This is the thread where we judge other people's parenting

the only people who will randomly touch my kid are middle-aged ladies who like to pat him on the head. my kid on the other hand likes to walk up to other people, put his hand on their knee, then run away. on occasion, he likes to pat women on the leg or slightly higher when we walk past them. : /

"What a pretty little girl!"

I try to smooth this stuff out by referring to her as "kid" as much as possible, for example "Oh, you are my sweetest little kid!" In sorta the same tone as the "pretty little girl" comments. But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something. I think about this stuff a lot.

punctuation went out the window in that paragraph. sheesh.

Oh, and I didn't even finish my thought either. Need a nap.

But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something.

So I'll give her more girly girl complements. She has a special way of saying "girl" - sounds kinda like "girl-ah" - which she delivers with a little bit of sass. I'll throw that back at her to let her know that I think she's as pretty as she wants to be.

When Ivy's keyed up, she definitely likes to reach out and touch people on the bus. More often, she'll just stare. Like, intense, minutes long eye contact that has prompted more than one person to remark with some discomfort, "She's staring into my soul."

We ride the bus with one of her daycare classmates who just turned 1 and he is a hilarious and adorable ball of energy who spends the entire ride climbing all over his amazingly patient mother and grabbing people or people's bags. He and Ivy actually held hands for a about 15 seconds the other day (and then he got excited and yanked her arm) and it was cute as fuck.

My favorite interaction was when we sat down next to a rough customer looking at his phone. He looked up at Ivy, who was staring at him like she was trying to read his thoughts, nodded and said, "Hey little man," then went back to his phone. I liked that he was basically acknowledging her humanity without making a big deal out of it, plus I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

my daughter went through a princess phase around the ages of 3-4. It never got that out of hand imo - she got a couple princess outfits that she would dress up in for parties or special occasions, she would draw lots of princesses etc. We took her to Disneyland and she was v excited to meet Cinderella. She seems to have mostly grown out of it by this point (and moved on to superheroes - if she dresses up these days it's usually wonder woman although she still has loads of other dress-up clothes of various types). We did nothing to really encourage the Disney stuff, iirc one day she saw some coloring books at a friend's house and it was like "yup! that's for ME!" and then I humored her by sitting through a few Tinkerbell movies and whatnot but it didn't really bug me or my wife.

xp

I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

lol this is what I call any male child under the age of 16 tbh

one time i was sitting outside with my kid at a cafe when he was maybe a year old and he was just staring at this woman opposite us and she looked at him and looked at me and said, "the combination of you two is making my hormones act up."

anyway i have zero issue with princess stuff, i think it seemed like princess boot camp though, they really want her to know how special she is. i mean, like every parent does, but i mean they want her to know how REALLY special she is. there's a bit of a difference.

Like, intense, minutes long eye contact that has prompted more than one person to remark with some discomfort, "She's staring into my soul."

:D

i'm talking about like a dozen princess dresses worn all day in and out of the house, princess bday party with cinderella in attendance, frozen and cinderella in constant rotation, disney trips all the time, and so on.

I might get a little judgey about this but it's hard to say who's to blame - the parents for indulging the child, the corporation for instilling the desire in the child in the first place, or the child for being obsessive (probably plenty of blame to go around tbh). There is a line where this behavior gets kind of creepy, like jesus christ isn't there anything else you can encourage your child to be interested in.

I feel similarly about kids and sports, and especially specific sports team allegiance, and especially when the allegiance is handed down from an equally obsessed parent.

Well you live in Cubsland, of course you should be ashamed of those people. #GOCARDS

especially when the allegiance is handed down from an equally obsessed parent.

lol no danger of this from me, most of the time I feel like the only adult male in existence who loathes professional sports. at most they'll get it from my dad, who's a Giants fan. Which is fine, he comes up to visit, we go to a ballgame, no big deal.

^pointedly sat in the next room while my entire birthday party watched the US tie Portugal.

hey I wanted to talk to Justin!

Lady on eastbound trans-Atlantic flight with three well-behaved kids who spent entire flight with eyes glued to in-flight entertainment and made no attempt whatsoever to get her children to stop watching dumb videos all night and maybe sleep for a second: I judge you, but given the triple-exhaustion-meltdown I saw brewing as you were trying to leave the plane to make your connecting flight, you will be paying for that mistake for the next few days.

that may have been my wife!

ime (with kids) there's no more price to be paid for that than for usual eastbound jet lag

Maybe after staying one place watching dumb videos for one flight, they'll be fast asleep for the entirety of the second flight.

She was speaking Hebrew, and VIE is really popular for flights to Tel Aviv -- if that's where they're headed, the second flight will be about 6 hours. So the Motion for Reconsideration of Judgement is granted. Sorry, anonymous parent!

Sunny took our 2-year-old daughter to Australia a few years ago and reported getting more stink-eyes than ever.

The 2-year-old is now five, and we're all going back down there in December - this time with her five-year-old brother.

This is a safe place, 3WU, thread title says it all, so I'm not judging your judging. But if they sit still and watch dumb videos for 15 hours, I'll take all the stink-eyes I can get.

