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[Saede Riordan]

Don't get me wrong, I think kids are adorable, and I'm glad there are people who are at least *trying* to raise them properly but I'm not sure I could stand having a kid of my own. I've no problem with having to change a diaper or cleaning up puke; my problem is those high-pitched shrieks that cause me to literally cringe in pain whenever I hear one. And it's that these parents seemingly have no problem with inflicting these ear-splitting noises on other people (read: me) that also get on my nerves. C'mon people, we (I) don't want to hear your little two year-old child shriek loud enough to shatter ear drums, so please PLEASE find some way to not bring them in public with you.

... Reason #25 Havvie does not like having to go out in public. [/Havvierant]

This sort of attitude is whats wrong with our society. (massive RAEG incoming, so don't mind me, its nothing to do with you Havvie you just pointed it out) Basically, our attitude as a culture is that the kids are the parents problem, we won't help them, we won't aid them, when we see a single mother in the store trying to console a crying child while keeping her other kids from running around, our first thought isn't to help her, its to sneer at her and tell her she needs to shut her kids up.
You look at other cultures around the world, particularly a lot of tribal cultures, and the children aren't just the responsibility of the parent, they're the responsibility of the tribe, with everyone pitching in to help. In my mind, this is how it should be. Instead, we isolate mothers and families, and force them to deal with their children on their own, this makes for a much, much harder time when raising kids. Its why so many parents are at their wits end so much of the time. Because they need help, and no one's willing to help them.
Incidentally, this is another reason I think polyamory is a really good idea. If I'm polyamorus, and living in a group household with five or six adults instead of one, if that, it makes it much easier on everyone.

Many hands make light work, I think thats something we need to remember as a culture. And seriously, we need to be more friendly with each other, and more helpful with each other, we live in a culture of me first, more more more, and it shows.

rant over.

[Vieve]

Havvie, I suspect you'll be a great parent.  Sounds like you may already have (even if you don't realize it) an internal "parent alarm".

I don't like shrieking kids, either.  When I'm around them, I'm in a constant state of low grade panic, because I have to keep reminding myself that there's no emergency, even though each shriek sets off my internal "what's broken/what's wrong/MUST FIX" alarm.  Damn hormones.

I'm pretty sure there's no parent on the planet who'd appreciate me stepping in, corralling their kids, and telling them the version of Peter and the Wolf that I was told when I was a little girl ("if you shriek all of the time, your Mommy won't know if a stranger is grabbing you or not so she'll ignore you, and you'll wind up in the back of a van being shot up with drugs and nobody will ever see you alive again").   So, I don't.   No matter how much I'm tempted.  I understand that people tend to get pissy when you give their kids nightmares.

[Boma Airaken]

I came into this one way late apparently.

I am pro-vaccine, but I was pissed my girl got a Chicken Pox shot without my express permission. Chicken Pox is kind of like a right of passage.

Anyways, just posting to say, yeah, I got one. Will go back and reread through whole thread later.

[lallara zhuul]

When I grew up at the end of seventies in Finland it was commonplace at my apartment building that if a child had a problem any adult from the building would help.

If there was a fight, the closest adult would separate the kids.
If there was blood, the closest adult would fix it.
If there was a problem, anyone could step in and try to find a solution to it.

The children could approach any adult without fear and ask anything they would want to know.
The apartment building had ten to fifteen families with kids of roughly the same age, we played together, we fought with kids of other apartment buildings (teenagers stepped in when hockey sticks and other paraphernalia came involved.)
We explored the forests nearby without any fear, we build rafts so that we could explore the more swampy areas, we built forts in the forests, we had epic snow wars, we spent days and days on our sleighs going down any incline.

It was a different time.

Finland was being run by a benign tyrant that had maneuvered the country so that Soviets would not care what happened here, basically we were adopting what he thought was good in their society and implemented in ours. It meant everybody had free healthcare, education and cheap public transport.
Just two generations earlier the people had fought WWII, winter war and the war after that. The urbanization had really kicked off only after the wars so the people from the agricultural areas were still working with the same communal attitude that had been around for centuries. There was communal saunas where people were equal from all walks of life. People that were 'no good' tended to disappear.
There were no paedos, there were no criminals, there was nothing bad that reached the basic worker of Finland at time, you had to love the propaganda machine back then. Also the community thing meant that things were dealt on personal level, if there was a problem with your neighbour you sorted it out with him. It may have lead to violence, but thats how things happened. Same thing worked with petty criminals and anyone that would threaten the safety of the community. The authorities did not need to get involved with everything.

It made everyone safe.

So it was perfectly fine if a stranger picked up your kid after he had fallen down and wiped the tears off his face and told him to run off and play.

Since then things have changed.

Media is all about mistrust towards your fellow man.
Fear this and fear that.
Do not act yourself, call in the authorities.
Sue everybody, you might get something out of it.

If I would go to a kid in a sandbox that was hitting another one in the head with a shovel and took the shovel from his/her hand and told him/her to stop in a stern voice.
First, I would get the mother on my back, shouting obscenities and threatening to call a cop.
If I would do something similar later to the same kid.
I would get the father on my back, probably with threat of violence involved.
At this point the authorities would get involved and I would probably be labeled as a sex offender because of the 'white lies' that the parents had told to the authorities to keep their children safe.
If I would want to I could go through a legal process that would take years to get that label removed but it would still be on my permanent record and it would affect my ability to get a job and exclude me from ever trying to get a political career.

The society has changed and its fucked up.

When it comes to the sound that the children make, there is a certain pitch that they only hit when something is really wrong. Most of the noise is just the children trying to make the parent react or bend the boundaries that the parent has put up. For some children it is a constant battle about authority with their parents.

