I've just seen the most depressing thing

[Havesomecommonsense]

In a coffee shop, in comes a Dad and his daughter (roughly 3 years old)
He made a comment to the daughter about this being a weekly visit before he dropped her back to the mum
He then sat her on his lap, gave her a phone and she watched instagram videos and he watched his own phone holding it over her head..
He gave her some food, which she kept choking on intermittently. He barely said 2 words to her
Yes I'm judging, but fgs do better

As for telling you to calm down, please do and read slowly! You may grasp what’s being said than instead of getting on your bloody high horse and talking nonsense!

and it’s not personally to women, I’d tell a man as well, If he was being equally as irrational.

Twenty mins to daydream, think about one of those kids questions like why is the sky blue, look at the pictures on the wall, vaguely listen to the conversation, have the manners, patience and maturity to just wait. Why is it unwise to teach anyone that their ideal preference isn't always going to be catered to and sometimes you do just have to sit...assemblies, memorials, a wedding, an awards ceremony. Loads of utterly dull things for most people that you just have to sometimes sit through. A pp said on another thread that people seem scared to just be in their own headspace now. I think that's true.

That's what I said 🙄I'll quote it for you

"If I didn't agree with them I wouldn't be calling them controlling ffs and I certainly wouldn't be telling them to fuck off as a pp stated upthread, I'd just tell them I don't agree with them."

Have words, same thing.

You're clearly one of the parents being bashed on here so you're attacking anyone with a different opinion. Good luck to you and your kids.

Your kids have very poor attention spans if they cannot sit still and do nothing for 20 minutes. They can think their own thoughts. Amuse themselves.

Very poor parenting. I would expect a 4 year old to do that.

Oh sweetie my children were born way before screens, as I’ve already said….. I’m a GM!

You’re clearly going to be one of “those MILS and interfering GMs”.

Good luck with that!

It’s an epidemic. Several times a week when I’m doing grocery shopping in a mall I see young children in a pram with a phone glued to their face. I get the use of a device if you need them to be quiet (like in a doctors surgery) for a short period, but there is so much to see and talk about when out and about that should be interesting for young dc.

So many kids are starting nursery and school with poor language and communication skills which is a reflection of environmental factors- not biological. I work in many different schools and this is what is reported to me and observed by me.

Ah. The old "children shouldn't be seen or heard". Kids this obedient usually have a very stick-based upbringing which will backfire in its own way later. It's normal for an 8yo to be inquisitive and want something to do

That doesn't mean you're not throwing gadgets at your GC every time they dare move, maybe it's your DDs parenting you're trying to defend, definitely very defensive.

I was once in a supermarket with my 5 year old in the trolley who was watching my phone.

A man (not Australian - from Western Europe) starts expressing his discontent at my child being on my phone. He was huffing and puffing and getting more and more aggressive and publicly admonishing me.

I just ignored him. But it was getting to the point that he was going to get physical because he couldn’t calm down.

The thing is my child is severely autistic. We were minding our own business.

I agree with you that it’s sad that this child was being ignored. I also think it’s sad that father’s push for 50/50 custody so they don’t have to pay child support.

It's none of your business how your dd parents her child.
I wouldn't be inviting my dm out anywhere with us if she tried talking to me like that.

Your dd will probably be making loads of threads about you on here and talking about going LC 😆

Oh so I’m throwing gadgets at my GC now, like I’m their parent and get that choice, like their own parents aren’t perfectly capable of parenting well themselves?

That’s a great atreeeeeetch!

imagine having a child you’ve raised unable to parent well and you’ve got to step in and remove items, control
them, and dictate your rules and if they dare to disagree, you’re labelled as defensive.

Incidentally I only have boys, no DDs, just lovely DILs.

Anyway you’ve been called out by a number of PPs on this post for your attitude, time to chill for you.

Good to see you get plenty of screen time yourself mind, are you DC being entertained elsewhere? By GPs perhaps? 🤔

Don't be ridiculous. The lad in question has much older siblings who are thriving, hard working, sociable and happy. There is nothing wrong with being seen and not heard for a short period every now and then.

My immediate reaction was ‘poor child’… But, I’m sat here on my phone having just popped the TV on for my 3 year old.
What you don’t see is that we’ve already been to the park, made cupcakes and done puzzles. I’ve just put her 4 month old baby brother to sleep and needed 20 minutes to recharge before I start dinner. So I can kind of understand the ‘it’s only a snapshot’ arguments.

I'm not ridiculous. My grandmother certainly believed this and all her kids resented her but she was rather stuck in victorian times despite being born in 1936. Like I said, I'd be much more impressed and excited to meet a child who would ask questions or chat or wander about the room looking at things. Curiosity is healthy.

