Believe it or not, I love kids. Apparently not enough to have any of my own, but I do like them quite a lot.
It's just the parents I hate.
Certainly not all of them, but most of them. Good parents who mind their kids in public I have no problem with. But so many modern-day parents are irresponsible assholes when it comes to their kids, and I've had enough. You can't go anywhere without being exposed to dumbasses who let their children run ape-shit because they're too busy talking on their mobile phone, reading a book, or flirting with somebody. They couldn't care less if their kids are terrorizing people, getting into trouble, breaking shit, or doing something dangerous. It may be their kids, but it's not their problem.
Here's just a small sampling of some of the things I documented on my trip...
Kids are going to cry and misbehave, and I get that. I sympathize with parents who are exhausted and trying their best to manage their kids when they travel. But the operative word here is TRYING... and too many parents I see just aren't. From all appearances, they just don't give a shit. They don't care if their kids get into trouble or are in dangerous situations. They don't care that their kids are bugging the crap out of people. They don't care about anything. People like this should never have had kids in the first place.
If you have kids, you have to be responsible for them.
When your kid is screaming their head off in a store, theater, or restaurant, take them outside until they settle down so everybody doesn't have to suffer. When your kid is misbehaving, do something to stop it. When your kid is making a mess, clean up after them. When your kid is running around going ape-shit, get them under control. But, above all, WATCH YOUR FUCKING KIDS!! It's your fucking job... not everybody else's job to do it for you.
As I sit here wrapping up this entry, the same cute kid that was climbing up the luggage chute earlier is now having a great time with the automatic doors opening and closing as he runs through them. Cars are driving by just outside and I have no idea where his parents are at. I hope he doesn't die.
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Very well put Dave!!!
Especially this:
WATCH YOUR FUCKING KIDS!!
I concur wholeheartedly!!
M
Just yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said
I like kids but I can’t eat a whole one.
You know what else sucks? Parents like me who don’t let my kids step out of line who get glares and sniggers when I am DOING MY JOB as a parent… by other parents!
That really rankles me. Hey, MY kid’s life is WORTH SAVING.
I agree with everything you said, Dave.
As a parent I have to say that making sure that my kids don’t show me up in public is very high on my agenda. I put up with a lot at home when they were little because I knew damn well that they would never play up when we were out.
Having said that, in these days of political correctness gone crazy, I know of parents who have bollocked their kids in public, or grabbed them by the arm (to get them out of danger) and had people approach them and flat out accuse them of child abuse! Seems there is no right answer here *sigh*
I have no respect at all for asshole parents.
NONE.
As a parent of two kids, I could be huffy about your post, but I totally agree with you. My kids are just old enough (16 today) to have sidestepped the disinterested parent stage, so when I see it, I’m aghast. Yesterday at the beach, for example, a mom sat way up on the shingle while her 2 year old boy, still in diapers, played in the water by himself. Mom was so busy on her phone she wasn’t even watching her little toe-walker when he went face down into the ocean. I audibly gasped and started towards him when I saw that she did as well. He was crying and scared, but did she get off the phone? Well, you know the answer. She was gabbing away as she pulled him up and out of the water. She never picked him up, she just marched him back up the shingle, took off his shirt, and let him go right back down to the water….by himself. I shot her daggers with my eyes I was so ticked.
Asking complete strangers on the beach to watch your kid while you’re on the freaking phone qualifys you as a very bad parent. Period. Letting your toddler play along in the ocean qualifies you as a very bad parent. Letting him go back into the ocean alone after he fell makes you irresponsible and a total shithead.
She did have a lovely tan, though.
Yeah. They let anyone have kids.
I completely agree with all of your points. Kids don’t have to be bad. IF their parents would parent them, responsibly, the children might learn to behave in public. What a thought, huh?
Clap your hands together and say AMEN! Currently my neighbor’s kids (ages 6 and 4) are riding their bikes down their driveway and into the street. I mentioned it to the neighbor by way of saying, “I hope the boys are remembering to look both ways before entering the street.” To which she responded, “They don’t go in the street.” I just stared at her and said, “But they’re playing in the street right now as we speak.” And she said, “No…they know better.” Keep in mind, she and I were having this conversation over the backyard fence and her kids were out front. I could see them plain as day from my driveway. WTF?
And as I was shopping in a teacher’s store the other day (spending out-of-pocket-money on much needed classroom supplies…and people say we get paid too much…HAH!), I was browsing the aisles and this mother was letting her kids run rampant all over the store knocking shit over and bumping into people. Three separate times the little imps blasted into me and mommy dearest didn’t do one damn thing other than to say, “Make sure you don’t break anything.” HELLO??????
This is a touchy subject for me…can you tell?
