Not a parent but I read this and have my personal opinions, curious what others think about it.
My opinion?
I doubt such a person will ever be able to realize public space is not hers and is not there for her to use as she pleases. Public space is, well, public and shared between everybody and as such must be used with consideration to others. What would that incredibly tolerant (towards herself/her kids) lady say if I was to, say, come sit right next to her and loudly fart while she is eating her sandwich?
She can let her kids splash (and fart as loudly and) as much as they/she wants in her own home. Heck, she can even let them burn her house down if she thinks it’s good for them. But what will she say the day her kids get hurt doing some stupid shit like that?
Does she really need a fucking ‘handbook’ to understand the cosmic level of stupidity she’s reaching for? That’s so unbelievably clueless and egoistical. But whats so sad is to realize it’s not even surprising anymore.
I will have one last thought for those poor kids, just imagining the kind of teens and young adults she’s preparing them to be :(
Let them run and play and fall and get scrapes, yes. Don’t be a helicopter parent. But when other people are around, respect the social contract.
I witnessed a dad (friend of a friend at a group dinner) nearly get in a fist fight because someone asked him to corral his kids that were interfering with their meal. Madness.
I say fuck people like this. And if you are people like this, then fuck you too.
Public space is for public, not just your kids. If you let your kids run wild, then you are sacrificing other people’s freedom.
Also, this is how entitled little bitches are created. Do you want your kid to be an entitled little bitch?
You seem to be implying that you are somehow more entitled to that public space than kids. Sounds like something an entitled little bitch would say. Are you an entitled little bitch? Public space is for the public, ALL the public. If let your own hangups lead you to bullying the most naive and impressionable of us, then you are sacrificing other people’s freedom. And if you are people like this then I say, “fuck you too”. The social contract of public space doesn’t entitled you to be unbothered by other people.
To be clear I am in no way excusing parents that do not actually parent their children, especially in public. However the logic of the above comment is just a bunch of “get off my lawn” anti-social ME generation boomer energy. Also, kind of telling that the parent commenter just doesn’t see the parallels between their entitled attitude and everyone else’s entitlement. It’s a public space, if you can’t be compassionate, you don’t deserve it any more than anyone else.
You must be one of those entitled parents, or people who get offended on behalf of others. Either way, I have nothing to say to you.
I’m on the fence. It’s a pretty subjective topic no? Public spaces will always have conflict due to many people have many preferences.
I teach kids, and a lesson I have with them is on “context”.
The game of tag, is it good or bad?
Well, on the playground it is good, really fun actually!
But in music class or at the library? It’s really bad.
The game didn’t change, the context did. Same goes with parenting imo. In fact I’d go so far as to say that teaching your kids to be considerate of the spaces they are in is a good thing.
I grew up with my mom telling us to keep our hands behind our back when going into an antique store or to be polite at the dinner table, and I was always invited to dinners and nice places by my friends parents because they knew I’d behave.
Going off of this, If you never give your kids the chance to exist independently in public spaces (and appropriately discipline them/ teach them) they’ll grow up without really learning this well.
I can’t believe how many kids (high school) these days will call their parents to help them out of any uncertain task in a public space rather than try to figure it out on their own.
Recent example was I was taking a kid to the customer service desk on a trip I was chaperoning because they forgot their pass, and they were so lost about what to do and were calling their parents for help. I had to tell them relax, we’ll just explain the problem to the person at the desk and see what they say. And he could barely do that.
I imagine that if you as a kid had the freedom to explore museums and stuff semi-independently as a 10 year old but also under supervision, they would have so much more confidence in public spaces on their own later.
There is a difference between disciplining and helicoptering.
I guess including conflict of people trying to take your kids and ransom them.
I had a glorious moment at a restaurant with my extended family where there was a large group with kids at the next table letting them run riot. The parents were all nursing huge glasses of white wine and chatting away while the kids bothered other diners, waiters, etc.
At the end of the meal, after paying the bill, my uncle went over to the parents and told them their kids had ruined our meal. One of the parents tried to protest that he’d obviously never had kids. He responds, “I raised 3 kids and none of them ever behaved as badly as yours have done this afternoon.” Mic drop; my party left.
My hero!
It was British high drama
I hate this attitude. “Never let your child out of your sight or they’ll immediately be kidnapped”.
You know they’re more likely to be abused by family than a stranger. By your rationale you should never allow family to see your children either.
How do you know the wanker wasn’t related to you in some way?
