parenting stuff

[keryx]

I was appalled to see that misia's (Hanne Blank's) readers were so "ROWR, kids have to be taught TEH RULEZZ" about this post.

Am I way off base? It seems like a four year old doesn't need to be taught to mindlessly follow rules, and hauled off without explanation. Yes, mom needs to be more understanding of other people, but what, we as adults can't pause a few minutes to let a kid have a good time - or at least to explain to the kid why zir good time is a source of frustrating inconvenience to others? In my opinon, if anyone was wrong in that story, it was the old dude TOTALLY VIOLATING THE KID'S SPACE. And yeah, okay, mom needed to be paying more attention and have done something sooner. Cause $DEITY knows you can't expect strangers in this country to show your kids care and respect; they just want to demand you discipline them.

Seriously. Only a handful of people had the slightest concern for the child other than to say zie'd be "spoiled", and even they were still like "yes, children are zany, but that means we should leave them with a relative anytime we leave the house".

GAH. Sometimes I think I'm going to have to live on a self-sufficient farm if I ever want children. And we'll all just roll on the floor whenever we fucking feel like it (er, although it won't be all nasty dirty like the grocery store).

Comments

Sorry.....but.....

[luna-littleone.livejournal.com]

what the child needs to learn though is that there is a time and place for everything. Say a child is in a movie theater. Does the child have the right to squeal and scream down the aisles during a movie because it's fun?
Or run around a restaurant where servers almost drop plates of food because they have a toddler running around their legs?

These are not extreme cases because I have seen these things happen and it really bothers me that parents allow there kids behave in such a manner.

Re: Sorry.....but.....

[anysia.livejournal.com]

I might be the exception but I never allowed my kids to ever get that out of hand. I have had more adults disrupt dinners/movies/concerts than children ever did.

[kdiddy.livejournal.com]

Hmm..
Granted: the situation sounds infuriatingly annoying.
Granted: maybe that kid is just a jerk.
Granted: the mom doesn't sound like the brightest bulb on the tree.
Granted: the man presumably thought he was acting in the best interest of everyone involved.
Granted: the whole situation and all that it implies certainly seems quite unfortunate.

However, touching a child, much less picking one up, who isn't yours and you don't know is never cool (unless the kid is about to be hit by a car or something). Regardless of what the mom was doing wrong, the guy was out of line. He should have taken it up with the mom, since she was obviously the person he had the real problem with anyway.

[anysia.livejournal.com]

No, you aren't off base. A 4 yr old barely has a grasp on what just is. What amuses them, and gives them entertainment might be something totally outside the ken of adults. And yes, we do have to just let kids be kids.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you. I just want to give you a hug right now. :)

[divinerose.livejournal.com]

perhaps the old man shoudlnt have picked up the child, but something needed to be done. there is a time and place for play. like a jungle gym, a park, outside...NOT in a grocery store. Especially when you ask the child to do something and you go ignored. Yes, I am all for kids having fun and playing. But they need rules too. That is how kids feel safe and secure and yes they will push these rules and boundaries but they do like to know they are there. I think the mom was at fault here, she was inconsiderate of other shoppers and honestly was placing the child in harms way. What if the child rolled against a display and had knocked cans down on itself? I know that you will disagree with me, but I think the mom should have picked the child up and put it in her cart. I agree with the poster.

[titilayo.livejournal.com]

I almost feel bad about this, but I disagree with you. You say that "you can't expect strangers in this country to show your kids care and respect", but how were the child and mother showing care and respect for their fellow-shoppers? I mean, would it be acceptable for me to go outside right now and roll back and forth across the major intersection in front of my office, just because it's fun and I feel like doing it, and expect all the traffic to stop for me? I don't think so.

I don't necessarily agree that the child should have been left at home, but I do appreciate that for a parent, that really can be the most convenient thing.

And you say, "okay, mom needed to be paying more attention and have done something sooner" and your response to the original post said that you'd have "told the kid to stop" which isn't that different from what some of the other respondees suggested. (Q. What would you have done if they'd then refused to stop?)

As for me, I can definitely pause a few minutes to give a child a chance to have some fun. If I saw a little child stop to roll around giggling on the floor of the supermarket for a few moments, my concern would probably be more about the fact that the floor is dirty that about the child's discipline or lack thereof. And if the kid kept rolling around and the parent reacted like the mother in the story you linked to, I'd roll my eyes, suck my teeth, and turn my cart around and go down another aisle.

