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“Those pesky kids need a beating” is a meme several thousands years old
Yeah but then I see grown ass adults doing the same shit. And since they’re my age they more than likely got beat.
I see a lot of objectionable behavior out in public. A lot of it is from children. But most of it is not. If I’m thinking through my 10 worst flight experiences, or subway experiences, or coffee shop experiences, none of them involve children. Children are mostly a mild annoyance (and I say this as someone who mostly doesn’t like other people’s kids), but mostly harmless.
So the reaction of singling out the children for immediate correction, through physical force and violence, seems to be selectively targeted, and makes me suspect it’s just people who just don’t like children. Unless these same people say that a person holding up the line, playing music too loud on the subway, getting too close in your personal space, throwing trash on the ground, catcalling women, using slurs in public, etc., all deserve to be beaten, too.
And for people in the thread who are saying stuff like “oh yeah you shouldn’t beat your kids, but you should keep those children out of public places,” it also calls to mind the way some people talk about the homeless or the disabled, like they’re ruining your good time by simply existing within your vicinity.
We’re all just trying to coexist. Being in public, in a place open and accessible to everyone else, is inherently going to involve compromise, where we’re not able to exclude others (the deal that comes with them not being able to exclude you). You can’t let other people aggravate you enough to, like, post a TikTok about it (which I also consider to be objectionable behavior).
The kind of attitude you are talking about here is btw called adultism, which is a selective bias against children.
The answer isn’t to beat your kids though. I just think the current generation is taking the good advice to not hit your kids and is too impatient (or doesn’t have enough time) to actually raise kids that aren’t screaming all the damn time.
Try telling your kids not to scream.
… and watch them screaming even more just to annoy you.
It’s so fucking insane to me that the majority of Americans think beating your kids is acceptable and even healthy
Well, neither is true, though. Newer generations don’t just magically have less patience. Nor children today are more prone to tantrums and screaming than children in the past 30 million years. That’s just good old, “back in my days”, backwards thinking that has, ironically, also always existed amongst the older generations.
It’s a song and dance, driven by evolution, it has happened before and it will continue to happen. As this thread and hundreds of threads, and newspaper articles, and postcards, and letters, and books, and clay tablets and campfire rants have proven, ever since humans developed speech.
Kids these days.
My 11-month old is an absolute saint when we’re out and about, then a horrifying tornado of destruction when he’s at home. I suspect a lot of it is just boredom, but its hard to tell because… 11-mo olds aren’t great at verbalizing their discontent.
As he gets older and he starts losing that starstruck look of wonderment at the mall or a new restaurant or wherever, I suspect he’ll be harder to control. But he’s also incredibly clever, athletic, and curious. I don’t want to discourage any of this just to make parenting a bit easier in the short term.
Can’t fucking imagine actually hitting him. I know what that did to me after the rare few times my mom did it. I still can’t bring myself to forgive her 30 years later. And there’s no way I want my son thinking of me that way.
They’re experiencing restraint collapse.
You’re doing a great job parenting! It’s one of the most difficult jobs in the world to do well. Restraint collapse is a great indicator that you’re doing well. It’s also hell because you take everything on. Thank you for parenting well.
My mom had 4 kids. 3 of us were well behaved in public and she said “I would look at those parents with screaming kids in the store and think I am doing something right, my kids don’t do that. So God gave me Janet. I was so judgemental, then I got one who screamed in the store.”
When I was a kid, my parents used to leave me at home with my brother and he would be abusive af. He tied me up ones with zipties. One time, I felt so scared of my brother, I had to run away from home. I’m so used to all this, every time I hear my mother’s voice, I feel terrified, its like PTSD-inducing.
Then my mother gets [suprisedpikachuface.jpg] when I have depression. What did you expect, bitch, you caused this.
I don’t mind rambunctious children, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone, doing ear piercing screaming, or doing something that spreads disease. (Like putting their hands directly into ice cream topping trays instead of using the fucking scoop)
Frequently I see parents be way overly harsh with their kids where I’m at like the parent is terrified of being seen as a bad/lazy parent so they take it out on their kid by way over reacting to a kid doing something disruptive but ultimately pretty harmless.
There are occasional situations where the parent just dumbly stands there doing nothing to stop their kid doing something they really shouldn’t (like that Ice Cream Topping example… which is a thing I recently witnessed). But that’s less common than the former. Might be because I live in a rural conservative hellhole where kids are seen as their parent’s property.
