I also agree with Kemtee and Kimberley!!

Applause, Applause :D

Sory I got so excited about kemtees post that I forgot the quote her.
I'll add a standing ovation. :D

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Mary

Very well stated, Kemtee.

And yes, I have no problem removing my whiny, bratty, screaming, foul children from public places (and giving them a swat on the fanny to boot). Children should behave in public - period.

I will largely agree with the article. So far as I know, my eight year old step son has never been inside a grocery store. Movies, Pizza Hut, camps, schools, whatever, but I am lucky enough to get to leave him home when I go places where children generally aggrivate people, and children aggrivate me almost anywhere. Frankly, when we see a well behaved child we comment, "did you see how polite that child was?" As if unruly children ARE in fact the norm. Well, they are, and I would rather see a terrier at a nice restaurant than a child.

Misbehaved children are generally the fault of the parent, and you can tell a good parent by their level of embarassment. A good parent will appologize and remove said child from the situation. A bad parent thinks it is normal for children to misbehave in public.

The signs about watching your children, or keeping them quiet, etc., are up in businesses all over my town. When I was a child, you did not need to tell parents to watch their children; they just did it.

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The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is best after all.
- -- Benjamin Spock

I agree as well!!

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Do you remember what it was like to be a kid? Sure, it's rude for your kid to tear up sugar packets or unload the ketchup, but clean up the table before you leave and give the waitress a big tip. And in restuarants, anyways, the waitress doesn't clean the table - the busser does.

If a restaurant is child friendly, they should be prepared for what that entails. My DD is 18 months, I do not expect her to behaved like a saint because she doesn't have impulse control and yelling/hitting/or saying "no" until your brain falls out WON'T change that.

sure 5-8 year olds know better, but I'm disgusted when I see a mom yell across a restaurant or any public place - "GET OVER HERE NOW AND SIT YOUR BUTT IN THIS CHAIR". Isn't that JUST as disturbing to patrons. If my DD is fussy, well I go outside...I agree with you all that removing a child from an adult setting when they are overwhelmed is appropriate.

But that's just it, putting a child in an adult medium - you cannot expect your child to be perfect and sometimes they can be downright "bad". Doing what you do as a parent is setting firm boundaries, and if they cross it, well leave your cart in the aisle and GO HOME.

My mom, now 60, grew up in a time where parents taught their kids to "behave" but you know what that meant? Instilling fear into their child, beating them into submission, spankings for punishment - is that worth your child always behaving?

I'm not a leanent mom, maybe more so than others. If my DD cannot wait the 15 minutes to seat at a restaurant, I put my name on the list and go play outside with her. I don't expect her to sit in a seat in the waiting room for that time. I agree with kemtee on the grounds that - you have to sacrifice what you want to do sometimes, not go to nicer restaurants...put off going to a movie for 3 months until you get a babysitter...but if a setting is obviously child friendly then it's equally innappropriate for patrons to expect that a child is going to behave 100%.

I don't like getting dirty looks when I get on a plane (I don't let my DD run around the aisles), or go to a restaurant. I know the article is speaking of children that simply are rude and don't have manners but it also talks about a child being loud in the children's section of a bookstore!!

A nice restaurant, fine - it should be common sense for a child not to go to one...but the article talks about menu's saying "Kids must use their inside voices" - People who write those sentances do not have kids.

The libertarian in me agrees that no one's rights should be infringed for the sake of another. But I think in this case we're confusing "right" with "privilege." Do you have the "right" to walk into any private building? If it's open for business, then sure, you could make the argument that you do, but the truth of it is the proprietor is doing you a favor by extending you the privilege of his hospitality, be it to have dinner or buy socks. And being a private business, the proprietor also has the "right" to ask you to abide by certain rules. If one of those rules is to keep your child behaving properly or don't bring him in at all, so be it.

With rights come responsibilities. With privileges come duties. When someone falls down on their end of the deal, then the privileges should be revoked, and the rights should be restricted.

If someone's child is disturbing me, my colleagues, or the rest of the establishment, then that IS infringing on my rights. And I maintain that I, as an adult, paying good money for that dinner/movie/item in my cart/ballgame, have more rights that it does. Ergo, the adult should have the ability to exert actions that you dismiss as discriminatory.

