Banning loud children from restaurants, airplanes

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Absolutely not. Even with autistic children I try my level best to teach them manners and behavioural skills wherever and whenever possible, and generally my children stay quite well behaved in public, barring unforseen incidents. I have never said otherwise. What I take issue with is the "all children regardless of age/problem/situation should be kept in a box until they are 30 and never let out in case they mildly annoy someone" attitude in this thread, the rudeness being displayed to children and their parents, the sheer arrogance of people thinking that they should have precedence over parents simply because they chose to become parents as if raising children is somehow less important than their interest/appetite. Not to mention the f*****g ridiculous suggestions that keep cropping up, like "There is NO reason for a child to fly on a plane EVER.", or perhaps "A babysitter is ALWAYS available ALL THE TIME.", or that new mothers should stay indoors for 12 months."

What happens when a baby won't latch on and won't bottlefeed either? Then that baby is in serious trouble and is not likely to be hanging around in a restaurant because it will be starving to death, and thus solving that problem will be a high priority. If for some reason that baby happens to suddenly act like this in public, sneering, abuse, or cries of horror and disgust are not constructive or helpful, much as it would not be if an autistic person had a meltdown or an epileptic has a seizure. It is the cry of a child in distress, and people should treat it as such. That's WHY they make that noise.

I forgot to mention: This thread has gone from "Ill-behaved children in posh restaurants" to "Banning children from any and all venues/eatieries/transport" to "Breastfeeding is as bad as taking a s**t in the middle of the room." Get some perspective, please.

^

And BTW the illbehaved brats discussion is far from settled, just because there have been some bad apples at all times.

If you can't see the difference between that and the general disruptions kids cause everywhere today, it's simply because you don't wanna or am too proud to admit that you're wrong.

Upto the 1950's-1960's it was very seldom a problem for teachers to keep comtrol in class rooms, or for parents to shush their offspring.
That is not the case today. More school time is wasted because the teachers have to spend so much time getting the undisciplined kids to STFU and sit still at their desks. And regardless of youth gangs in the medival ages that was unheard of as a general phenomenon 40-50 years ago.

One can seldom go out (be it movies, groceriy store, cafe, *anywhere* without there being kids there screaming and crying. And I'm not talking about babies now. I'm talking ca age 1-10.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mods_and_Rockers 1960s, almost 50 years ago to the day, who became hippies and skinheads as time moved on. I reiterate, youth has been in rebellion one way or another for centuries.

I've just spent all morning in a busy town centre. I've seen several children, plenty of babies, and only ONE was crying or upset or acting up in any way, and that was clearly because he wanted something he couldn't have. They are hardly a plague on society.

No I didn't say this- you are being hysterical. You should take an arguments class. You are putting out all these absolutes and not really trying to understand what I am writing at all. Shouting doesn't further your argument.

This is a good point- I found that removing my daughter from fun places where she had her tantrums taught her that it was inappropriate behavior. It worked quickly too. I am talking toddler age. They see it as punishment when they have to leave a place they are enjoying due to their own behavior. Removing babies from the scene is just courtesy to others.

Unfortunately though, a lot of the time, when they're acting up it is best to IGNORE them until they find it pointless and calm down. If you take them out of that environment you're giving them attention, and will more than likely lengthen the tantrum. Sometimes they're acting up because they don't want to BE in that place... if you take them out, they wont learn that sometimes you have to do things you don't want.

Of course there are exceptions. I remember having to carry my tantruming brother out of a toy shop with my friend because he wanted a Jar-Jar Binks toy and I refused to buy it for him... man that was embarrassing!

Okay, glad to see we're on the same page. You were making it sound like in your PP's you were for them doing it. But just as long as you are trying to teach them how to behave and have manners and calm them down, you are doing your job as a parent. What other people are saying in this thread are parents who don't try and do their jobs as parents. They just let it happen and they don't do any discipline or try and calm them. Not about parents who are doing their jobs and getting their kids to stop running around and being loud and disruptive or parents who ignore their screaming babies because they can't be arsed to stop eating just to change them or feed them or take them to the front of the restaurant until they are calm.

That's why you give them a punishment at home like no dessert or taking away their favorite TV show or putting them in time out. I can remember nan saying here children that young don't have the cognitive development yet to understand about being punished later so that's why you don't leave when they throw a tantrum.

Back in the 1900's before the 1910's, children were expected to act like little adults and be very proper. Even lunch was a lesson in school because kids had to learn to eat properly. But times have changed then.

Even back when my parents were kids, kids were seen and not heard. Did you know children back in the early 1900's were not allowed to eat with their families and they had to eat up in the nursery? If they did eat at the family table, they were to be seen and not heard and that meant no talking. Now that was dumb wasn't it because kids have every right to speak.

Times were different then and it has changed over the years.

Macbeth is right about there have always been kids that were bad, gansters for one. Just like there have always been bullies and kids committing crimes like stealing and killing. But that doesn't mean the etiquette rules for kids needing to behave and be proper didn't exist. I am sure there have always been parents out there that were lazy and didn't do their jobs as a parent. I am sure there have always been kids out there that were undisciplined and were allowed to run wild and be rude. But it was uncommon then and frowned upon. But now today it seems to be more acceptable and there are still people out there who don't like it simply because they grew up in the times where kids were expected to behave and be proper and be seen and not heard and were taught well to behave out in public. even Temple Grandin talks about how she was taught table manners and how to behave in public and she also gets frustrated when parents don't teach their kids those things. I think if kids were proper then and well behaved, it can still happen today if the parents do their jobs and teach them and not let it happen.

