Parenting and Manners
Parents do your Duty!
Have you ever gone into a restaurant and just after you ordered your food some negligent parents lets their child yell, bang on the table, shriek, and run around everywhere? Ever go to a public place like a mall or a zoo and have been trampled over by kids who treat everyone in their path as an obstacle course while parents ignore them? If so, you know where I'm coming from. I'm sick of lazy parents that create ill-mannered kids. C'mon parents, do your job! Teach your kids to keep their voices down in public, to maintain a reasonable amount of distance from strangers and to say please and thank you. Teach them to be helpful and courteous and do things like hold the door open for the person behind them.
For those of you parents raising good, well mannered children who will grow up to make positive contributions to society, I thank you and do not mean to include you or offend you in this article. To those who choose not to have kids because you realize you wouldn't be very good at it, I thank you too. To everyone else, feel free be offended, boycott my web site, avoid my home, etc. etc. The less I see of lazy uncaring parents and ill-mannered children the better.
Lest you think I'm the only one who feels this way, here's a fun link for you regarding the horrors of public diaper changing and wailing rug rats in coffee shops.
What Can Parents Do?
If you are a concerned parent and have read this far, chances are you are already doing the right thing. If your child misbehaves, you probably already know enough to make them stop. If you have a baby, you probably don't take them to movie theaters and nice restaurants, and if you do, you promptly rush them outside when they start crying or acting up. If you are in a restaurant, be it McDonalds or somewhere fancy, you have your children use suitable indoor voices. If your child does something wrong, you probably correct them. If they continue to misbehave, you are probably caring enough to punish them (no this doesn't mean beat them with a stick or abuse them, but it does mean to take action that the child recognizes as undesirable and associates with the offense they committed).
A Magical Childhood is a web site that offers great tips on interacting with and managing your children in restaurants and public places.
What can everyone else do?
Don't tolerate bad behavior from other people's children in your presence, especially if the parent/guardian is making no effort to stop it. If you are in a position of power, such as a homeowner, host, shop owner, manager, firmly tell parents of loud, unruly children to leave and not to come back until they have taught their child some manners. Make it absolutely clear that you will not tolerate such poor behavior in your establishment or residence.
If you are not in a position of power and cannot evict the lousy parents and their screaming offspring, you still have options. When in someone else's house, politely inform the host you do not wish to be around that type of behavior and leave. If possible, say this in the presence of the bad parent who is letting their child run amok. Say a cordial good bye and then leave.
If you are in a restaurant, ask to see the manager. Tell them that you are paying for both the food they serve and the atmosphere they provide and that by tolerating obnoxious behavior from other guests they are making it less likely you will return to their restaurant. After that (here's the important part): Have them move you to a different table far from the offending child and their lazy parent(s). This serves several purposes:
You are free to enjoy the rest of your meal in peace
The manager is inconvenienced by having to relocate you, your food, place settings, etc. to a new table. You will end up dirtying up two tables and possibly get a new waiter in a new section (thus making them divide up the tip you leave).
The offending parents might be shamed if you let them overhear what is happening and why you are moving
If this sort of thing happened in restaurants, I suspect managers would be more motivated to either throw out or warn bad parents. Over time, restaurants would get quieter and more civilized.
If you are in a movie theater, and a crying baby or screaming child is not made to be quiet, simply get up, leave and stop by the customer service desk on the way out. Inform them that a loud child was detracting from your experience and you would like a refund. As long as you aren't much more than half way through the movie, most movie theaters give you a refund for almost any reason. If this happens often enough, they will throw out the loud kids and bad parents because it costs them money. Most movie theaters operate on a tight margin and cannot afford to lose money over something so stupid.
Note that in all of the above scenarios, I did not call for a direct confrontation with the bad parents nor their disruptive child. Although I have at times asked inattentive parents to quiet their children and had good results, there is always a chance that this style of direct confrontation could make things worse. Truly bad parents often either don't believe they are bad or don't care. Thus, they will likely defend themselves and their child with loud, wrathful indignation. A verbal (or physical) fight with the bad parents simply adds to the noise, disruption and unpleasantness for everyone around you. If your goal is to achieve a pleasant atmosphere for your meal in a restaurant, don't further annoy other patrons by engaging in a screaming match with idiotic and incompetent parents.
Don't forget about Positive Feed Back!
There is of course a flip side to the above actions. If you see a parent with a courteous and well behaved child, give them a compliment and make the good parents proud of their achievement. If you are a shopkeeper or restaurant owner, consider commenting on what a good child they have and asking the parents if you can give the child a token treat, toy, balloon, piece of candy, etc.
