Permissive parents: Curb your brats

Eh, he's just mad because I called him a fat fuck - and, apparently, it's true.

OTOH, his idiotic crap doesn't bother me because it's not true.

Then you'll love my solution to this whole deal: free-range children. As soon as they can walk, you fence in your back yard (if it isn't already) and turn the little bastards loose. Throw a box of Cheerios over the fence once a day and call it good. Let 'em out when they turn 18.

Plato agrees!

What is this "sidewalk" of which you speak? This was rural NJ in the 20s/30s.

But you're probably right - I got the impression Pop's reprimand was for disobeying his orders, period. I don't remember Pop well enough to know how he stood on the Dirty German situation, but I can tell you Dad's mother would have blanched at any sign of bigotry. I suspect the neighborhood kids, who, as apostle pointed out, had parents who fought the Bosch in The War. Pop was a few years too old to have been in The Great War, but he was still of that generation.

Well, you don't have to have kids of your own to understand that if someone is sitting at the Applebee's booth across from you with a glazed look in their eye while their kid shrieks at the top of their lungs for five straight minutes that maybe, just maybe, there's some bad parenting going on, and maybe, just maybe, we have a few ideas that might work on how to correct THAT situation right then and there.

No, no, no. Have we forgotten so soon? You have to be right on top of a thing if you're going to have even the most basic understanding of it. If you're not, then automatically and inescapably, it absolutely must be incomprehensible to you.

Actually, for me it's not the "you're not doing it so you can't know about it" syndrome so much as the vast, sweeping absolutes that the non-experienced child-rearers tend to speak in. Such as "parents should ALWAYS..." and "children should NEVER..." and crap like that. Life just doesn't work that way, regardless or whether you think it should.

As a parent, you do your best. It's gonna suffice for some folks, but never for everyone. There's always someone out there who's pissed at the world, doing a slow burn because children dare to be in a public place. Folks like that really won't be happy unless they're writing a manifesto in a cabin off the grid in Montana or something.

Absolutes don't bother me that much, mostly because they don't exist. Where some will read "parents should ALWAYS", I see, "Parents should ALWAYS do their utmost to..."

I think the biggest problem non-parents have with dealing with kids is that they are so used to thinking everything is about them in the first place.

So kids, learn to deal with kids. Touch mine and I'll fucking kill you.

That being said, it is true that there are bad examples, and that society has gone too far to stop child abuse that parents have to worry about the legal ramifications of dealing with their kids. And everyone has to worry about dealing with any kids not their own.

But the general WAAAGHHH level that is often at display over this topic is typical forge over-emotive outrage. Some would call it a tantrum.

Don't want to be around kids in public. Easy. Don't go in public. Problem solved. LOL.

Parents and their kids have every right to be there. You have the right to be there too - just not the right to not have people you don't like there.

Same here.

One of the nice things about giving them things like cell phones and iPods is that they hate it when you take that stuff away.

Unless my parents decide to pony up the cash*, it's going to be a few more years before we can afford to have kids. Sometimes it's just not fiscally responsible to have kids early.


*Damn right I'm serious. Time is money. We may be getting older, but my parents are even closer to death. Give me enough to put a decent down payment on a 3 or 4 bedroom place in Seattle and I'll grab some needle nose pliers and take care of Anne's IUD TONIGHT! Only reason we haven't squirted out any little crumbsnatchers yet is that we want some stability first.....

Frontline - good advice in general. However, most people aren't concerned about LEOs in these incidences. They are concerned about Child Protective Services. The assumption that the truth will be what wins out there is an idealistic one to say the least.

I concur that taking things away from a child is the most effective punishment. That being said, I have a well behaved kid, the type that honestly wants to do well. Some people don't have that - and some people have very little to take away from their kids in the first place.

No, it's equal application of common fucking courtesy in public. That does not allow for you inflicting your undisciplined brats on me.

Don't want to deal with people who won't put up with shrieking brats? Leave them the hell at home. Fuck you.

That cute little portrayal is dishonest to the point of an outright fucking lie. It's not "people I don't like." It's negligent assbags who expect everyone to tune out their wailing, berserk little crotch fruit rather than forcing themselves to recognize the fact that having small children restricts your movements a bit more out of courtesy for your fellow human being. I'm really fucking sorry that this means you might not get to go out to all the fun places you went before you started squeezing out babies, but you should have thought of that before you did it.

Nope. Completely wrong, and what's more, intellectually dishonest in every particular. I remember that thread were you were defending that asshat who hung an epitaph of Santa by the neck. Tickled you pink, and you said that everyone else could shove it because he had no need to consider other people's feelings on the subject. It was his legal right.

Guess courtesy didn't really enter into that one, did it? LOL.

Right, because averting your eyes from a display on private property is exactly the same as tuning out someone's noisy brood in a restaurant. The childish imbecile "logic" here is all annoying things are equal in every way, and it doesn't fly. Bring the santa to a public place, or put the shrieking children in your own front yard, and then you might have something resembling equivalence. But neither is the case, and yours was a weak attempt at rationalizing.

The same standards for "courtesy" don't apply in public vs. private settings.

You should have been around for Ancalagon's rant on that subject a year or more ago. He thought that shit was okie dokie. Approach my kids like that and this pappa bear will snap your fucking neck and shit down it.

Have a word with the parents? Hell yeah. PLEASE do. Shame them, scold them, whatever you like to highlight THEIR failure. But anybody who thinks they're a bad motherfucker for backing down a little kid that isn't their own deserves a bullet enema.

If you need to call the police to find out what is "acceptable" by LEOs, you're doing it wrong.

Both my boys mind me without question and I never spanked my older child, and the younger one hasn't been a problem since I left my ex husband.

Do you plan on making every goddamn thread here about Kirk or apostle?

How much longer before you disappear again?

Oh! Anc is here!

If reading my opinion bothers you, maybe you should put me on ignore.

1. Disciplining someone else's kid? Should never be an issue---kids should be kept in line by their own parents. When I was a kid, if another parent had disciplined me, my parents would've been angry with ME for bothering someone else. "Didn't I teach you to behave better than that?" would've been the immediate question.

2. There are environments that are kid-appropriate and there are those that are not. Know the difference. I don't expect to go to a G-rated cartoon on Sunday afternoon and be spared babies and toddlers making noise; I *do* expect to go to an R-rated movie at 10:30pm without those distractions. Likewise, a crying baby at McDonald's is no big deal; a kid making excess noise at a nice restaurant is out of line.

3. We *all* bear the requirement to act courteously in public. Parents: that means you either control your kids or you keep them out of situations where they can bother others. If you don't get that your screaming kid is keeping someone else from enjoyment of conversation, a meal, etc., then really YOU are the biggest part of the problem.

P.S. I once got called "Motherfucker" because I dared--dared!--to ask a lady with an infant to step out of a theater because her baby was crying. Her husband/significant other clearly objected to my temerity. Apparently, it was his God-given right to bring a crying infant to see a late showing of Godzilla...

This is why I wish a movie theater down here would ban kids and actually enforce it.

I refer to them as Dumbass Cunt Fuckers.

Check out Gold Class Cinemas. You pay extra for it, but valet parking, premium seats, full menu/bar w/server, and 21 and up only.

Na, done with this shit, at least for now. Looking to use my G.I. Bill and get my Master's and eventually PhD in order to teach. Yeah, got a while left yet. :/