My kids are respectful but they’re kids and I have an autistic 4 year old who is so cute and cuddly but he has the energy of a thousand suns, one time he was skipping around, hopping over cracks in the sidewalk and being happy and laughing loud, we go to a store and hes asking me a million questions and laughing and talking loud while being energetic and hopping. this one old Karen tells me I need to keep him quieter and calm, because he is disturbing others by laughing and being a kid. Without skipping a beat i said “well good thing hes a kid, the world belongs to the kids, not miserable Old people who are gonna die any day now” She had that look that if she were wearing a monocle it would have popped out.
I’m definitely the kind of adult who applies a disproportionately large punishment for small public disruptive behavior from kids I’m watching. It sucks because I know I’m going to far but I’m also so scared of the other adults in the room that I don’t know how else to react. It sucks.
What exactly are you afraid of them doing?
Embarrassing me, which when I say that why should I care if they embarrass me in front of other adults? So long as I’m trying to resolve the situation in a reasonable and mature way, why do I care about what other random adults are thinking.
[S] Is Lemmy better than therapy? [/S]
There is essentially universal agreement in the field of child psychology that “beating” your child is the wrong approach.
I’ve yet to meet a parent that completely ignores their child in a public venue. In many cultures children are considered to be a part of society / community and so they are given some autonomy to discover the world with their peers. Hyper individualistic Western society is really the odd one out here and Western cultures are the only ones where I’ve seen this take expressed openly. Conclude from that what you will.
A few weeks ago my wife and I were getting breakfast at a local bakery. Inside, a dad had decided that it did not matter that his small child was running around, screaming at the top of his lungs. The little gremlin started trying to steal pastries off other people’s tables and dad stiff didn’t do anything until the staff announced loudly that all unattended children would be reported to CPS.
That kid didn’t need a beating, but that dad sure did.
Agreed, that’s unacceptable.
It’s pretty hard being a dad and wanting to not hit my kids (which I do not) because I know damn well when they’re throwing shit and having an absolute exorcist level tantrum over some inconsequential shit I just think “yeah my mum would have smacked my ass and I’d not have done that again” for the eighth time each day…
“Calm it down or you’ll lose your tablet time” doesn’t have the same immediate corrective effect.
I don’t hit my kids, I barely even yell. They’re the most well-behaved kids I know. Almost as though respecting your kids and spending time with them makes them happier? And maybe kids that feel respected act better? It’s a parenting problem. Youth are the future, we the parents decide what that future looks like.
It’s boundaries, expectations and consistancy in consequences if they break the rules.
ITT people taking issue with parenting methods not even being advocated for. If you take your children to public places, of course everyone knows they are children, but they still shouldn’t be pulling stuff off racks, running around screaming and licking the windows, or putting hands on other people or children.
You don’t have to yell at them or beat them or anything else, but if they can’t pull themselves together in public then work on it and consider not bringing them to such places. My mom made us all repeat the rules before we left the car (no running, no putting things in the cart without being asked, keep one hand on the cart while we are moving or something like those) and if we didn’t follow the rules we all went back to the car. Simple as that.
Edit: sometimes you gotta go do something and take the kids. If they’re acting feral at least maybe don’t be the parent who looks like they are totally cool with it and just pretend it isn’t happening?
no body is stopping you now
It’s crazy seeing kids being kids. In the 90’s abuse was legal and used, daily. I guess the trade off is life expectancy since we didn’t dodge bullets on the daily.
In 1990 violent crime was twice what it is now. It dropped heavily from 91’ until 99’.
We just think it is more dangerous now because we can see it every time we reach in our pockets. (And companies make money off making sure we see it.)
I would say school shootings are higher now than any point in U.S. history. Child abuse is always an issue but kids today are more protected than in the 90s.
Yeah I would say they have been abnormally high since 2016, with 2020 being an oddity (COVID).
Murders overall are half what they were in 1990. Meaning we have a lot more targeted attacks for various reasons I’m not going to speculate in because my bias would likely impact what I think reasonings may be.
Yeah, it is safer now then ever before overall. I live in Sacramento. Very big place area wise but 20 years ago… It was dangerous with almost half the population size.
New York in the early 90s was cool but you never went down any alleys. I don’t care what it was. If it rolls down the alley it is the lords then.
Being a parent is hard af
If every single one of your ancestors did something and so did everyone else’s on a planet of 8 billion, the thing is not that hard.
Being a good one is.
