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

yeah "consequences for them" I should have said

like are the rich everywhere less likely to hit their kids (because they don't need to be "kept in their place")?

Probably more of the rich aren't actually involved so much in raising their kids, outsourcing it to nannies, 'the help', etc etc

A lot of French parents hit their kids, even really bourgie sensitive left-wing types. Many French people think it's crazy NOT to hit your kids. Their reasons are always the same: the fear of of a smack is enough to keep a kid quiet and ruly. Which from what I can tell is the over-riding goal of French parenting, to have children who keep extremely quiet and eat all their food and then vanish at an appropriate time. I can't tell you the number of times I've eaten dinner with a French family, and their child is at the table with us, and no matter the age of the child, whether it's 4 or 14, they don't say a word, and their parents make zero attempt to involve them in any of the dinner table conversation. And because I'm a stubborn fucker I always steer the conversation around to the kid, and loop them in, and nearly without fail they look like a deer in the fucking headlights.

That's pretty different from my experience in France. I wonder if that's a regional thing? I spend more and more of my time here in the south, and attitudes seem more relaxed in every way, including with kids. At public functions when a parent is speaking I see their kids run out of the crowd and hold onto their parents' legs---down here. I haven't seen that in Paris.

is involving kids in dinner chat an American thing (asking as a UK person)? I remember eating a meal with some US relatives as a child and being mortified that I was expected to take part in the conversation, though to be honest I wish could get away with not saying a word in these situations as an adult, French children aged 4 to 14 are getting a pretty good deal imo xp

I'm speaking mainly about Bordeaux!

xpost

It is entirely possible that different practices coexist in different social bubbles and that my experience doesn't stand in for everyone's but it's definitely something I've noticed. Maybe I'm over-egging it in my mind because it feels of a piece with France's retrograde attitudes towards a whole host of social issues? (race, gender, fashion, etc?)

By the way that article DJP links to is definitely one of those "a HA" articles that I'm incredibly glad to have read, and which makes me feel like I have been a fucking cro-magnon for not accurately realizing before now

yeah I don't know about Bordeaux social customs. but today in my youngest's classroom (in an ordinary French public primary school) her teacher brought his toddler son to class, and the toddler roamed around during class. Granted it's Wednesday so it's only a half day, but I thought it remarkable. of course this is Marseille where everything seems kinda ramshackle (and yet mostly works).

see Marseilles I've always thought of as kind of cool and different from the rest of France but I fully admit that's based on absolutely nothing beyond some gut instinct; i've also heard horrendous stories about racism there

Marseille is totally chill and yeah it feels like a different country here, except for the boulangeries everywhere. it's *way* more integrated than anywhere I've lived in Paris.

still: we've seen some cops here wild out in what seemed a racist way (on a mother whose kid was crying a lot at a tram stop, but we got there pretty late in the event so I don't really know). but I've seen way worse in Paris.

is involving kids in dinner chat an American thing

I have no idea but around our dinner table it's blatantly obvious that my daughter expects to be involved in whatever we're talking about, and will offer her opinions/make up shit/ask random questions solely in order to participate. which is fine with me.

We were allowed to talk but only on topics my dad would be interested in, because if it bored him or anyone started having too much fun, he'd change the topic to an engineering project.

I know I know, not everyone's family can be as warm and wonderful as mine.

Grew up in a household where we sat around a dinner table and my parents made sure to try to involve me in conversation. Now that I've got my own family, we mostly just sit around and watch TV during dinner (we don't have a table). I'm fine with that. We have plenty of conversations at other times.

judging you so hard rn

jks

kind of

tv is such a point of tension in my house, i need to figure it out, short of allowing my kids to watch everything they want, whenever they want, or throwing the TV out the window

Oh, we are pretty TV-friendly, but primarily use it for decompression. The kids don't want to be all cramped up in the house watching TV. They would rather be active and outdoors or playing with toys. I can't even use it as a "babysitter" anymore when I'm tired - my little girl has other plans for me. So we let them watch as much tv as they want, but they really want very little. Dinnertime, bedtime, for the most part that's it.

Veronica gets max a couple of hours of TV on the weekends. Which is great cuz mostly I get to watch old Justice League/Batman cartoons or Pee Wee's Playhouse or Teen Titans Are Go! with her or whatever.

Judah's too young for TV yet (not yet 2).

I totally let Ivy watch TV when I need her to sit still for something or if she just will not go to sleep, I will sometimes give up and sit on the couch with her and watch TV with the lights off. Also sometimes I have the TV on when she's playing on the floor and she'll stop to check it out occasionally, but these days she's mostly more interested in seeing how fast she can get to any number of off-limits areas of the living room/office than she is in watching Law and Order reruns with me.

I had intended to be more of a hard ass about TV but it turns out my too tired to be much of a hard ass about anything.

My too tired to type good either apparently

upworthy on my facebook feed trying to stop us from judging!

http://www.upworthy.com/a-fantastic-photo-series-to-help-us-think-about-judgment-spoiler-alert-we-have-to-stop?c=ufb4

I judge every parent who reposts an Upworthy link but that doesn't really have anything to do with their parenting

(now if you'll excuse me, I have some ClickHole links to share)

wife & i have always watched TV in very limited way to begin with, pretty much just a movie a week, occasionally we'll get a TV series through netflix but only watch it after J goes to bed. we have never in our years together been channel-surfing people and we don't have cable. we barely receive standard network TV and have to fiddle with an antenna whenever my mom visits and wants to watch the nightly news. so J (2 yrs old) has never watched TV.

im totally judging you right now

Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix aalows I wouldn't get a shower before lunchtime Monday to Friday

Dammit.

Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix allows me to have a shower before lunchtime Monday to Friday, and use the very rare cot naps (naps are short and almost always during walks in the buggy) to do a bit of housework. TV is on for about 30 minutes a day on top of that, giving me some zone-out time while F plays but he usually doesn't notice it. I'm basically on sole duty from 7.30am until 7.30pm, so while I'd rather we were a telly-free zone I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

JUDGING: a former colleague told me how her son had terrible table manners and no amount of ticking off had resulted in an improvement. So one day, she told him she was making pizza, his favourite, for dinner. She served it up to the whole family, then took a pot of mud from the garden and dumped it on his plate. "That's your dinner, because you eat like a pig." What a bitch.

That's creative...

Did it work?

She didn't say, but her glee when she told me he cried told me that story wasn't really about her son.

My son would've asked for seconds.

sounds like a weird thing my nan or my mum would have done

there is a woman who regularly camps out in front of the Embarcadero BART station with her daughter to spare change. They are there all day. The daughter looks to be about maybe 8 or 9. For all kinds of reasons, I find this deeply disturbing. I have no idea what this woman's story is. I'm sure it isn't pleasant. Sometimes I wonder if I should call child protective services (surely this child should be in school? anywhere but on the street begging for money?) but then what would I say? After all I don't really know what's going on. But I stop myself from giving the mom money because I don't really want to encourage her to continue exploiting her kid as a prop, if that is in fact what's going on. Or maybe she just wants to keep her kid with her at all costs because she's all she has; totally understandable. There's got to be services available for someone in her situation, especially in this city... anyway I'm conflicted between this knee-jerk judgmentalism ("how could anybody willingly subject their child to this") vs. my personal politics which are always to err on the side of generosity/compassion and I end up doing nothing, which solves nothing. >:(

I am skeptical of people who beg with their kids.

I mean you're right, there is absolutely no reason that girl shouldn't be in school. In fact, she might very well be getting free meals at school, so it's hard for me to think that that person isn't just using their daughter to earn more money. I mean desperation is desperation, but there are some lines that seem like they shouldn't be crossed. I feel the same way about people who pretend to be asking for donations for shelters or organizations.

Sry I mean she *would* be getting free meals if she were in school. Probably access to other services too (not to mention education).

Schools want to know where you live, btw, and if you don't have a home address to give them, they probably have a reporting burden to get interested in how you're living pretty fast? I don't know what the levels of removal into state custody are like but it's something I'd definitely be afraid of as a parent.

Plus if the kid's in school, someone has to walk or take her there in the AM and pick her up in the PM and that means two round-trips a day for the parent, which has both $$ and time costs.

My wife has taught numerous homeless kids at her public school. Also IDK how San Fran is but in NYC you're pretty unlikely to lose your kids unless you are actually severely neglecting/abusing them, not just because you are poor or homeless, whereas not sending your child to school actually does put you at risk of trouble with child protective services.

As for transit, there are often services provided by the school district for that as well (not to mention that, even if not, the cost of a BART ride for the child would probably be cancelled out by the cost of two free meals for her child).

I fully respect your effort to give people the benefit of the doubt, but there's a reason you don't see more people begging on the street with their kids -- most homeless families send their kids to school, and even the ones that can't don't usually beg on the street with their kids.

I know for a fact that sf serves homeless kids in school w out removing them from parental care. But you do have to get your kids to and from.

christ our school district requires our 401Ks and utility bills.

i don't feel like judging this woman is justified unless you have a handle on her housing, occupational, psychological etc situation

If she has psychological (or drug) problems that prevent her from getting her child to school or getting her services, that's all the more reason for a social service agency to step in. I used to feel a lot more on the side of thinking that child protective services is this scary agency who takes away poor people's kids as a punishment for being poor. My experiences, via what my wife and other teachers I know have seen, have been very different -- kids saved from regular severe beatings, sexual abuse, extreme neglect, and in most cases not taken away from the parents (there are a bunch of intermediate steps they can take and this is a last resort -- again NYC I am talking about so it may be different elsewhere), although in one case a mother's sexually abusive boyfriend was restraining ordered, and in another case a child was moved from one relative to another (relative caring for him was mentally disabled and not really capable of providing proper care). There are probably still bad cases, but my impression overall has improved a lot.

It's nice to not be judgmental, but if the kid is basically never in school that's not only illegal but the child is losing out on a lot of services she could get as well as any chance of a better future for herself. So without deciding whether the mother is good/bad/doing the best she can with insufficient information, it still seems like calling an agency might be an option to consider.

i used to see a father/daughter pair with signs asking for money on one of the freeway offramps near santa monica. she looked to be about 12 either way. i don't know the truth of it, but it was really creepily staged. he had her front and center and literally holding a tattered doll.

That's great to hear! I hope CPS continues to do the difficult and draining work that they do--every social worker I've ever known has been incredibly patient and hard-working, it's really terrible that their own caring is used to burn them out p much every time, because the system is just not funded or supported the way it should be.

But outcomes in the system look different for different people. There are significant racial disparities in how kids' cases are treated, for instance. Just, you know, pretty much every other kind of way to offer to help this lady is more helpful than being mad at her for not keeping her 8-yo in school.

"Sometimes I wonder if I should call child protective services (surely this child should be in school? anywhere but on the street begging for money?) but then what would I say?"

Believe me they're aware. There have been stories in various local outlets about this woman/child (struggling to find evidence but I find a similar case from 2009 where it looks like a 4 year old kid was taken away by CPS.)

This it?
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/A-better-plan-needed-for-4-year-old-panhandler-3291876.php#photo-2439639

Yes.