The author admits to have let their kids, who are 2yo and 4yo roam free in restaurants to the point they have ended up in the kitchen, that right there tells you how responsible of a parent she is and how good of an approach hers is.
Do people not have the experience of peeking into the restaurant kitchen growing up?
One year I was on an elementary school trip at this restaurant that did a little historical show along with the meal, with a lot of crowd interaction, and I got caught up in acting out my role and went into the kitchen at which point I was immediately told that was off-limits, and I never did it again.
Not the same thing as letting a 2-year-old into a kitchen though. But I definitely explored and learned what was appropriate and what wasn’t as I grew up.
Yes, I did stuff like this when I was a kid, everybody does, but no, I wasn’t actively encouraged to do so, au contraire, my parents always taught me how to behave in public and I’m grateful for it. Kids will become adults one day, if they are never taught how to behave they’ll probably end up being entitled pricks that think they can do whatever they want whenever they want.
I don’t think everybody does anymore. Some parents keep their kids so sheltered now they don’t know how to do anything independently.
That’s wild lol, I’d be way too embarrassed.
I honestly think the same, there’s too many weirdos out there.
You watch too many movies
Don’t have to deal with this anymore, because mine are all at least tweenage.
It’s a balancing act, and sometimes running around a little is fine this day in this space, but not another day in a similar space.
I’m not going to act like I’ve never given my kids an iPad to keep them quiet for a while, but it would be refreshing to see MORE kids playing trains and Hot Wheels instead of sitting in front of a screen.
It’s much harder for the kids to create their own fun when a device just spews nonstop entertainment at then. Why use your own imagination, when there’s always someone else’s available to watch, play, listen to?
There’s a HUGE gray area between “children should be silent and invisible” and “HOW DID YOU GET ON THE ROOF OF WALMART?!?”. Neither of those extremes are good, and sometimes, as parents we learn during or afterwards that maybe this wasn’t the best place to play Hot Wheels. But a lot of the time, it’s not hurting anyone.
I worked for a while at a summer camp that didn’t allow phones, and kids loved it … if they could make it through the first two days.
Like you said, kids love being able to make their own fun, but it’s hard to compete with an iPad, and not always appropriate given the context (like if you are in a library you have to be quiet).
I definitely think kids should get more opportunities to play and make their own fun in unstructured but supervised settings – where the adults are there for safety but not telling the kids how to play.
The author’s critical approach to what is ‘polite’ is all well and good, but I have reservations about what she considers the limit.
As for the ‘doing no harm to others’, she must recognize that the harm her children do may not be readily apparent. When I’ve got a massive migrane, I don’t want to hear her kids screaming in the next booth over, but I also don’t want to have to confront her about it and risk her screaming also. Better to sit and suffer until I can’t.
I hate to sound like an old person with my “people these days rant”, but it’s just people being inconsiderate, and it’s everywhere. People stand in doorways and elevators, make people behind them on the road wait while they turn from the wrong lane, cut in lines, run red lights because they don’t want to wait, etc.
This is simply people being selfish and not wanting to parent, there’s no difference. There are places where kids can run wild and be themselves, but it’s not literally everywhere. Remember that the end goal is to raise not a child, but an empathetic, functioning member of society. So start teaching them early…
I definitely don’t feel like we live in a world where too much respect for others in public has become a problem.
The writer of the article is treating child rearing as if it requires PhD level child psychology. It doesn’t.
A child’s behavior is almost always ok if it is safe, non-destructive, legal, and NOT OFFENSIVE TO OTHER PEOPLE IN THE SAME SPACE. It doesn’t even matter if the other people’s idea of “offensive” seems reasonable or not. If their children are bothering others, a responsible parent will either curb their behavior or take them elsewhere.
The writer apparently doesn’t understand that last part.
Yes it absolutely does matter if other people’s idea of offensive seems reasonable.
If it seems unreasonable my new game for that moment is to see how much I can offend them without breaking any laws.
I raised my kids to be independent and was not very controlling - they think I was pretty hands off because they don’t remember the earliest years - but I can’t imagine doing that without literally teaching them what was reasonable behavior for different spaces. We did restaurant training, sit in your chair, use the utensils, don’t yell. (ETA I would do this at teatime when it was slow, and tip double since the bill did not reflect the mess or work at all) In stores, “put your hands behind” was the cue, not “don’t touch” because it’s easier to tell them to do something than to not do something.
