"I Let My Little Kids Run Wild in Public. Join Me!" Opinions
I Let My Little Kids Run Wild in Public. Join Me!
Not a parent but I read this and have my personal opinions, curious what others think about it.
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.
The author admits to have let their kids, who are 2yo and 4yo roam free in restaurants to the point they have ended up in the kitchen, that right there tells you how responsible of a parent she is and how good of an approach hers is.
That's wild lol, I'd be way too embarrassed.
Do people not have the experience of peeking into the restaurant kitchen growing up?
One year I was on an elementary school trip at this restaurant that did a little historical show along with the meal, with a lot of crowd interaction, and I got caught up in acting out my role and went into the kitchen at which point I was immediately told that was off-limits, and I never did it again.
Not the same thing as letting a 2-year-old into a kitchen though. But I definitely explored and learned what was appropriate and what wasn't as I grew up.
Yes, I did stuff like this when I was a kid, everybody does, but no, I wasn't actively encouraged to do so, au contraire, my parents always taught me how to behave in public and I'm grateful for it. Kids will become adults one day, if they are never taught how to behave they'll probably end up being entitled pricks that think they can do whatever they want whenever they want.
I understand the thought process and agree to a point - kids are definitely on too tight of leashes these days.
That said, everything I read in that article tells me that the author is a fucking horrible parent and I wouldn't want to ever be in 1000 feet of her demons.
Yes, your kids should have some freedom. No, they shouldn't actively be bothering everyone around them every moment they're out of the house. Teach them respect and kindness, too.
A bit hyperbolic but something I have noticed in a lot of this parenting style tips are that either the kid needs to be padded up head to toe on a leash glued to their parent 24/7 or they should be allowed run wild screaming at the top of their lungs at restaurants and museums.
There is very little in-between, unless you find the sane person in the comments. Kinda like a lot of things nowadays, sadly.
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.
I say fuck people like this. And if you are people like this, then fuck you too.
Public space is for public, not just your kids. If you let your kids run wild, then you are sacrificing other people's freedom.
Also, this is how entitled little bitches are created. Do you want your kid to be an entitled little bitch?
I had a glorious moment at a restaurant with my extended family where there was a large group with kids at the next table letting them run riot. The parents were all nursing huge glasses of white wine and chatting away while the kids bothered other diners, waiters, etc.
At the end of the meal, after paying the bill, my uncle went over to the parents and told them their kids had ruined our meal. One of the parents tried to protest that he'd obviously never had kids. He responds, "I raised 3 kids and none of them ever behaved as badly as yours have done this afternoon." Mic drop; my party left.
I’m on the fence. It’s a pretty subjective topic no? Public spaces will always have conflict due to many people have many preferences.
I teach kids, and a lesson I have with them is on "context".
The game of tag, is it good or bad?
Well, on the playground it is good, really fun actually!
But in music class or at the library? It's really bad.
The game didn't change, the context did. Same goes with parenting imo. In fact I'd go so far as to say that teaching your kids to be considerate of the spaces they are in is a good thing.
I grew up with my mom telling us to keep our hands behind our back when going into an antique store or to be polite at the dinner table, and I was always invited to dinners and nice places by my friends parents because they knew I'd behave.
I guess including conflict of people trying to take your kids and ransom them.
You seem to be implying that you are somehow more entitled to that public space than kids. Sounds like something an entitled little bitch would say. Are you an entitled little bitch? Public space is for the public, ALL the public. If let your own hangups lead you to bullying the most naive and impressionable of us, then you are sacrificing other people's freedom. And if you are people like this then I say, "fuck you too". The social contract of public space doesn't entitled you to be unbothered by other people.
To be clear I am in no way excusing parents that do not actually parent their children, especially in public. However the logic of the above comment is just a bunch of "get off my lawn" anti-social ME generation boomer energy. Also, kind of telling that the parent commenter just doesn't see the parallels between their entitled attitude and everyone else's entitlement. It's a public space, if you can't be compassionate, you don't deserve it any more than anyone else.
You must be one of those entitled parents, or people who get offended on behalf of others. Either way, I have nothing to say to you.
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.
Let them run and play and fall and get scrapes, yes. Don't be a helicopter parent. But when other people are around, respect the social contract.
I witnessed a dad (friend of a friend at a group dinner) nearly get in a fist fight because someone asked him to corral his kids that were interfering with their meal. Madness.
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.
Thank you for thinking about others, you are the sort of parent I respect.
An unintended side effect of making backyards a luxury item, public spaces a pay-to-play, and community playgrounds homeless shelters
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 :(
The framing of this article is all wrong. There aren't just two choices: discipline or wild abandon. There's times and places for both. Five pm at the colorful hippy burrito spot with dinosaur toys and a large play area, let them run free. Out at a special dinner with family bring them with, set your timer for their ability to keep it together and make adjustments as needed. If they don't meet the standard, thats cool. Not their fault and probably not even your fault. Do a vibe check and leave if needed.
Hell, I'm all for your kid doing frog jumps down the grocery aisle, but be a sentinal and see if there's a person in that aisle that would care. You can read the people who are delighted by the child's exuberance and those who want nothing to do with it. I'm not a big fan of screens, but they have their time and place like on the six hour flight.
Any case, there's only so much you can do when parenting. Creating a safe connection for them is so important and then trusting you to see them, receive them, and make the unknown a little bit safer is all a tall task.
The author's critical approach to what is 'polite' is all well and good, but I have reservations about what she considers the limit.
As for the 'doing no harm to others', she must recognize that the harm her children do may not be readily apparent. When I've got a massive migrane, I don't want to hear her kids screaming in the next booth over, but I also don't want to have to confront her about it and risk her screaming also. Better to sit and suffer until I can't.
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.
Don't have to deal with this anymore, because mine are all at least tweenage.
It's a balancing act, and sometimes running around a little is fine this day in this space, but not another day in a similar space.
I'm not going to act like I've never given my kids an iPad to keep them quiet for a while, but it would be refreshing to see MORE kids playing trains and Hot Wheels instead of sitting in front of a screen.
It's much harder for the kids to create their own fun when a device just spews nonstop entertainment at then. Why use your own imagination, when there's always someone else's available to watch, play, listen to?
There's a HUGE gray area between "children should be silent and invisible" and "HOW DID YOU GET ON THE ROOF OF WALMART?!?". Neither of those extremes are good, and sometimes, as parents we learn during or afterwards that maybe this wasn't the best place to play Hot Wheels. But a lot of the time, it's not hurting anyone.
I worked for a while at a summer camp that didn't allow phones, and kids loved it ... if they could make it through the first two days.
Like you said, kids love being able to make their own fun, but it's hard to compete with an iPad, and not always appropriate given the context (like if you are in a library you have to be quiet).
I definitely think kids should get more opportunities to play and make their own fun in unstructured but supervised settings -- where the adults are there for safety but not telling the kids how to play.
1- this is cursed
2- i dont think this belongs in asklemmy
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.
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.
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.
Letting children run around is fine as long as they are well-behaved.
I fart exclusively in elevators and crowded busses. Join me!
Fine, but don't get mad when I laugh at them tripping and falling.
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)
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.