I couldn’t agree with you more. People need a license to drive, they should also need one to breed. Otherwise the whole world is going to end up looking like Idiocracy. I just ran into the same hotel situation as you – both parents and children talking loudly and running through the hallways after 10 pm. Whatever happened to common decency? It’s a good thing the noise didn’t go on past 11 pm or I would have been out in that hallway with words for those people. I’ve had it with inconsiderate assholes.
I saw a mom take her young son outside a restaurant the other day & talked to him about how to act in public – they didn’t come back in until he’d settled down & was quiet.
I noticed it because it’s SO RARE. Shouldn’t be, but yeah – it is.
douchebags should not reproduce.
p.s. LOVE the book cover. made me giggle. a lot.
Dave, next time you should be very obvious, move in close (as is safe), snap a few pictures and announce you’re writing a blog on bad parenting, that you have more readers than Arianna Huffington and then, run like hell!
Nicole’s “license to breed” really cracked me up.
Is it too much to ask that this book and your “DaveGuard” product be released at the same time? I’m pretty sure between the two our Earth could be transformed into a utopia.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to walk up to someone and ask them for $5.00 for the time I spent watching their child. This happened to me a lot at the laundromat in particular.
Some day I really hope I get pissed enough to go through with it.
I have friends that have two of the most ill-behaved kids I’ve ever met. It’s difficult because I want to say something about disciplining their children once in a while, but can’t because there is a fine line when it’s a friend’s children. I rarely go to their house anymore, though, because it’s too hard to watch. The funny thing is that they marvel at how well-behaved my 17-year-old is and I want to say “that’s because if he acted like your kids I would have beat his little ass!”
I have been yelling watch your kids my whole life because my sister is a douchebag who never did. She’s also one of those horrific people that glare at you when you’re scolding your child for misbehaving in public. To top it off she’s a Scientologist so they don’t believe in spanking or time outs or restricting their behaviors or anything like that. It’s detrimental to their cosmic development or something equally ridiculous.
And then these same kind of parents proceed to never teach their children any manners. Any, like not even the mere basic common human decency ones. I know; I see hard results of this failure every day at my job. I just want to hang my head. And then, thankfully, I’ll meet a kid who restores my faith, but I sure wish that would happen a lot more often. The ratio of the former to the latter seems pretty high, out in the general public.
I agree.
Kids need to be kept under control, and parents need to be more involved with the process.
There’s just no excuse for bad behavior.
I spent a lot of years watching my friends breed before I did…. and I took a lot of notes on what not to do! My pet parenting hate? Parents who won’t spank their toddlers. You can’t reason or logic with a toddler… they have no understanding of actions and consequences and no ability to communicate it if they did. You don’t have to smack your kids hard enough to hurt them, but the dent to their little egos is often all it takes to get the message across.
Robyn
PS – Dave your observations are the very things that will probably make you a considerate and responsible parent should you want to be Dad.
Hell to the yeah, and can I get an “amen, brother”!
I saw a girl on her tricycle in the middle of town at 10p Friday night – no parents in sight. What the hell? Who lets their kids ride their bike unattended at 10:00 at night??? I have to hope that I just didn’t see them as I drove past – but I did do a double-take.
I really love children and it hurts my heart when I see (so frequently, just like you showed us in this post) parents not looking after them properly. So sad.
I really wish parents would take more time to keep their kids in check. I swear my Mum would have skinned me alive if I’d done half the things I see bloody kids getting away with nowadays.
I had to move seats on my flight from Paris to London because even after asking her nicely, the lady behind me would not stop her child from pulling on my seat.
Apparently she didn’t want to hurt little Timmy’s feelings. That little bastard.
My (ex)wife and I raised our daughter to be respectful in public. That means, if you act up or scream in the middle of a public setting, you are going to get the wrath of mom or dad. The wrath may simply be a talking to, or it may be something more severe. Either way, it’s discipline in public that kids need.
Dave:
As a stepfather of two I see both sides to this story. As many have already mentioned correcting a child in public is not easy. You have the folks that think everything other than a series of soft positive words are child abuse and they’ll let you know it in a not so positive way. Beyond that the redundant warnings to an unresponsive child simply sucks the life out of you fast. I’m not a perfect parent by any stretch and it is clear to me that some children are naturally programmed to run wild. Out of my two girls my youngest is content standing next to us all day. The other will be off trying to stop the luggage belt with potted plant. Often the repeated warnings to her drains my wife until she simply gives up so I can see how folks can get careless. On the other hand there are those folks that are just idiots and couldn’t give a darn. All I can say is raising a kid today isn’t easy as everyone has their own opinion on the best way to do it but it seems there isn’t a simple easy formula that works in every situation.
So I guess that means I shouldn’t ask you to come babysit my seven kids while hubs and I get away for the weekend??