's frustration is mostly down to a lack of understanding of child development. If you bristle and feel like "how dare that baby scream like that and spoil my lunch?!" all it tells me is that you don't know very much about babies and the dearth of communication tools they have at their disposal. Ditto a 3 year old confined to their seat for 7 hours on a flight. Most parents will have brought snacks, toys, books etc but if a small child becomes really dysregulated then they don't have the tools to calm themselves down. Even with the support of a parent, its going to take them longer to feel calm than it would take a typical adult. A 5 year old doesn’t have a well enough developed prefrontal cortex for consistent impulse control, and occasionally they're going to do something surprising, annoying, and/or socially inappropriate. Which the parents need to deal with once it's happened, obviously, but by that point it's, well, happened.
All the discipline and punishment in the world can't make a child's brain develop faster (if anything there's plenty of evidence that harsh punishments can slow it down).
I think 90% of people who feel personally violated by kids occasionally laughing too loud, shouting, doing something impulsive and alarming would find life much easier if they understood a little more about normal child development. The other 10% are probably actually encountering poorly parented little shits, if they're genuinely running rampant in the restaurant shrieking and throwing glasses of water over each other. Obviously that's not just part of kids being kids.

i disagree. Children very quickly learn that there are places where it okay to be loud and places where it's not. It's not a question of discipline, it's about the parent putting the time and energy into managing their child. I didn't have to discipline my kids to achieve respectful behaviour in confined public spaces. Instead I took the time to make sure they were properly occupied and they understood that other people didn't want to hear their noise . That was normal parenting when I was a child and most of the parents I know did exactly the same as I did. It's a question of social norms and parents socialising their children gently and appropriately.

the parents I encounter who let their kids scream and make too much noise in a confined public space are invariably not focussing on their child. That's the issue.

I agree.

I’ve never come across it either. Just kids being normal.

I can see why you didn't put a poll up you'd have had 98% YABU 😂Actually, as has been said over and over and over in these discussions, it is the lazy feckless parents people get angry with. If a kid is being loud and people can see the parent is trying to deal with it, nobody gets annoyed.

it’s quite common in this culture to value being quiet in public so is not surprising to me that some children breach this norm and that it is frowned upon!

Don’t be so ridiculous, plummeting birth rates are due to the cost of living, the uk is overcrowded, population almost 70 million.It’s harder now for parents to have more than 1 child.And of course people are putting off having children, much later.

Some parents (which is sadly increasing) need to explain to DC that excessive noise, running about etc is not appropriate in various settings.,

I had to go on the bus as parking at hospital is awful. On the way there there was a girl on a tablet where it went yeah yeah. Still could hear this through my earbuds playing music

Worked in retail and wish parents would tell their DC shops are not playgrounds. Since when has it been acceptable to ride scooters inside shops? It has never been and never will

And male behaviour which has also plummeted since porn and MRA websites and influencers rewired their brains. Young women report men demanding anal rape within a week or two of knowing them, explicit photographs before dating, complete body hair removal at all times, an attempt to normalise revolting kinks and fetishes (being called vanilla is a HUGE compliment as it means normal and not deranged) and on and on and on it goes. Porn today is far darker and much much much more violent than ever. Men's behaviour gets worse and worse and women actually have choices now - the smart ones don't want kids with men who behave worse than their primate cousins.

@abeeloudglade yes completely agree.
I have relatives and friends, who are genuinely happy to be single, haven’t had children, l can see why.

Give you top marks for posting that one. You should have stopped ahe service and asked the parents of the child to look eave the service. or kavebrecorded to the screaming and posted it on the Internet.

I don't know what sort of World the OP lives in.
But l could give you a lot of examples of poor behaviour,top notch screaming from children with feckless parents.

Try any supermarket around 6 in the evening for a full top notch 20 minutes of ear piecing screaming and carrying on from small children.

Supermarkets have become the latest kids play grounds

There’s a particular kind of ear shatteringly high pitched piercing screaming that kids do these days that I can’t remember we did as children. It’s like nails on a scraping down a blackboard and painful to my ears. And very different to the noises babies make when they’ve just discovered their voices and are experimenting. That doesn’t bother me at all.

3 days ago I was seated next to 3 children (around 7, 5 3) with their father mother no where to be seen, older child quiet reading, other two, one with mobile phone other with ipad watching videos, loud, no headphones.

We all sat, no one approached him as we were all rather concerned with our own thoughts but you could see many people getting a tad aggravated.

We were at a breast clinic, waiting either for Cancer results/investigations or treatment, now would of thought he would of appreciated that no we did not want to hear the racket, and to control the volume.

I dread summer because it’s constant screaming, actual screaming everyday on our estate.

The child with granny playing catch across the doctors surgery. One patient gave a heavy impatient sigh, granny bleats 'just trying to occupy her' Good job I didn't have to wait very long!