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 :(
I don’t care about kids being unattended by a parent or guardian if they are behaving themselves. Honestly, these days I tend to see more adults behaving like children in public, causing a scene than children who behave like children causing a scene.
I’m more concerned by a small child by itself getting snatched or hurt than because they might annoy me.
I might not have a puppy, but I always have skittles (the crack of the candy world)
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.
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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.
Everywhere I go, my kids—I now have two, and they’re 2 and 4 years old—seem to be the wildest kids there.
That means your kids are gonna grow up healthy.
The nation controls its people to the point of bending it into unnatural behavior. In fact, the people are real, the nation is not. We should think about what’s best for the people.
As long as you allow the village to raise them. Expose them openly to the village, the village will react openly.
Our 5 kids are grown, but there’s no way in hell I’d have let them run wild. When parents do that, it is one of the most annoying things about going places in public. It seems every time we go to eat someplace, a family with a gaggle of rowdy kids gets seated immediately near us.
I appreciate that. And our “not allowing our kids to run wild” thing never involved being authoritarian, either. We just tried to raise them to be respectful of others and, whaddya know? It worked! We have some very respectful and wonderful grown adult kids!
My questions to the author would be:
“what happens when your kids get hurt because they were someplace kids weren’t expected to be, or doing something they weren’t expected to be doing?” Do you, the parent, rush to their aid and castigate the adult that was near them or that was the initial cause of the physcial harm? Do you apologize to the adult instead? How about if they break things? Do you immediately open your wallet and start handing out cash or do you fall back on “they’re just kids” and let others shoulder the burden of property loss because your choices?
I saw this exact thing at the local brewery. Two kids chasing each other tripped someone carrying several glasses and both fell onto a pile of broken glass. The parents came over and started yelling at the man to watch where he was going. Others started saying it was the kids who caused the accident, and the parents backed down but clearly still thought they were right.