I would argue that being a bad one even has its challenges.
even being a bad parent can be very tough
Doesn’t help that people judge 2 year old parents when their child is crying. Not like they could hold a debate with someone who can not comprehend the concept of self control.
For real, clearly they never had to explain to a 4 year old why they could not run around with crayons stuffed in their nose.
I understand but also not my problem? If you are too tired to deal with your children maybe keep them at home. If you are going to bring a child to a public place you got to be prepare and willing to educate them. Your children are special bundles of joy for You, and you only. People are not ok in having to deal with an unhinged savage child because parenting is hard. People take the “it takes a village” wrong. Not everyone you see is on your village.
Speaking as a parent, you are correct.
Thank you. Just adding again I’m not agains kids. Just want parents to parent more sometimes.
They’re mad because you’re right and they have to deal with screaming brats all day because they chose to and you didn’t.
exactly. They are mad because it’s NOT about the kids. Kids will be kids and thats why they have PARENTS. the Parents are the fucking lazy people that are “too tired” but keep having children becuase “oh my god it takes a vilage” Fuck off go raise your child
Then, politely, fuck off.
Children are a part of the society that you live in, whether you liked it or not. I don’t know who hurt you, but you were also a child once. You pooped your diapers, you cried, you misbehaved. How your parents have treated you when you did these things has a very direct effect on how you behave and think right now. My guess is they were shitty, it would explain your irrational anger and hatred towards kids.
Misbehaving in public is a necessary step to learning how to behave in the first place. It’s a learning by doing thing. You won’t get your child prepared to act kind, nice, and considerate with other people if you don’t let them meet other people. You cannot teach your kid how to behave on the outside at home. How is that not obvious to you? It is inconvenient, it is annoying, it is hard, and it has to be done so that we don’t have underdeveloped, immature, dysregulated asshole adults a generation’s time from now.
Parents are always obligated to watch for their kids and show them how to behave. This doesn’t mean they can, or should, control their every move, word, reaction, emotion, or behavior. If a 3 year old cries and it is uncomfortable for you, that’s your problem. It is not the child’s or the parent’s duty to shut them up with a gag ball ffs. It is their duty to help them resolve and guide them through their overwhelming emotions. So that they will grow up to be emotionally healthy adults.
Children have an innate need to play. They learn via playing. They learn via trying things out and touching them. They learn to walk and run by walking and running - and falling and failing. They also learn about the world from the world’s reaction. Being met with disdain for solely existing and breathing won’t help them to grow up to be adults with a lot of self worth.
You don’t get to decide who is part of the society and village you live in. You don’t get to cherry pick your neighbors.
You don’t want kids in your village go live in a cave.
You think the judgment is being leveled at the KIDS? No, no, no… nobody’s judging kids for acting out. They’re kids.
Kids aren’t the problem. Bad parents are the problem.
Judgement is only partially the problem. You are never as full of yourself as a parental figure as before you become one. Neglectful parents should be held accountable, that is not the core of the issue.
What bothers me immensely is the thought that “your kid, not my problem, but actually it is my problem, because I want them to behave differently”. This is like eating your cake and have it too.
The other thing that I find awful is that just existing on the outside (for some families even inside) is so anxiety evoking because of all these judgements. Parents end up micromanaging their kids and berating them for minor things because they are so fucking scared that people will judge them or yell at them for not having a picture perfect child that you can overlook. Children are not allowed to show any childish behavior on the outside. And this is what bothers me so much. You have to constantly choose between supporting your kid and gentle (not neglectful) parenting where you don’t yell or hit and simply being on their side or trying to appeal to the scrutiny of the public eye because it wants perfect order and quiet.
When you go vacationing in a child friendly country (looking at you, Croatia) and you feel supported instead of frowned upon for the exact same behaviors of your kid, because they are just having fun and not destroying anything and just minding their own business while not perfectly sitting still, then you just understand how shitty it is to go every day feeling the cold stare of everyone around who wished children would just die out.
I am a parent. My kid knows that some things aren’t okay to do in public and especially not in the direction of people who are trying to live their own lives. Teaching courtesy is not complicated.
Your third paragraph, from beginning to end, is INSANE and you’re telling on yourself quite a bit there.
Thank you for representing a normal parent reaction here. I too think this user comes off unhinged. It also seems to me like they think all their parenting shortcomings are someone else’s fault. If no one else’s, those people silently suffering in the public spaces they share with their screaming kids.
That’s a lot of anger you’re spitting just because someone doesn’t want to hear screaming children. My siblings and I were never allowed to scream in public.
