Posted on 08/15/2006 6:24:16 AM PDT by steve-b
For Cindy Nooney's 3-year-old twin boys, playing with the Thomas the Train set at their local bookstore in Southern California is a major thrill. Jack and Sam push Thomas, Arthur and friends down the track, they run around the table, jump up and down — and, of course, they squeeeaal.
Nooney expects as much in the children's section of the store. But on a recent afternoon, she was surprised by an employee who confronted her, calling her darling Jack a tyrant.
"He was a little loud but this is a children's section," says Nooney. "They run a noisy, cavernous bookstore but they don’t want kids to make any noise? It just seems ridiculous and leads me to believe that they don't want kids, they want silent kids."
The bookstore is not the only place that likes quiet, controlled children — and isn't afraid to say so. Across the nation, there are signs of a low-burning uprising against children supposedly behaving badly in public.
Eateries from California to Massachusetts have posted signs on doors and menus saying "We love children, especially when they are tucked in chairs and well behaved" or "Kids must use indoor voices." In North Carolina an online petition was started last year to establish child-free restaurants — the petition loosely compared dining with children to dining with cigarette smoke....
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
How about that you cant enjoy the peace and quiet of your own property because the little brats now have unbridled access to ATV's? That is a real pleasure in the summer.
LOL!
Hilarious!
NOBODY except the parents wants to be around wild loud loose running kids. It shows lack of control on the parents part and is totally annoying. Kids should only be allowed to make noise in their own homes or outside. PERIOD.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner!! This mom gets it!
Oh GOD!
That made me flinch! After years of riding motorcycles and scaring myself to death, it takes a lot to do that with just a picture.
This extreme aversion to children so prevalent in the west is not shared by our enemies.
That's cool. Ninety percent of kids diagnosed with ADD have never been hit hard enough to get their attention.
Actually, no, they don't have to misbehave before knowing they shouldn't. Personally, as a kid, I was told what to do in public before we ever left the house. In no uncertain terms!
Yup. Of course, the liberal whiners who complain about noisy children are usually the first ones to shriek like fishwives if a parent actually, say, DISCIPLINES their child. Lord forbid you should SPANK a child in front of them -- you're an abusive lout!
Homosexuals and Feminists, and our madly procreating Islamic enemies don't like to see western children.
And when parents would miss part of the show to take their children there.
Oh, never mind.
NO...I'm not going to let you get away with this...it's not about CHILDREN in general..it's about unruly children in public places. Is there anything some of you will not politicize to your ideas?
Seems like anti-social is "cool" these days. Blasting music, loud talking, acting up is not limited to young people.
""...supposedly"?? You know it, I know it, there are lots of overindulged brats out there that run their families. Also, there's too many people calling BOYS "young men" (and girls "young women/ladies"). They eventually will become such but FIRST they are boys and girls and need to behave or suffer the consequences."
There are also kids out there with problems that cannot be detected by merely looking at them.
I never had a problem with raising quiet well-behaved children until child #5.
Nothing I did with him produced the same results as with the other children. He is loud and excitable. If he had seen that train set he would have gone bonkers.
Of course, I don't take him places like I did with the others. This is bothersome too because I say to myself "how will he ever learn?" - but I also know he will be disruptive - so I don't take him to nice restaurants.
He has been going through a great deal of testing this summer and will be having an audiology test this week.
Most people would look at this child and say "he's a brat and needs a good whack"
Heck....I've said it myself.
But just when you think you've got it all figured out...God sends you a little one to let you know you don't.
Now when I see another loud child I don't automatically assume mom and dad are incompetent boobs - nor do I think I know the "solution" either.
> We were on an international flight - from Switzerland
> back to the U.S. and this Swiss couple had three kids -
> baby and two around 8 and 5; the older kids were
> just holy terrors.
Some realism is needed here. We made an internation flight with our two and three year-olds a while back, and I have to say that the two year-old was a monster. His brother sat quietly, watched videos, looked at books etc, but Ben just screamed and screamed and screamed. And there was nothing I could do about it. I tried everything, but he would not stop.
Now, you can say I'm a bad parent or that he's not raised properly, but the fact is that sometimes as parents you will get into situations where there's no easy way out, and all the platitudes about 'what happened in my day' won't stop the kids from crying. Perhaps the answer is not to have kids on long haul flights, and indeed we've not done it since, but it's hard to think that their grandparents will have to forgoe seeing them on such occasions.
But please let's not pretend that kids will always be good, and that tantrums won't happen. They will, no matter how good a parent you are. And those who won't tolerate them from other people's kids simply don't understand what is involved in parenting.
My father is of the generation that you describe and has hearing problems which are attributed to the time he spent in WWII (fortunately he has always been soft-spoken and never raises his voice). Same may be true for some of those you describe. Give it a few more years and you'll be able to eat your Egg McMuffin in peace.
Kinda like pacifists.
Don't be silly. There is no aversion to children here. I love kids, but not when they're screaming in my ear in a place where I'm paying a lot of money for a good meal or a movie. My parents loved kids too, and my granparents too (one set of grandparents had nine, and kept them ALL in line). The difference is, they loved us all enough to teach us how to respect other people, other people's property, and to be considerate of other people.
These parents, and you, apparently, have no consideration for anyone but themselves--and of course their own children.
I live in rural Georgia. There is an anti-child mood here, and there is a reason. Parents no longer consider it their job to raise or monitor their kids. But this issue of bad behavior is hardly new; it has been going on for some time. Look at the current crop of adults, who do things like casually jaywalk or even stand in the street, then glare at you for not just stopping for them.
Again, this is a straw man argument. But if you'd like to follow the logic, what makes you think rude, obnoxious adults are any more tolerable than rude, obnoxious, anti-social children?
Debating cause and effect is a waste of time, too. We all know that bad parenting breeds bad children so, what is the big problem with no longer tolerating either?
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