You see, as an adult I work for the money that enables me to be there in the first place. I provide the tax revenue. I provide the services. The child provides nothing. The child is a dependent. The child has no rights save for what the adults in its life allow it. The erroneous notion that a child has the same rights as an adult without carrying ANY of the responsibility is a recent phenomena that our society has created, much to its detriment. ESPECIALLY when that self-same society is not enforcing the need to learn nor demonstrate any responsibility. There is the crux of the problem, like it or not.

And if the child's actions lead to circumstances that give cause to restrict the parent's rights or privileges, then the parent only has him/herself to blame.

This is a spurrious, wholly emotional argument. Equaling "but he's just a kid; lighten up." Dumbing down society to the lowest common denominator is not the way to run a railroad. It only creates a greater low end. Raise the standards for expected behavior and you'll see very quickly how people will rise to the occasion.

We used to have standard norms and mores in this society. Behavioral standards. Where no one would dare do x or y in public for fear of societal censure. What we need is to bring that sort of thing back.

Future generations are indeed necessary to perpetuate the species. But unless the adults in existence now get a grip and start taking control of the care and training of their replacements, it's going to be a sorry future. And the repercussions of failure to achieve this go far, far further than a ruined dinner in a decent restaurant.

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken

[quote]Do you remember what it was like to be a kid? Sure, it's rude for your kid to tear up sugar packets or unload the ketchup, but clean up the table before you leave and give the waitress a big tip. And in restuarants, anyways, the waitress doesn't clean the table - the busser does. [quote]

First, of all, why would one let their child rip up sugar packets or unload the ketchup if the parent knows it is rude? Why not just keep a small pack of crayons in either a purse or diaper bag and let the child color the napkin (assuming it is a paper napkin, of course).

And does it matter if a waitress or busser cleans the table? I think not. It is wrong either way. And it is the parent who allows this behavior. And if the parent allows this behavior in a toddler, the toddler will continue to think that the behavior is okay when they are 5 years old, and will wonder why they are being reprimanded when they never have been before.

Then you would be disgusted with me. If my 5 year old leaves the table without my permission, you had better believe I'm going to call him on the carpet and tell him to get his fanny in that chair. It is rude of him to get up without asking. Even at home he has to ask to be excused from the table. I was taught that, my husband was taught that, our parents were taught that, and so on. It is simply good manners to ask to be excused instead of getting up and wandering away.

My mother and father are both 70 years old, and I am almost 40. Both of my parents were taught to respect their elders, respect themselves, and respect their surroundings. They were taught how to behave in a restaurant, at church, at a store, and in school. Fear was not instilled into them; neither were they beat into submission. There were rules and the rules were to be followed or there was a consequence. Occassionally, it was a spanking. More often than not, especially as they got older, it was the losing of a privlege. That is how I was raised, and that is how my husband and I are raising our children.

It is not impossible to raise children to behave in public and still allow them to be children. It does, however, take parents with a backbone who are willing to teach their children that there is a time and place for everything.

In every restaurant I ever worked in, the waitress DID clean her own tables. I worked in family establishments. We didn't have bussers, except in rare instances. Therefore, it WAS my responsibility, and WAS a huge inconvenience to have the city dump on display in the middle of my section until I could make enough time to get it straightened.

It's more than rude for the kid to destroy consumables, it's EXPENSIVE. Sugar and ketchup and salt and all of that costs MONEY. When the restaurant has to eat that waste because some parent can't be bothered to move the stuff out of Junior's reach, or provide something quiet to occupy Junior even when they know damn well that there's going to be a time lapse between sit down and serving, it drives EVERYONE's costs up. And I don't appreciate being forced to suck up that cost because it makes Junior happy to be destructive.

Not to mention that it fails to teach Junior anything about property rights. Even the smallest child can be taught that "that doesn't belong to you." If you aren't teaching the concept of individual property from a young age then you're going to end up with a selfish little tyrant at some point.

