Give your child a screen and the rest of us peace

[OlympicsFanGirl]

Second long train journey this weekend and yet again a whole carriage having to put up with loud, noisy, whining kids.

It's grating and it's constant and there are hours to go.

Parents just don't seem bothered.

Rest of the carriage now sharing looks, rolling eyes and sighing.

Just give them tablets and headphones and the rest of us some peace and quiet.

Other people's loud children might make you feel better about yours but the rest of us shouldn't have to put up with them, esp in the quiet car. If your kids are gonna be dicks then stick them with the rest of the loud children. Many of us are not happy to listen to screaming children for 3 hours and if a kid had been kicking my seat with the parents doing nothing, I would have turned around and told him/her to knock it the fuck off.

YANBU
I can take a lot of “child noise” as I work in a school,but I cannot bear the sort of screaming and yelling and generally making a nuisance of yourself type of child noise that a lot of parents choose to ignore.
I was in the supermarket yesterday, there were two little girls aged about 7 and 8 literally screeching on top of their voices for no apparent reason and not once did the mum ask them to pipe down. On the same visit a boy of about 10 was charging up and down the aisles with one of those kid sized trolleys and doing knee slides with it ; narrowly missed me on two occasions. Again, not a word from the adults.
My faith , however, was restored by a grandmother with her 3 grandchildren , one a boy of about five who was trying to do similar. She stopped him, told him it was unacceptable to do that in a shop, and if he couldn’t push the little trolley sensibly she would put it back. He actually listened to her.

My 3 children are all grown up now, but I would never let them run about in shops ( or elsewhere, especially confined spaces) and make unnecessary noise. I brought them up to have respect for others and their surroundings. It’s not hard. Sometimes, you have to say “no” to your kids, whether they like it or not.

@UnfriendMe I was saying I’ve given up on taking my kids out on the train… the small local services I still do don’t have a quiet coach

I think you need to be careful if you find yourself looking for peace and quiet all the time. Once you start you can't stop. Life's not like that. Life is full of life, the unexpected, having to adapt to different circumstances.
Reaching for comfort all the time is not a recipe for happiness, just being a grump.

If you think I'm seeking perpetual peace and quiet I think you've misunderstood.

@Sienna1987

Regarding inquisitive chatty children when did this become an issue?

It's not an issue at all.

That's how the rest of the children in that carriage were behaving and they weren't bothering anyone in the slightest.

I am a parent of two children

I really wouldn't.

isn’t it the parents’ job to tell the child to stop kicking the seat?

Actually I don't think we should have to tolerate bad behaviour and anti social behaviour especially over a prolonged period of time.

The fault of course lies entirely with the parents for failing to parent and failing to show consideration for all of the other passengers. .

Children need to learn how to be bored and how to amuse themselves and tablets etc aren't the answer!

On this occasion it turned out that they were the answer.

Our lives are spent on social media, tablets, computers and phones. We have forgotten how to socialise and tolerate other people. Children can't even play in their own garden without some busybody having an issue about noise. My next door neighbour puts his children on the Xbox to keep them quiet. He doesn't want them making a sound or a mess. It's got to be abuse.

I'm with the OP. OK, a lot of parents are good about keeping their kids entertained and making sure they don't behave badly.

But I'm still scarred from a train journey from South Yorkshire to Inverness with a family in the carriage with four children who raced up and down the carriage screaming and spent a lot of the journey kicking the back of our seats and chucking stuff around, while the mother just sat there looking benign.

I've travelled with small children. I know it isn't easy, but I managed to keep mine entertained. Too many parents seem to think they can inflict their children's bad behaviour on everyone else.

To avoid the 'How dare you tell my children not to make your journey a misery' row, I got someone from the on-train team to talk to the mother and it did stop, up to a point, the chair kicking, but I got daggers from the mother for most of the journey. Parent your children. I had to - and so should other parents.

You might as well call it lazy parenting. I would say in the last 10 years or so kids behaviour has got worse because they are always in front of the babysitter (screen). Parents don't know how to interact with their children. I would say a high proportion of men who were arrested at the riots are young 18 year olds. Maybe its just me and what I am seeing you may see something else. There has to be a negative knock on effect. All you can do is feel sorry for the children because they will learn the hard way like those young yobs who rioted.

Books. This is exactly the opportunity to read a nice big book. Which is why readers are so superior to everyone else - perfectly able to entertain ourselves and above all not noisy ☺️

I'd honestly rather listen to the noise from kids whining than see them sedated by screens. It's so depressing to see. Children need to learn to occupy themselves without screens and parents need to learn how to spend three hours in one place with their own offspring. It's really not hard if you care enough about your own kids to make the effort.

Also interesting to see that so many posters are also advocating screens, rather than books.

I honestly thought mine was the only one 😂 he won't sit still long enough to read a book to either 😅

Did you never make noise as a child? What would be your solution if technology didn't exist? What if said parents cannot afford it? What would your own parents have said when you were a "whiny" child?

I do find it ironic that this is a whiny thread, whining about children acting their age.

I think society are slowly becoming sick and tired of snowflakes such as yourself. Suck it up princess and tell someone who cares.

There's kids being stabbed and countries being blown to pieces...yet here you are.

Have an eye-roll for yourself, while you're moaning about it.

I am one of those patents who don’t give my children screens, and I never will. If a parent wants to do that then that is up to them and I do not judge, however it is not how I parent. You should mind your own business and maybe instead you should be the one to put ear phones in. Sorry to remind you of this but you were also once a child too.

Oh honestly. Then we give them screens and everyone b*tches about that too!!!!!! It’s literally impossible to win. If you exist in public with a kid (and especially an ND one with high needs or less socially acceptable behaviour or one whose behaviour seems younger than they look) some one will be judging you.

Bit unreasonable in my opinion. I frequently forget birthdays and my friends frequently forget mine. I have a busy life just like my friends do. I sure don't hold it against them when they forget it.

I would stop my child but I'm not all parents! If they're not parenting you can either say something or put up with it...

Drunken groups, from teenagers to middle-aged football fans are also annoying to share a carriage with

Books on transport make me hurl I assume the worse and never gave my children reading books on transport they will colour in occasionally but not for long tablets on long journeys are fabulous download favourite episodes from netflix headphones on and relax a bit