Back in the day you could put the fear of God in them.

Nowadays its illegal to physically educate your child.

[Lillith Blackheart]

This sort of attitude is whats wrong with our society. (massive RAEG incoming, so don't mind me, its nothing to do with you Havvie you just pointed it out) Basically, our attitude as a culture is that the kids are the parents problem, we won't help them, we won't aid them, when we see a single mother in the store trying to console a crying child while keeping her other kids from running around, our first thought isn't to help her, its to sneer at her and tell her she needs to shut her kids up.

That's because if a kid was being an obnoxious little shit twenty years ago their parent could smack them and tell them to shut up. Twenty years ago if a person saw a kid misbehaving in the supermarket, say eating or pocketing the candy, they could snatch the kid up and give them a real talking to, even if it wasn't their kid.

That's because sometimes you have to discipline children, but now you are no longer able.

 

You look at other cultures around the world, particularly a lot of tribal cultures, and the children aren't just the responsibility of the parent, they're the responsibility of the tribe, with everyone pitching in to help. In my mind, this is how it should be. Instead, we isolate mothers and families, and force them to deal with their children on their own, this makes for a much, much harder time when raising kids. Its why so many parents are at their wits end so much of the time. Because they need help, and no one's willing to help them.

Oh please. That is absolute nonsense. They are not willing to help them because they can go to jail for it. They are not willing to help them because they will get yelled at by the parent for "telling them how to raise their kid," they are not willing to help because they are not allowed to help.

Such misappropriated hostility.

I'll give you some tidbits: Raising a kid today is no harder than raising a kid was in the late seventies and early eighties when I was growing up. One thing I can assure you is that as a kid I may have been a terror around the house, but I never started a screeching fit in a grocery store. I never said disparaging shit about someone in a public place. I never started screaming and crying in a restaurant.

Why did I not do those things? Because my parents did their fucking job.

You can't smack a kid when they're acting up anymore. There's no such thing as discipline anymore. There is only the looming threat of child services and the "Everyone's a winner!" bullshit coddling that goes on.

Kids aren't acting up and being bad these days because people "aren't willing to help," kids are acting up and being bad these days because they're being fucking coddled.

Yes, it's a "me first" culture, it's a "me first" culture because no one is willing to tell kids they're not a special snowflake, they're not always a winner, and they can't always have what they want.

Done.

[Lillith Blackheart]

C'mon people, we (I) don't want to hear your little two year-old child shriek loud enough to shatter ear drums, so please PLEASE find some way to not bring them in public with you.

... Reason #25 Havvie does not like having to go out in public. [/Havvierant]

PLEASE tell me this is a joke post.

Otherwise, it is a shame your parents didn't drown you in a bathtub so you couldn't inflict your horrid screeching and whining on others. Seriously.

Nonsense. It's hardly a joke. Some of us were well-behaved in public when we were kids. We were taught it was disrespectful to both our parents and to others to be an obnoxious little shit in public. In the home was one thing, there was more leeway, but in public there were behavioral standards that one was expected to uphold. You kept your mouth shut, you spoke only when spoken to, you did not pitch a fit when you were told you couldn't have a piece of candy (you might pout and stomp around, but you sure as shit didn't scream about it), and you did not act out.

You were taught there was a time and a place for everything, and public venues and when guests were being entertained at the household are not the times nor are they the places for such behaviors.

You don't bring infants to movie theatres, especially action films and horror. You don't bring infants to restaurants. You be a responsible parent, and shit like that won't happen, and when it does you excuse yourself from public and you deal with the situation. You don't sit at the table or in your theatre seat or in the isle of a grocery store and try to bargain with your child.

It's as much disrespect by the child as it is by the parent.

It's compounded by the stuff in the previous post.

Ok, really done.

[Valdezi]

Wow, this thread got ugly quick.

Anyway, my son is out of his humidi-crib, off his breathing tubes and seems pretty happy. We might be able to get him out of hospital in 3-4 weeks.

Yay.

[Vieve]

I am pro-vaccine, but I was pissed my girl got a Chicken Pox shot without my express permission. Chicken Pox is kind of like a right of passage.

Without your express permission?  Didn't you also have to sign off on the vaccine permission form? 

I'm also pro-vaccine, but I'll admit the chicken pox one makes me twitchy.  Alas, it's required for public school here (and most private ones:  that is, the ones who actually teach academic subjects out of genuine textbooks and grant diplomas that are accepted by accredited post-secondary institutions), so we had to get the Monster inoculated.   It was either that or lie about having religious objections, which would sort of be counter to the whole ethical behavior part of school board recognized religions, so ... yeah.

[Casiella]

Well this thread went pear shaped.

[Louella Dougans]

Well this thread went pear shaped.

yes, it did.
[mod] [/mod]

lets try again, better this time.

[Boma Airaken]

Well, third grade just started, and she wants to dye her hair purple. 

[Louella Dougans]

Well, third grade just started, and she wants to dye her hair purple. 

light purple? or dark purple? and why? a favourite character in film?

[lallara zhuul]

Kick-Ass.

[Saede Riordan]

Nikita spends four hours going over adoption law, rages, proceeds to use Havvie as punching bag

bleh, adoption is hard. >_>

[Vieve]

Well, third grade just started, and she wants to dye her hair purple. 

Temporary dyes are good.  And so's using them just to dye a few strands of hair.  Show her this year's Halloween Treat Barbie if she wants an example.*

*Note, I don't think Halloween Barbie's a good example of anything other than how purple streaks can look in fake blonde hair.  And I continue to be happy I had a boy.