You were not allowed to but I can guarantee that you were still screaming in public.
Hmm my mother says I was quiet and I observed normal amounts of fussiness from my other siblings that was far less than screaming at the top of their lungs. If they had done that, they would have been shushed, comforted, talked to, or taken somewhere else because my parents took responsibility for their own decisions and for what their children did. Instead of pretending it’s hopeless and that whatever impulse we had was fine.
My son was, too. I didn’t raise him strictly (I was a hippie mother, raised in the 70s), but gradually acclimatised him through smaller interactions (small groups to larger, to regional to public), because I had that luxury. Lots of parents over the past 10 years were deprived of that, and it’s been exceptionally difficult to get a child acclimatised to an increasingly hostile world.
People have been far less patient in public – which is entirely understandable, given the circumstances – so many parents and other caregivers (teachers, counsellors, etc) who are trying their best can’t help but be defensive when they hear negativity towards children online, because I’d wager everyone encounters people who are excessively put out by the slightest transgression of a child in their proximity.
It may not be the way the majority react, nor how you react, but it happens regularly enough to become exhausting.
So, in these conversations, I feel like many people are responding to children who are clearly being publicly misparented, and then there are many parents who are thinking of the times someone overreacted to a social faux pas by their child.
I feel like people are misdirecting their anger here.
I think you’re dead on actually. The person I responded to is so defensive because they’ve probably been talked to about it before. No matter how awful it’s been I never have done that. And if they realized that they as a parent are used to the annoyance, but others aren’t, it actually takes restraint not to at least glare. So when that commenter got so pissed, I assume their child is poorly behaved enough for the parent to get told semi-often
Every child screams in public at some point? That’s normal development. You and I did too. They may just be excited.
Of course if a child is screaming constantly then the parents need to intervene. But expecting children to be seen but not heard is unrealistic by any standard.
Not really. There are kids louder than others. And while there may be some internal aspects to that a lot of that have to do with education. Specially as they grow and education starts becoming more a defining factor.
Yes, I have a lot of anger for people who meet the most vulnerable parts of our society with hostility. I have an immense anger for people who don’t think these vulnerable people in the making have a place in society.
Congratulations on not being allowed to scream in public, ever. Did you good. Your parents had shitty standards and now you want to enforce these on other children so that they will also grow up and hate children. Great idea.
What you don’t understand (or pretend not to) is that you’re the one being judged, not the kids. It seems obvious from this chain that your kids are out of control and you get judged for it. I can think of no other reason you’d act this way.
I think the point of contention is that the user you debate is under the (right) assumption that when a child cries in public, this is just a small snapshot out of all the time the parents took them to any public place. A child crying is not a bug, it’s an inherent feature. They sometimes just do that, they don’t even know themselves, so it’s not the parents fault that their mini-human isn’t behaving like a fucking Gucci bag. Everything volvoxvsmarla said is true, children learn through trial an error and yes, you need to sometimes take the brunt of this process, I’m sorry little one. When children don’t learn how to behave in (for example) supermarkets because you banned them, then you get teenagers who didn’t learn to behave. You can’t pass the problem on forever. I’m a teacher and it really fucking shows when kids never learned how to exist in a public place.
BTW., this is not an excuse for parents who evidently don’t give a fuck or even worse, motivate their children to be brats so they entertain themselves. Scum of the earth. But it’s perfectly possible for parents to try their hardest and still fail sometimes.
No one is saying kids shouldn’t be allowed in public. They’re saying if your kid is losing their shit in a restaurant, remove them from the restaurant until they are done losing their shit.
I can tell you a specific scenario I take issue with. At the grocery store the other day, a child screamed at the top of its lungs all over the store. The parent never seemed to notice or care, but people everywhere were looking at each other, all clearly bothered. I’m sorry but that’s not my problem, that’s their shit to work out and they clearly don’t give a shit about others. Shitty parenting, 100% worthy of judgement.
We don’t have to assume that everyone bothered by kids at all hates kids or has no tolerance for their annoyances. OP did that, and took out what seems obvious to me as parental stress on users ITT. So I don’t really have much capacity left to empathize with them in particular.
Honestly, the judgement of parenting is not my main issue here. It’s the hypocrisy of at the same time saying “this is your problem, not mine” and “you have to deal with your problem so that I am not inconvenienced.”