[titilayo.livejournal.com]

By which I mean to say that I would never take it upon myself to manhandle another person in a grocery store, or anywhere else, just because they were in my way. That's really out of place.

[ddr-ho.livejournal.com]

I've worked with kids a lot, and I think you're way off base. The situation described shows a complete lack of discipline, both on the part of the child and the mother. Kids don't learn to mindfully follow rules until they develop further mental cognizance. For those earlier years, they need to be given very firm guidelines on appropriate ways to behave, for their own good and that of those who have to share the world with them.

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

For some of us, the market is far more sacred then any recognized place of holy worship
; )

[ddr-ho.livejournal.com]

Eh, not horrifying, but I would have done differently. I would have stood over the child, said, "Excuse me, young man, but I would like to walk in that space where you're laying." Strangers actually calling them up on their poor behavior straightens kids out amazingly fast.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

And seriously, it's a GROCERY STORE, not a sacred place of holy worship.

EXACTLY. And the kid was what, four? Eww, I just love how people are all about freedom and rights and... punishing kids a lot (often with hitting) because THEY, unlike adults who should hardly ever be coerced, need to "learn to behave."

[keryx.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU. That's all I'm saying. Whatever you may believe about parenting (and apparently a lot of folk believe that having riotous fun in a way that slightly inconveniences others is EEEVIL), the travesty is someone a child didn't know manhandling another person in a public space.

If I went back and replaced the word "kid" with woman, I damn well expect my feminist friends to be horrified with the man's behavior.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

Disagree. Toddlers are taught to mindlessly follow rules because at toddler age, most rules are there to either keep the child from accidentally killing itself, or from keeping shoppers from killing it. Toddlers don't reason very well. I'm all for teaching kids to think and decide when to break rules that should be broken but they can't do it until they're old enough to reason.

I've got no problem with kids -- or adults for that matter -- rolling on the floor. They just can't block the right of way. The old guy may have been violating the kid's space but the kid was violating *everyone's* space. We expect adults to recognize the laws of basic social etiquette, one of which is that your rights and your space stop at the line where mine start. Either parents have to enforce those laws with their children or the rest of us have to be free to enforce them ourselves, which is what the old guy did.
The only other solution I see was for him to ask management to remove the people from the store.

[ddr-ho.livejournal.com]

I do think he could have tried a hands-off approach. I described one above, but sometimes just making eye contact with a kid who knows he's behaving badly will get shock them into politeness. I find that kids know how badly their parents don't want to make a scene, and they know that other people will pretend not to notice. So the kid pushes the parent's boundaries to see how much they can get away with.

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I'm with most of them. Yes, I am all for letting kids (and adults) have fun, to act outside of how we are "supposed" to act. But letting your kid roll all over the supermarket floor? Not just one little roll, but back and forth, while people wait and are patient while you let playtime become rudeness? No thank you. Polite people, no matter what the age, are big on my list. I don't think you have to be mean or angry to correct this situation (before it even happens!), just consistent and fair.

[vaspider]

You and I are often on the same page about a lot of things, but on this one, I think you're entirely off-base. Four year olds are absolutely old enough to be taught that there are different behaviors expected in different areas, and this is an age when it's important if not crucial to socialize children with a basic respect for the situation in which they find themselves and the people around them. One of the things I have endeavored to teach my son is that rolling around on the floor at home is a-ok, and in fact encouraged, but rolling around on the floor in the supermarket, where you are disrespecting the basic social contract in that place, is inappropriate.

Kids at that age need to be taught to respect other people and to view them as people with needs and desires. I work with someone -- the infamous A. -- who was never taught this, and who treats everyone he works with as someone there to do what he wants them to as a result. Example: last night I got permission from my manager to leave early and use a couple of hours of PTO so I could get ready for my trip today. This is exactly the same thing that he himself did the day before his vacation three weeks ago, and when I told him John had approved it, he whined for literally an hour about how it was "unfair" because it wasn't what he wanted me to do.

That is someone who was never taught basic respect for other people as human beings. As a result, despite wanting to be a manager, he will never be one at our company, because he completely lacks the requisite basic social skills.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

How do you know this was a result of how he was parented? If he doesn't say so himself, he could just be an asshole in general. If he does say so himself, he could very easily be making excuses for his behavior that have no real meaning at all.