2-year-old is seven.

not gud with math

kids were well-behaved, as I said, so I didn't give the mother the stinkeye -- but the new "improved" VIE is a confusing nightmare and not nice to make connections at any more, and based on the plane-exiting drama, I was picturing her having to drag three confused kid corpses to the next gate, which I wouldn't wanna do to myself or my kid (they looked 3, 5, and 7 to me).

corpses would be easier to drag, tbh.

nah wasn't us, it was start of June & not to Vienna. but o/w sounds familiar!

I flew ahead of the fam & behind me was a woman flying with four+ kids and they were all awake all night, left the overhead lights on too, but I dunno, it's hard to get too mad since those flights are so horrid under the best of conditions. & she had a fascinating north carolina / irish mixed accent.

Instant classic: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-study-finds-link-between-breastfeeding-always,36823/

lol

' But if they sit still and watch dumb videos for 15 hours, I'll take all the stink-eyes I can get.

― pplains, Saturday, August 23, 2014 11:21 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink'

Fucking A

http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/a42773f0f710e5f67d09a9c8ec77c641/200694984/anMobaby2.jpeg

tomboy niece insists on princess dresses but wears them playing football, not fussed either way tho tbh

judging parents with kids who don't make flying a nightmare for all parties is notmimo

i kind of think spanking is bullshit

well not really even "kind of", i just think it's bullshit. outdated. shit people did in the 40s and 50s. we should be beyond that now.

Yup.

I'm not going to find it because Twitter is a rushing river so it's long gone, but a friend tweeted something about how you've also got to take a look at a society that expects children to be perfectly behaved at all times. There's a lot of pressure on parents, more pressure on some parents than on others, to keep their kids docile in public. There's also the consideration that misbehavior in black kids especially is met with harsher public/social/school consequences than that of white kids, up to and including the American police force's tendency to shoot young black men for looking dangerous and then literally getting away with murder, so when you weigh all of that, spanking a kid might seem like the least harmful path to take.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's complicated, which doesn't mean I think that hitting children is okay (I really don't, I'm sorry, I know many people were spanked as children and turned out fine, but I really truly believe that it is not okay to intentionally physically hurt children for any reason) but it does take some of the wind out of my righteously judgey sails.

https://twitter.com/iSmashFizzle/status/510548657301905408

feel like certain people believe kids are being monsters when they act out in public instead of just being kids, and those dark looks I sometimes see aimed at the parents def ante up the pressure to get kids in line. Not individual looks, I mean they really do seem to indicate an attitude of "how dare this disturb the rest of us?" It makes some parents feel like they're doing something wrong.

xp that's an interesting point in that tweet but at first i interpreted it as an argument not to spank (until i finished reading it), like spanking just reinforces the notion that you have to be well-behaved all the time, and all the pressure on parents moves them to take a physically violent action toward their kids.

also does his tweet kind of assume that spanking is more effective than other disciplinary measures?

meant carl's friends tweet, not the tweet jeff posted

My wife spanked our son before I came along. She wasn't comfortable with it, but didn't know what else to do. Now she trots me out as the "big guns", even though I've never laid a hand on him in anger ("...but I'm beginning to think that 10's not too old to start!" is what I say to him).

Anyway, yeah, I wish I could better search facebook timelines for select quotes and comments the few times that I've gotten into it with people about spanking.

Me: Studies show that children who are spanked &c.
Outspoken and Aggressive fb friend: My mom used to beat my ass and I turned out just fine!

-or-

Fb friend: But my cousin was spanked and he turned out fine - he's a POLICE OFFICER!

Lots of successful people were spanked

OJ, bin laden, margaret thatcher, bieber, etc

Friend of mine used to get forced to eat hot mustard as a kid which I thought was way weirder

Oh, hotsaucing. I met a woman once who disciplined her kid like that. I wasn't interested in getting to know her further.

I've known some people whose child discipline style made me wonder if I should have ever known them in the first place.

Yes, but hitler was spanked. And Judas was spanked for the first time just before betraying Jesus.

On an unrelated note, what is the ILX -parenting crew's opinion on walking your kid on a leash?

Depends on where you are. On a regular street? At the park? I think that would be weird. In a crowded public place where there's a risk of becoming separated, we've found one of these harnesses to be valuable.

http://www.daftdaddy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DD-leash.jpg

Like, a shopping mall. A museum.

marcos - the friend is 100% anti-spanking. This is what she is saying, "like spanking just reinforces the notion that you have to be well-behaved all the time, and all the pressure on parents moves them to take a physically violent action toward their kids" and she's saying that it is a bad thing. Basically just pointing out that decisions on how to discipline kids are not made in a vacuum. I'm kind of speaking for her now, but she's into the positive parenting (the no discipline parenting) for her kids so I'm fairly confident that she would not argue that speaking is more effective than other disciplinary measures.

Although I think if you're goal is to keep a child quiet and still on command, spanking probably is most effective. But her, and my, response would be akin to omar's statement, that kids are kids and shouldn't have to be quiet and still out of the parents' fear that they are going to bother other people with their kidness.

lol My dad was made to eat a spoonful of black pepper by the nuns in Catholic school. I didn't realize anyone had done that since 1959.