Like, you can’t have it both ways. Either you don’t care, and then other people deserve the right to also not care about your opinion, or you do indeed care, and then it is your problem too. Your quote about not being part of the village is the one that I am saying fuck off to. You want to take yourself out of society and of the context, yet expect the other part to not take themselves out of society. You don’t even decide to look away, you decide to look with destructive criticism. I don’t see how this is supposed to help anyone, you included.
You come off as the type of person who will look at both the kid and the parent in disdain for being a nuisance even when they did something absolutely minor that you could easily avoid, ignore, or get away from. Are you assuming the kid will differentiate between your reaction towards them and their parent? Or that your reaction has no effect on the parent’s treatment of their child, perhaps in a more negative than positive way?
As for the judgement part, as I have pointed out somewhere else, you are seeing a sniplet of a day, of a life, of an hour. Yet you feel like you have enough information to rightfully judge. It’s correct that the kid might be subjected to bad, neglectful parenting and the parents do not care if their kid behaves awfully. Or you might have just met them in a vulnerable, bad moment. Somehow you know tho. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt or, God forbid, ask whether yoh can help? Offer a supporting smile to someone struggling? Why be hostile instead?
Because even if you took a perfect parent who does everything according to textbook from beginning to end, the kid will still have meltdowns in the most inconvenient and absurdly embarrassing moments in public.
And I have seen way too many parents who devote an insane amount of time and effort to their parenting, are reflected and have the best intentions and approaches, are incredibly level headed and collected (definitely not me tho), and give it their all, still being talked down upon by absolute strangers if they cannot make their preschool kid calm down within ten seconds. If these parents don’t stand a chance in the eye of public scrutiny, then I just don’t even know how a normal parent who doesn’t spend 24/7 thinking about their parenting choices has a chance.
I’ve also seen cases of what I would call bad parenting. Shaming, yelling, ignoring cries for help. But at least I can realise that I don’t know the full story. So unless I have a direct offer of help (tissue, water, bandaid, carrying something, etc) I let them be and hope that they know what they are doing and handling the situation to the best of their ability. I also know a kid who died of shaken baby syndrome because the new partner of their mom couldn’t handle the cries. I’d much prefer he ignored the cries and tantrums instead of killing the two year old boy.
It’s the hypocrisy of at the same time saying “this is your problem, not mine” and “you have to deal with your problem so that I am not inconvenienced.”
What the hell are you even talking about? It’s not complicated. Because you aren’t taking care of the issue, it became mine (and every other person being bothered). I can’t take enough drugs to understand how that wouldn’t be obvious, or how it could be “hypocrisy”. What the actual fuck. I chose not to have kids, you chose to. Therefore I cannot and should not be expected to help them not lose their shit. That is your job. Do it.
Also, you confused me with someone else. I didn’t mention “the village”. You must have also missed my comment where I said that I lost my empathy for you after your ragey diatribes where you shirk all your responsibility.
And for the record, when I see the parent actually trying, I don’t judge them, I just try to get through it and ignore the child’s cries, such as a baby screaming on a plane. What I cannot have compassion for are the people who do not seem to be trying in the least. Which is far too common.
We are not talking about kids babe, we are talking about YOU that is too tired to educate
Kid having a meltdown in the Walmart while their mom casually picks out yoga pants
volvoxvsmarla: “look at this fine example of parenting!”
I can’t find where the yoga pants part was supposedly said
You can look around and see that the world is not ok on you imposing your misbihaved child on everyone.
I was once a child, correct, and I couldn’t leave my table in a restaurant, that was not even a question. I had to learn to behave otherwise I would be grounded at home. My father left the table more than once in a restaurant to take my brother to be grounded in the car. And came back once it was understood.
Limits are healthy and if it’s tok hard you can always gibe them to social services or not fucking having them.
Just look around a little. Nobody else cares about you baby or you.
Society norms have to be bilateral, and convenient for every member of the society.
One member of society cannot fuck around not expecting to, eventually, find out.
This is why we have laws, norms and social customs. So we can live in a society.
If members of society feel that they cannot longer live next to other members is when society breaks, and, you like it or not, the social pact gets broken.
You cannot force members of a society to live en the minimum common suffering denominator. To lower everyone standards of living to the one provided by the most annoying member of the society. That’s a highway to the society giving the big F to that member.
It should be the contrary, society should try to live to the standard of the less annoyance. To avoid bother the most sensible member of the group.
It’s a everyone loses vs everyone wins situation. We should aim for the later.
Hahahahahaha
Right. Maybe that’s why you have mad social anxiety and the like. Because your parents beat your ass for even talking when out in public.
You’ve riled the forever alone nerds.