[hope-persists.livejournal.com]

my plan is to have a women's (mostly self-sufficient, mostly off the grid) commune out here in western mass, complete with organic farm (mostly just to feed us) and a birthing center because i think children should be born into those kind of female run, loving type environments. (and men would be allowed on the land, just likely not living there. though there could be exceptions).

wanna join?

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Yes, please. I wish there were urban communes so I could have city life without having to interact with things like how other people think we're supposed to behave in public. :)

Gods, the responses here are distressing, too.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

That mom does seem like she was handling it very poorly. But it bothers me that any time any child misbehaves and the parents' solution seems ineffective or stupid it's assumed that the person is that horrible, child-marring beast, THE PERMISSIVE PARENT (tm)! Children are all about pushing parents' buttons and sometimes parents just feel helpless. A resigned, exasperated "Oh, honey, you KNOW you shouldn't be doing that!" is ineffective, ceertainly. But what if it's just that that's all she can think of that second? What if the kid's behavior was cute and charming to the other shoppers* until they couldn't get to their peas?

People really need to stop making assumptions about others' entire parenting style from one experience that annoyed or flabbergasted them.

And this one is a hellacious sore spot for me because one of the most deligtful memories of my entire life involved running breathlessly around an IKEA with my niece. Technically I was supposed to be running after her to get her to stop. In truth, we were playing together. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life because I had never been able to run in my life until a few months before. Having the experience of flying after a gleeful child was something I'd never yet had and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

But but but we were right in front of the checkout aisles and so that was an inappropriate place to play! OH NOES I AM A PERMISSIVE AUNT. May the flames of hell take me and the OMG KILL EM NOW PERMISSIVE PARENTS who raised me to be kind and to do right because I understood the importance of my choices, not because I feared breaking the rules trained me to think such behavior might be permissible!

And that man picking up the child is totally disgusting. I make vows in TKD never to start the fight, but it would have been with great difficulty I resisted clocking him in the jaw. Adults are not the only ones with violable personal space.

*barring the "childfree" ogres who go into paroxysms of rage if a child has fun in their immediate vicinity, I mean.

Re: Gods, the responses here are distressing, too.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose I should be surprised to find, once again, that I'm weird beyond belief. I'm not saying this mother didn't show a lack of interest in others' wants at the grocery store, and she clearly responded emotionally & somewhat stupidly once others made a Huge Big Deal about it. But seriously, it's a grocery store. Can we not be permissive with children ANYWHERE? I just feel like we as a culture ought to have time to allow children to be a little crazy - out in public, or anywhere - if they're not hurting others.

It bothers me that this is apparently a massively radical viewpoint on the role of kids in our society.

You seem to be the first person to interpret the mother's behavior as I did, as purely representative of her response to that moment & not a history of disinterest & "spoiling" of her kid. Surely all other commenters aren't 100% their best selves 100% of the time? :)

from another perspective

[strph.livejournal.com]

While I don't think the man should have grabbed some stranger's child, I do think it needs to be said: she should have picked up the child sooner before it got to the point where an exasperated customer had to do something drastic like that. I feel that children should be taught the right and wrong ways to act in public settings, if only out of respect and concern for other people in those spaces--and not just the for customers, mind you.

I work in the supplement department of a health food store with lots of glass bottles and small tippy things. I can't tell you how many times an errant child has created messes from hir "play," and of course, I have to clean it up, not the parents. While I respect the right for a child (or an adult!) to play, I think there are times and places for that. Also, as somebody else mentioned, they could have hurt themselves too, if a display had fallen down on them or a customer tripped and fell on them.

I won't touch an errant child in my store, but I will say to the child, "Please don't touch those bottles. They're fragile." I don't care if a parent gets offended; I wish they'd just respect my job of keeping the store clean and protecting merchandise. Heck, I could technically lose my job if I let a customer cause harm to the merchandise or (especially) to themselves.

cultural tropes

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

I also think that the bogeyman (or, feminists take careful note, bogeywoman -- this is usually said of mothers and not fathers and if it's not because women are deemed "the nurturers" and thus considered to be more indulging, I'm a hobbit) of the Permissive Parent is "backlash thinking," to borrow a general idea from Faludi. I think that what's happening is similar in structure as happened when people in the '80s in the US went "Of course it's good that so many (white) women have careers now! But now they're forced to GIVE UP HAVING KIDS! Feminism made them miserable!" or to the people who say things like "Of course it's great that now so many people of color go to college and/or get nice jobs. But affirmative action, that goes too far! Give us whites our rights back!"