You would think kids raise their kids the same way they were raised but wrong. My mom was hit a lot growing up and called names because back then that's how parenting was done. You yelled and screamed at your kids. If you didn't scream at your kids, you were spoiling them. Now today yelling and screaming at your kids and calling them names be seen as bad parenting. So parents from those times grew up and didn't do it to their own kids. But my mom had to work hard at not losing her temper and hitting us when she get mad and she said it was very hard to change. It got wired into her brain because of how she was raised. But she worked hard to change even though she repeated the same behavior to my brothers and I and she worked hard at it. So because we may be taught how to behave and act in public as children doesn't mean we are going to grow up and do the same to our kids because it's not the 80's anymore nor the 90's. Parenting has sure changed over the last 20 years. Now you can no longer leave your kids in the car alone. Back then it was acceptable now today you get CPS called if you do it.

I'm sorry League Girl but I think you have a very romantacised picture of the past. Child ate their meals in the nursery upstairs? That may have been true for a tiny minority of children. The vast majority were more likely to have been living in squalor, eating and sleeping in one slum room with the whole of their family.

I'd like to add to this. School was also a luxury.


My mother wasn't treated in the same way your mother was treated, League_Girl... that sounds like child abuse to me. Nor were my grandparents. You don't scream at your kids or call them names to get them to behave. That is NOT how good parenting back then was, and it isn't now. I'm glad she didn't carry on that "tradition".

That's what I read in one of the Samantha books in the American Girl series. You can say the company was wrong whoever wrote that part in the book and even mom told me that's way things were back then. That doesn't mean I think it should still be that way.

Honestly, the only time I ever ignored her was in the car when we were alone and if I had to be in the place, like the grocery store. Ignoring didn't work. Ignoring bad behavior is spotty- it often doesn't work. Mine just got louder and louder and could cry for up to 3 hours when this happened. And I would never subject other people to an extended version of that- it isn't right. Most fits happen because, like with your brother, the child doesn't get what they want. Usually that happens in a place that kids do want to be, like a store. I think the last time she pulled that I even told her that I would never take her shopping again. She began to get better after that- there were only about 4 or 5 public incidents in total.

Kids do this- it is normal for them to test their boundaries, and you have to find what works to discipline them. After she realized that she would not get to go shopping if she misbehaved I took my daughter out more, and I would give her specific rules before we went inside: no crying, no asking, no running off. Asking for everything in the store leads to the fit, so she was not allowed to ask for stuff. She had to repeat the rules to me in the parking lot. She knew I would take her out of the store if she didn't behave, and the public tantrums stopped.

To make myself clear, I never said it was okay to yell and scream at your kids to get them to behave. Back then it was okay because that is what happened with my mother and to all her friends. Maybe it was a USA thing? You're in the UK so maybe things were different there or your family was just different? My grandfather also grew up being hit so he learned when you get mad, you hit so he grew up doing it to his own kids. I am not sure how my grandmother was raised. I am not sure how my dad's parents were raised either. My dad said he was kicked by his mother as a kid and he said that's way parenting was done then. But he never kicked my brothers and I. But he used belts to sling them at us because that is what his father did when he was a kid but my mom put a stop to it because she didn't want it being done to us.

Back then she and her friends were all saying they never would treat their kids that way when they have them because they hated being yelled and screamed at and called names. My grandfather did hitting, my grandmother did name calling.

But now today it be unacceptable parenting. People have found better ways of teaching them how to behave than name calling and yelling and screaming and name calling.

My mother could be wrong though about how kids were raised then because she is going by how she was raised and her friends.

I took out everything in between even though I agree with it- about how the definition of "bad parenting" has changed. I wanted these two sentences together because I think that they go together. The parenting difference that I edited out was your explanation of how what used to be called "discipline" is now called "abuse" and can get a parent arrested and they may lose their children. I think that this change is good.

The other change I'm not entirely sure about. The other thing that has changed is that these days children are supposed to be supervised at all times. It used to be perfectly legal to leave them in the car alone. It used to be perfectly legal to leave them in the house alone. It used to be perfectly legal to not supervise your kids very much at all. This made it far easier to have a mandate that children must behave in a very proper way in the presence of adults. Most of the time they weren't in the presence of adults and they could behave as they pleased...and did. Not even babies were always in the presence of adults. They were often cared for by older siblings.

Nowadays it's absolutely required that children be in the presence of adults at all times which means that every single incident of what an adult considers misbehaviour (such as being loud) goes on record. Adults could have quiet spaces easily because there was no requirement that the kids kept out of these places needed to be supervised. Children were "seen and not heard" when with adults. But they were only sometimes with adults. All the other times they could be just as loud and obnoxious as they wanted to be because no adults were with them. We've taken that freedom away from them and then get mad at them when they don't sustain 24/7/365 the behaviour that was only sometimes expected from yesterday's children.