You really never can do right as a parent because you will instantly get judges the very second you do something that's not perfect. It's no wonder so many parents are exhausted and stressed out.

I have a long list of thing I don't like seeing when it comes to children and I have done every single one of them on occasions. So I try not to judge when I see not ideal behaviour.

• Screens in prams. I hate seeing it, don't think it's good for kids but I have done it once when I was exhausted after three nights of no sleep and having to take toddler to get his vaccinations.

• McDonald's or other similar fast food places. It's rubbish food and shouldn't be elevated to being a "treat" because it makes it special and desirable. But we have had it on the rare occasions that there was literally nothing else available.

• Clothes with TV character on them. Even worse when it for TV show that are not age appropriate for the child. I think it's one step away from clothes with brand names on them. My DS has a minions t-shirt and a paw patrol t-shirt. Both bought in a moment of weakness when he was so excited when he saw them in the shop.

• Lollypops shouldn't be giving to kids under 6. My almost 4 year old has had 3. One at a party, one his grandmother bought and once I got him one after he asked about one for two weeks so I bought him the one he wanted and he had two licks and decided he didn't like it.

• Ideally kids shouldn't have screens in cafes and restaurants but I have given a screen on a few occasions. For example when meeting a friend I haven't seen in a long time and the only time we could meet was when I had DS. At a nice restaurant with family and DS has been good for over an hour and we are just waiting for dessert then I might let him play a toddler game on my phone if he is getting very bored.

Another thing that apparently makes me a bad parent is that I don't talk much to DS when he is in the pram and I'm on my phone quite a bit when pushing the pram. There are a few reasons for this, a big one is I can't hear him very well when he is sitting in the pram. Really I never understand it when people say they chat with their kids when they push the pram because genuinely I can't understand anything that he says. Maybe these people live in quite small villages? Or maybe my hearing is just bad. But it's frustrating for both of us if I constantly need to stop and bend down to hear what is being said.

Also DS was a horrible sleeper but he would always sleep in a moving pram. So I walked for hours around town and in the park. Just to get him to sleep. And I spent a lot of that time on my phone because I was exhausted and it was one of the few things keeping me awake.

I truly think one day we will see this like children not being in car seats.
And yes, she kept choking on the food.
Not a made up story.

Why can you not deal in nuance? I know this family well, the kids are great, love their parents and perfectly bouncy and curious and lively, but when the occasion demands it, they can sit still and behave. What on earth is with with that? The conversation I was having with the mum wasn't idle chit chat and even if it was, it's rude for kids to interrupt adults...a fact that seems increasingly to be up for debate ...

I am in agreement op- this doesn’t sound acceptable and the likelihood that his grandmother had just died blah blah is low.

However, this did make me pause as I live near to a health centre where a load of health visitors are based.

Literally this morning, I was desperately trying to get my kids to their dentist appointment and the toddler was having none of it- actually had to chase them down our street as they were refusing to even get in the car! Our dentist will just strike you off their patient list if you even dare miss an appointment, so I was losing my mind.

Just as a HV walked past my car, I was literally shoving my phone with kids YouTube on (prob cocomelon or something equally hideous) straight in my toddlers face going ‘do you not want this?!? Take this!’ Whilst they screamed and writhed- and I very visibly saw the HV’s eyes roll. My kids have so much parental input / stimulation and I was desperately trying to get my child to their dentist appointment fgs, but she couldn’t possibly know that. So I do wish people would be mindful that they don’t always know the whole story!

I wouldn't call this the most depressing situation I have ever seen, far from it. Everyone to their own.

I think using screens in smal doses in extremes blah blah
This was not this.
They sat for 25 ish minutes. No interaction at all. With a three year old. That is not right

I agree that phones/screens have reached crisis point with kids. I think people need to be a lot more discerning with them and save them for the times they’re actually needed.

True. As a seven year old in Greater London, I used to bring my little brother with me on the Tube to our school near Hanger Lane. No stops involved, a quick short ride, but imagine doing that now. My parents would have been locked in the Tower.
All this was necessitated because we’d no car, and my father depended on a lift into the city every morning, and this kind man would drop us kids at the nearby Tube station en route, and Ma would pick us up when school ended, and we’d walk back home from the station.
Worked extremely well, though not long after this we decamped to a small market town near the Cotswolds, far away from Tube stations!
Here, we engaged in exactly what you described. Dawn to dusk we’d be out in fields and along old railway lines with pals, parents not knowing where the hell we were and not being bothered at all.

What’s the correlation between car seats and screens?

No. Regardless of his circumstances, he should not be ignoring his child —especially to the extent of letting her keep choking on her food.