Yes, I remember very well what it's like to be a kid. Very well. My parents traveled the country from New York to California and back with us by car from the time I was an infant until we were in college. We learned at a very young age what proper behavior was and was not. We learned to keep our hands to ourselves, sit quietly, eat properly, and stay seated until the meal is ended. You see, we learned these things at HOME. We were taught manners from the time we were allowed to sit upright in a high chair. And if we DID act up in public, we were whisked out to the parking lot and given a stern talking to. We were taught that there are proper behaviors and improper behaviors, and that if we behaved improperly, that we should feel ashamed of our behavior. We should feel the pain of knowing that we brought others' anger and irritation on ourselves and our parents. And we never had to be told twice.

Shame is not evil. It's a powerful emotional motivator and it is exactly what is lacking in most of society today.

At 18 months, my daughter would sit quietly in her high chair and color or read a book, or munch on goldfish and milk . And I knew better than to take her anyplace where there would be a wait longer than 15 minutes. No, she doesn't have perfect impulse control. That's up to YOU as a PARENT to instill in her. And you don't have to yell or hit. Saying "no" without giving physical, tangible reinforcement won't change anything. Nothing pisses me off more than the parent who just sits there and says, "No. No. I said 'No.'" without physically getting up and removing the child from the temptation. You don't just say "no." You take whatever it was that led you to correct away from the child so that they learn what "no" means. The kid isn't born speaking the language. The issue is not the kid in this instance. It's the parent.

If a 5-8 year old has to be yelled at from across the room, then my question is NOT why the kid is doing what it's doing, but why was it allowed up from the table in the first place? How incredibly rude! Are table manners not being taught? That you don't get up from the table until dinner is being served? That you sit at the table in a restaurant? You're there to eat, not play? Again, it's faulty parenting by someone who has found it easier to give into the primitive, base instincts of the child rather than raise them to the level of proper behavioral standards.

Absolutely. We all have off days. Hell, sometimes I leave the cart in the aisle because I get p.o.'d at the store.

My father is 71 (god bless him, it'll be his last), and my mother is 58. So they're contemporaries of your mother. I'm sorry that you got the raw end of the stick on parenting, because that's NOT what all kids of that era were taught. They were taught to adhere to stricter, standards of behavior. And that's what they taught my brother and me (not to mention the vast, vast majority of my contemporaries). Spankings weren't doled out except in rare circumstances. Instilling fear -- no, we were instilled with pride in jobs well done and shame when we failed to meet standards. That from a man who grew up without a father, who got into no end of trouble, and who had to get bailed out of jail more often than not. My father HAD no role model of parenting. But he learned right from wrong and was determined that his children WOULD have proper upbringings. So don't tell me it can't be done. By god, I've lived it and so has he.

Well, I sure as heck don't expect to carry on intimate conversation in Red Robin, that's for sure. But neither do I expect to hear "Junior, don't do that" in Ruth's Chris.

Bad apples spoiling the crop, dear. If we all held each other to certain standards, those looks would eventually disappear.

Sure they do. All it takes is reinforcement.

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H. L. Mencken

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I am a strict parent and I do get the comments from people on how well behaved my children are, especially in restaurants, yes even fancy ones. "Kids must use their inside voices" is just good manners. I have kids, I say it to them before we walk into the library, bookstore, grocerystore, movie or restaurant, basicly if we walk "inside." They should not be screaming and yelling or talking loudly. They need to learn this and they can learn it young. It won't be tolorated in school, not even in kindergarten, so it must be learned, it's called socialization, learning how to act appropriatly in a social situation. Babies will have fits, and the fits should be delt with. I'm not talking on the way home from the hospital when they are born, but even then, they can learn. They learn not to bite their moms when they are nursing, because we tell them "NO," they learn not to touch things they shouldn't because we tell them "DON'T" and they will learn to have manners by example and by telling them "NO" when they disobey. I don't think it should ever be permitted for a child to rip open sugar packets at the resaurant no matter who has to clean it up and leaving a good tip is just not good enough. Parent's shouldn't be yelling " "GET OVER HERE NOW AND SIT YOUR BUTT IN THIS CHAIR", they shouldn't be out in the first place and by them acting this way, it's pretty obvious why their kids have no manners. Kids these days don't learn lessons that should be taught when they are little, and parents making excuses and bailing them out of all there problems are not doing them any favors. I'm not trying to be nasty by choosing this post to comment on, but some of it is exactly the kind of thing that is being talked about in the artical that people are disturbed by.

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The mighty oak started out as a nut that held its ground.