That is to say that in recent history, things like child abuse came to light as the horrors they are. Studies were done of using corporl punishment on kids and teh results are so overwhelming that most reputable mental health people say spanking and the like ar bad ideas. Broadly construed, this means that (at least among the white middle class) parenting has in a very real sense become "more permissive."

But now we have "backlash thinking" creeping in. Of course belts and maybe hands are inhumane tools of punishment for children? BUT OH NOES WHAT IF WE LET OURSELVES GO TOOOOOO FAAAAAAAAAAAAR TO PROTECT THEM FROM ABUSE?

PART 2

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

Why, that would be a sheer disaster! Kids would be whiny, spoiled and self-indulgent. They'd grow into simpering, spineless adults who expect everything handed to them on a silver platter! They'd become asshole bosses like the ones talked about in these very comments! Quick, just a little more punishment, PLEASE, before society explodes!

I think that explains the sheer vitriol people have for "permissive parents", the totally out of proportion disgust at a child doing something inappropriate without being immediately and effectively disciplined, etc. It's the old backlash fear that giving up the "old way" can only be good to a point.

[cutegaychick.livejournal.com]

Different angle:

I always get ticked off at parents when I see children being obnoxious in public, not because the parents should discipline their children but because they should entertain them a little better.

I used to hang out at the laundrymat (I hate the laundrymat) and I was always appalled at the number of children hanging out being really obnoxious because their mothers had brought absolutely nothing for them to do. You can't not provide entertainment and then ask a 4-year-old to sit still and be quiet through three hours worth of laundry. Hell, I can't sit still and be quiet through three hours worth of laundry. Give the kid a goddam book, lady!

Same goes for grocery shopping. Kids get bored and they get antsy and then they give everyone around them a headache. Give your kid a goddam book. Or crayons and a sketch pad. Or a (insert your favorite gender stereotype doll here). Or hell, get them to help you look for grocery store items that start with A, then B, then C. Whatever. Just give them something to do.

When you leave kids (or adults, for that matter) to entertain themselves, they tend to do it by getting into trouble or irritating the hell out of everyone around them. Gotta give them something safe and quiet to keep them occupied.

[fierceawakening.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. The whole point I've been trying to make repeatedly is that people's jumping to assumptions about "improper discipline" is nonsensical. There are so many other, creative ways this could have been handled, such as the ones you mention here. Why do our minds jump to the horrors of permissiveness rather than simple offers of creative, productive solutions that don't focus around punishment? (And why are these discussions SO OFTEN the occasion for parents who do spank to smirk that they know better than "the PC police?")

[anysia.livejournal.com]

The parent of this toddler ... decided that the way to handle this situation was to continue browsing the shelves and adding items to her cart, literally not paying a bit of attention to the child's behavior.

Funny,this is exactly how I handled both my boys when they had temper tantrums in a grocery store (same store, two kids, 10 yrs apart, same temper tantrum). And while it *looked* as if I wasn't watching, I was watching my kids like a hawk, all the while showing them I was not going to react to a hissyfit. And I only had to do that once with each child. And many parenting books/tips tell you to ignore hissyfits.

And what the heck is wrong with just turning the damned shopping cart around and going the other way. From what I remember, the aisles do have two points of entry.

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

:-D hee hee hee hee

i am the parent who puts our five year old in the trolley and plays "racing car" in the supermarket as we do our grocery shopping. we RUN down the ailses, making LOUD car noises. BRRRROOOOOOOM BBBBRRRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!
when mr 5 tires of this, he gets out and directs trolley traffic at the aisle intersections. tells people to "stop", "go" etc.
anyone who gives us the evil eye is laughed at. but it doesn't happen often, most people get into it and seem to enjoy the entertainment. :-)
my kids are wild as they want (as long as it isn't stupidly dangerous)... and it's actually suprising what sensible kids they really are. they have nothing to rebel against. LOL. :-D

[libskrat]

Erm. Speaking as the local childfree ogre...

I don't think it's any fairer to jump all over the man than to jump all over the parent. He did not hurt the child in the slightest, and "WELL HE COULDA!" is hysteria. And to my mind it's ludicrous for parents to bitch how the Big Bad World Never Helps Them With Their Children while objecting strenuously to acts such as this -- that's offering responsibility without authority.

Under the circumstances, I think he behaved appropriately. Kiddie didn't. Mama didn't. I also think he was brave. That kind of thing can land people in criminal court. Which is pretty ludicrous, but there it is.