CF: You know what pisses me off about parents?
 

What irks you about parents and how they handle their kids? Are there people that you think should not be parents whatsoever? What bothers you about our child-bearing society?

Sound off here. And hey, you folks with kids are welcome to post your own gripes (about childfree peeps or other parents) or defenses as well.

INCONSISTENCY

if you tell your kid no, and he argues......don't cave. you'll always regret it. i see someone i know do this repeatedly, and the kid plays her like a fiddle. he's 3. christ.

the child is fine around everyone until mom gets home, and then the whining and crying begin. in mom's defense. she works, so she feels guilty about being away from him all day, and doesn't want the limited amt of time she has with him to be filled with disciplining him.....so she appeases him. I know her well, but am uncomfortable discussing it with her. and yet, i can see where this will lead. So...I just pinch the kid when no one else is looking. :)

Yep, thats one of my pet peeves as well Jimbo. Life is a lot easier for kids when their parents are predictable. I know a Dad who will constantly work his kids up into a frenzy of noise and destruction and suddenly he can't take it anymore and needs a break from them. The kids don't know that no means no, so they ignore him or negotiate him away from whatever random stance he last took. It makes me nervous to be around them, especially near traffic because the kids don't listen and will dart into the road etc...

I agreee, lj, though I dare say we're guilty at least to a certain extent. Though I dare say, Mrs. Dallas more so than me. Our son is an expert fit-thrower, and I'll just sit there and let him scream for an hour if that's what it takes to get it out of his system. But at a certain point she'll just cave and give in to shut him up. Drives me nuts.

I think part of the problem is an overall lack of discipline that has seemed to grow since the 70s. And it's not that the parents don't want to discipline their child necessarily, but if you swat your kid or talk to them the wrong way, you run the risk of having social services show up at your door.

Steve, could the difference in how you handle your son and your wife handles him in that situation be a product of age, since there is a significant age difference between the two of you?

I don't think so, I really think she just has a lower tolerance for complaining than I do. This could well be the result of environmental differences (I gather she and her brother got along with significantly less sibling rivalry than normal), but I don't think it's specifically age related.

But I think we're cleaning up our act a little and working on being more consistent between the two of us. We'll see how it works out.

I agree that many kids lack discipline, but I don't see that as the root cause of "kids today". Kids are lacking in attention in general these days - they (according to the marketing of all baby related crap) are supposed to be convenient, until such time as they can be entertained by the TV or educated by their Leap pad. Then it's off to pre-daycare, day care, pre school, and school - where they are someone elses problem.

You can discipline a kid all you want, but if it isn't tempered with even greater amounts of positive reinforcement and general attention, I think the end result is yet another repeat offender.

And I see parents smacking the shit out of their kids in public all the time. It's disgusting.

I ride the bus to and from school. It's about 10, 15 minutes maybe. There are often children on the bus, and parents with them. Yesterday, there were two pairs sitting across from each other.

As I watched them, I realized a fundamental fact of bad parenting: The parents treat their children like a pet.

The kid on the right was looking at a bird out the window, as we stopped for a quick driver-exchange. Her parent happened to notice, and did that "point over the shoulder at it, doing little more than obscuring the kid's view" thing that I so hate from my own parents. After asking the child if she can say 'bird' a few times in that sickeningly patronizing tone of voice, the parent proceeded to ruffle her hair. The hair ruffling caused the parent to end up in a brief debate with some other passenger about how hard it is to get children to let their hair be combed.

As I was nearing my stop, the child and parent across the isle from the other child/parent combination began to get ready to get off, too. The child sort of tried to stand up (we're talking 1-3 year olds, by my rough estimate), then the parent pulled them back onto her knee in a series of remarkably awkward-looking grabs. Eventually sick of the manhandling, the child started to cry.

Now, I'm sort of skipping on the in-depth descriptions of this because I want to get going to school. But, through it all, it struck me as very pet like. People go off, get pregnant, give birth, and then spend the next few years of their life playing 'dress up' and 'do tricks' with their kids. They make them look nice when they're in public, they try to get them to do things for the amusement of others (walk around, say things, etc), and they use the most fucked up methods of discipline imaginable.

Really, I think people would be better off with a barbie doll and voice recorder.

right. that's the beauty of a well timed pinch!

Thats the toughest part and probably the most important. My folks were strict while Petes' were permissive. We had to take our expectations apart, talk about them and find a way to raise kids that was natural to us. We ended up with high expectations and kids that, so far, are outstripping them. For us, a big part of it is talking to the kids like they're intelligent inexperienced human beings rather than small sub-humans.

This is related to the sub-human pet issues...but parents that discuss their children, complain about the kid, the kids issues, problems, personal things to another adult in front of the kid or even a full room. Total disrespect. Like the kid's invisible. I guess the kid is invisible.

As to consistency- that's got to be the toughest, especially for a single parent. I see my pal Amy, wiped out raising her two daughters, 3 and 6, she's way more tolerant that I would be (I think- what the hell do I know?!) She definitely has to pick her battles. She'd be the first to admit she's far from perfect, but I think she's a good mom.

Discipline isnt just the long arm of the law. Yes, there is putting the fear of god into them to make them not run into the street. Or zero tolerance for a kid smacking her mom. Then there are the everyday acts of control - giving kids those more subtlely consistent boundaries, but choices within bounds so they can figure out how best to behave. I've seen that work well with kids.

Jinx, I didn't say discipline was the root cause...it's a manifestation of a bigger problem or problems.

It seems to me like a lot of folks almost feel forced to have kids due to societal expectations, family pressures, religious beliefs, etc. That pressure is then taken out on the child, be it beating on the child, treating them like a commodity (living vicariously through them) and what not.

Then there are the kids who suffer because they were accidents...the overwhelming responsibility and "lack of training" on the parents' part puts kids in the same spots as I mentioned above.

Have a child because you want and can afford the awesome responsibility of developing a new productive member of society. If you're not ready for them, take the precautions that will prevent you from becoming a parent for the time being. If you don't want them, find the strength within you to stand up to the pressures that will come at you. If you feel religious pressures, perhaps it's time to re-examine your beliefs.

Anyone who becomes pregnant or who impregnates someone should face a mandatory psychiatric exam. :)

Anyone who has a kid should have their head examined.

Psychiatric clients have the unfortunate tendency of breeding like rabbits.

They often, however, do not raise their offspring, leaving that to the state, which we all know does a bang-up job of raising kids.

Psychiatric clients tend to breed with other clients.

Major psychiatric illness is believed to have a large genetic component.

I think of it as job security.

This is how I've always felt, and it makes me so incredibly angry that it's been my credo for years that I hate <i>all</i> parents. The lack of respect astounds me.

Eventually I was a parent, and then I realized that I therefore had to hate myself. Then I realized that that was stupid and I couldn't hate myself because I was me. I mean it -- this was a serious identity crisis ("My God.. I have to hate myself now..").

But I realized something. SO many parents treat their kids this way that I thought that that's the only way it could be done. This may seem silly, but it was a great revelation to me when I realized I didn't have to do it that way.