At the park though? My only rule was don’t show off, don’t do anything to show off. If you want to climb the tree because you want to climb the tree, go for it but no “look at me I’m in the tree” because then you will probably go past what’s safe for you. When they fell down while running ask “you gonna be ok?” not “are you ok?”
Compared to their friends’ parents, the younger ones think I’m nearly neglectful but it’s more than my mom did, parenting right now while there are fewer kids around us so weird. So many parents are so controlling even of their high schoolers. You are trying to raise competent adults, they have to have the space to make decisions and mistakes to do that.
An unintended side effect of making backyards a luxury item, public spaces a pay-to-play, and community playgrounds homeless shelters
I’m a parent and do not agree with this approach. Everyone should behave in public - and kids should practice so they can learn. At home, my kids get to behave like animals and we do things where they can behave like kids, like trampoline park, zoo, the arcade, etc. When we are out at places where the kids should behave, we bring them iPads and headphones so they are able to make it through the activity. But it is just rude to let your kid intrude and ruin a dinner, museum, movie, etc for others.
They had to use a lazy Photoshop of kids running wild in a museum, because literally any museum can, should, and would kick them out immediately.
Not reading the article (why is an article even posted here) but the author is at best writing an article they know will piss people off.
It’s rage bait, which is likely why OP posted it
If you actually read it (or at least half of it, it was too long for me to finish) the author isn’t letting them play tag in a museum or anything crazy like that. There are people that do that kind of stuff, and there are limits to how wild your kids should get, but the author sounds like a reasonable parent comparing themselves to an unreasonable standard that they assume others are comparing them to.
That was my take as well. She even closes with asking us if we’re reacting to actual problems, or just what people perceive as problems (in other words, spirit or letter of the “law”).
Honestly, I couldn’t tell if I would be annoyed by how they handled their children or not. They are certainly not an unbiased source, and they could either be exaggerating how wild their children are in public, or oblivious to how bad they are. One would have to see it in person to know.
Some of these seem fine, some of them not so fine. Letting kids run around at a restaurant? I’d call that not fine. Other people are paying to be there and they probably don’t want to deal with your kids running around and past their table. The concerns about servers tripping over them are real, even if it’s not actually happening. I suspect the servers would prefer not to have to dodge someone’s kids to prevent that from happening.
The fountain? Not a problem, no one was being inconvenienced there, no one was paying to be there and having their time disrupted. They weren’t creating a dangerous situation.
The barbecue? Not a problem, they were invited, presumably by someone who understands what they’re getting into, and they can be uninvited, or not invited next time if it’s a problem.
Bottom line is, there’s places where it’s appropriate to let your kids run around and be wild, and there’s places where it’s not, and if your kids aren’t capable of not doing it in places where it isn’t appropriate, that’s a problem.
Just look at any public restroom, where the sinks are too high for them to reach
Well, maybe your two-year-old isn’t entitled to low sinks in a public restroom not specifically designed for children (e.g. at a school)? That shit costs money, why would they install low sinks just so kids who amount for a tiny percentage of the users can use them without parental assistance?
The bathroom thing just illustrates that we don’t accommodate kids in our society. There are probably more kids in the population who could use low sinks than you see because our public spaces are so hostile to them.
It’s more common in Europe (e.g. Sweden) for folks to bring their kids everywhere, and the physicality of those locations accommodates them because they are more present.
The bathroom argument that you made is akin to saying that folks shouldn’t feel entitled to bike lines / safe sidewalks because our cities were designed for cars and sidewalks and bike lanes are expensive for a tiny percent of the moving population.
Wouldn’t it be easier to have stools available that a kid could pull up to the sink to use a normal height sink, than to have sinks that are exclusively useful by kids?
The bathroom argument that you made is akin to saying that folks shouldn’t feel entitled to bike lines / safe sidewalks because our cities were designed for cars and sidewalks and bike lanes are expensive for a tiny percent of the moving population.
Bike lanes are installed by the government using taxpayer funding. Bathrooms (in non-public spaces) are installed by private companies. Difference in expectations there, for sure.
Stools are a great solution!
What community would be more appropriate? I’m pretty loose with fediverse communities. I’d rather throw more content up even if it’s not the best fit just to give Lemmy more content and this post got a shitton of interaction
ive neer seen link posts on asklemmy, and its generally used for self posts. i think its probably more of a fit in a curiosity comm. this kind of controversial but kind of funny takes do well in shitposting comms too.
it did appear to have sparked some discussion here now so actually on second tought, why not keep it here.
