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

Just out of interest, why the ‘in public’? If you’ve think screens are bad for children, you surely think they’re bad for them in private as well?

and again, you are misquoting me. The visit was TWENTY MINUTES and no he didn't sit in total silence but most of the conversation was a purposeful one sorting out a specific issue, not general chit chat so we needed to not be constantly distracted in the way you often are with kids around. . I am perfectly happy to have gold standard that involves a child of school age able to sit for a short period without external input. You and one or two others have been determined to paint this as akin to child abuse and that he'll have a damaged childhood. Ridiculous and as I said before, totally lacking in nuance.

I'm not focusing on dads. I happened to see a dad today.

I think its absolute shite that people who do do other things are dismissed as narcissistic performers doing it for effect instead of just enjoying their child and bollocks that their kids are uptight.

I think that you'll find very, very few adults who openly say they enjoyed growing up in an extremely controlling, religious or otherwise rigidly wholesome family. There IS always a huge amount of outward performance and narcissism involved in that type of parenting. There are various cultures in the world where academic performance or moral and personal "purity" take precedence over everything else. Just talk to anyone who grew up in a home like that most will say they hated it.

Obviously to clarify, this is for extreme parenting where certain activities or behaviours are entirely banned. It's not for otherwise normal families who just have a rule such as no phones while waiting for food at a restaurant.

It is not performance parenting to actually like your child and talk to them..
Sitting for 25 mins with no eye contact and both staring at a phone when one is 3 years old is not OK. No matter how people try to spin it here.
I don't understand why people think in extremes on here. Sit in silence or be over the tol performance parenting. What happened to NORMAL behaviour like talking to your child, sharing a joke , chatting about the day, pointing out stuff, talking about future plans for the day.

Maybe he had an absolutely urgent email to answer, a call to make, maybe he’s just lost a family member and needed five minutes of peace and quiet?

To you but maybe not to others?

Have you always been this judgemental of someone you don't even know or is it a relatively new thing?

I'm chatting on a chat forum about an opinion I have.
This MN gaslighting/turning on the person won't work with me

It was 25 minutes of gawping at his phone while his daughter watched instagram and kept choking on her food.

He sat there for the ENTIRE time on his phone and the 3 yo was Insta. why are people so desperate to justify this? Why are we so reluctant to clarify what is within the bounds of decent parenting? There can be a broad range sure, but it feels wrong to me that we are saying its ok to use this as default.

I don't know, but I honestly despair.

If I walk my baby around in the pram for 45+ mins she will (hopefully) fall asleep, and then I have 30 minutes in which to reply to emails/messages/write/mindlessly scroll while I wheel the pram around, oblivious to my surroundings. That (and in the middle of the night, when I'm trying to not fall asleep as I hold said baby) is the only time I'm on my phone in the baby's presence all day. But people seeing me do probably think I'm a phone addict/terrible mother. 🤷

Absolutely right I judge this type of parenting (sen excluded). So does everyone I know. We see it everywhere we go now and someone always always comments on how shit the parents are. We're not judging all screen time, mine had screen time at home, have phones as teens, we're judging children being ignored by parents, being silenced by screens instead of interacting with people/parents.

My youngest child is 13, she is part of the first generation to have had smart phones around growing up, very rarely did I see what we're seeing now 10 years ago, that's why we're horrified. We used screens of course we did but never when outside or interacting with people and certainly not when eating a family meal.

I said it upthread and I'll say it again...how do you think parents managed before screens? I understand screens can be a godsend for sen children but that's not what we're talking about here.

How the hell is a sleeping baby in a pram the same as an awake child being ignored by a parent in a cafe. FFS I honestly despair on here.

I think I'm a person with an opinion and what I saw was far beyond acceptable to me.

Fixed that for you! You're welcome.

Hate this bullshit excuse. It wasn’t a snapshot, it was probably at least half an hour and you can make a bloody accurate judgement in that time if someone doesn’t interact with their child positively once. Stop excusing terrible parenting.

Selective outrage innit? 😎 Typical behaviour of the super smug judgypants brigade, who love nothing more than a bit of performance parenting with Jimberly and Jimothy!

How is a sleeping baby the same as a 3 year old who needs interaction and positive relationship building with her parent? Your standards of parenting must be on the floor.

obviously a tiny baby is different. Not hard to work out!

Oh the horror of all these TERRIBLE PARENTS letting their child use a screen! Call Social Services NOWWWWWWWW!😱

Recently I was in a play park and a little boy kept coming up to both his parents trying to interact with them - ‘Mummy I went on the slide’ etc. Both of them on phones and neither looked up at him once. I judged hard. Innocent, sweet boy will likely not stay that way for long with that level of parenting.

I beg your pardon?!?! For some of us it’s the better alternative to a restless child who is inquisitive and won’t settle, especially when they’re very small. My child has Autism and when she was a toddler, even my mum couldn’t get her to sit still if we went out to eat and she’s like Mary Poppins! Absolutely nothing helped regardless of how many times we removed her from the restaurant or wherever we were. We didn’t know she was autistic until she was 4 but quite often it’s the lesser of too evils! To be very clear, it was educational programs NOT Instagram!!!!!
You sound insufferable and if I was your DD and you tried that snobbish nonsense with me, you’d not be seeing your granddaughter again.

You’ve seen half an hour out of a day.

It's not - I was replying to a specific comment talking about that exact scenario...

It’s just pathetic and lazy. My child aged two is allowed to watch limited TV at home but a coffee shop is an opportunity for interaction, chat, vocab building, playing I spy etc. You're too lazy for that? Don’t have kids then.

I was replying to a comment specifically talking about being on the phone with a baby in the pram...