Originally posted 2021-02-03 08:35:54.
in Parenting, Staff Picks
This made me smile.
Claire
1.7k Views
22 Comments
If you don’t follow Hollie already you should. She’s a gem of a person and such a talented poet to boot.
Wow, a reverse karen
When my first was about 1 I used to regularly meet a friend in a cafe. She was really quiet, like objectively so, not just the blind parent to kid noise quiet. All she did was sit on my knee and people watch because she was quite shy. Anyway one day my friend is talking to her and she laughs and this man turned around and shouted at her for being noisy and that he was trying to work.
Idiot made her cry so then she was even noisier and I’m not usually a confrontational person but by god I chewed him out. If you want a space to concentrate go to the library. Or better yet, your office.
My coworker, Liana, is on the evening shift and everyday her husband facetimes her with their 2 year old daughter. They’ll have a 3 to 10 minute audible conversation while all of us around her laugh and smile at how funny her little girl is. Sometimes Liana will reflexively apologize for “all the noise” or the distraction. I always say ” the 5 minutes I get to hear that little voice babble and laugh are the best 5 minutes of the day.”
I had to go do my university homework out of the house one day because the power was cut off unexpectedly. In a library of all places a guy was on his phone, sitting underneath a sign saying “please take phone calls outside”. A cafe full of babbling toddlers would have been more peaceful.
The baby can learn how to talk at home too :3
Pre-covid I tried to make a point to socialize my kids in restaurants. I wanted them to learn how to act appropriately in a public setting that didn’t revolve around them. I always took them to places where it’d be acceptable for an adult to speak/laugh loudly and I’d seen kids before (no quiet fancy restaurants). I also made a point to NOT apologize to others for every peep my kid made (major outbursts are removed from the restaurant). I’m an over-apologizer and I am trying to show my kids that it’s ok to be a kid in a public space.
We were eating dinner at a Disney World buffet and our 1 year old literally figured out at dinner she could scream. She would then giggle her head off after a short scream. It didn’t last to long but yeah it could get annoying fast if she did it all dinner.
The guy next to us thought it was funny as hell especially as I was chuckling (which was just making her do it more) trying to get her to stop via another distraction. His date was annoyed as hell you could tell. Who goes and eats dinner at a Disney World buffet and expects there to be no kids having fun and noisy?
All it takes is 1 bad interaction from that dipshit that thinks they own the Cafe to cause people to apologize constantly.
While we are discussing this how do y’all feel about babies/toddlers trying to catch other people’s eyes and smile at them and try to engage with other tables?
My daughter used to do that and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. I tried to re-engage her but she just loved trying to make friends. No one was mean about it but I wasn’t sure how to correct her.
I feel this way when people complain about babies on airplanes. Like, you don’t want to hear a crying baby? Shoulda booked a private jet.
Oh god, I can already see the childfree foaming at the mouth at stuff like this.
For every one of these people it seems like there’s 5 who will glare at you if you place your mug down too loudly.
Yes! Obviously there’s a line between letting kids run wild and a reasonable level of noise, but there do seem to be a lot of people who forget that children are allowed in public spaces.
When my daughter was about two my mom and I took her to a tea and scones cafe. To be fair, she was remarkably well-behaved in public (through no real effort of my own, she was just kind of shy!). I was so nervous when a bunch of elderly ladies that were dressed super fancy came in and took seats near us. It was a small cafe. Luckily for us, they were delighted to see a 2 year old playing “tea” and just squealed at her the whole time. Haha! She even got a free scone from the owner!
It’s so refreshing to see that there are kind people out there that understand that babies are, well, you know… babies.
I wish everyone felt this way. My kid is loud. He’s not naughty or anything, but he LOVES speaking loudly and yelling and just being loud in general. Not everyone is so understanding.
Aw don’t make me cry….
When my stepdaughter was two she loved to talk… and loudly. We went to this restaurant and she was loudly talking about whatever I don’t remember, and the person across from us kept rolling her eyes, and her partner was sighing loudly. Me…being the type of person I am….ignored them. Then when our food came my stepdaughter proudly exclaimed “WOW MY FOOOOOOD!!! I LOVE THIS FOOD!!!” and this lady turned and said “Could you maybe ask her to be quieter?!?!” I said “Well…she’s two. She’s just gonna continue to get louder…I’m sorry if she’s bothering you.” Thing was we had already told her “Baby, let’s use our inside voice.” A ton of times.
The man that was with her was exasperated and grumbled about how parents don’t teach their kids any manners. We apologized profusely for her, but when she loudly proclaimed “I’M ALL DONE!!” the lady freaking shushed her.
Um… no…you don’t do that. Not to my kid. I said “Excuse me, could you not be so rude as to shush my child? I’ve apologized, I’ve told her to use her quiet voice, but she a freaking baby! Maybe you need to grow up and deal with it or ask to move tables. Don’t be so rude and mind your own business. She’s not crying, she’s happy. Let her be a kid!” And the gall of these people. They did the “why I never” reaction. Said that parents these days are awful. How dare I. Blah blah
Thing was, this wasn’t a fancy restaurant. This was freaking IHOP. On Kids eat free night. There were plenty of kids there that night. But apparently ours was the only one bothering them. Because she was excited about freaking pancakes….
And another story, I went to lunch with my friend and her 10 month old. He had been babbling and squealing and a group of three ladies kept staring at us. When one said something loudly “I hate when people bring their babies to places like this.” Now this wasn’t a fancy place, but it was a nice little cafe. We were the only people with a kid. Not to say this was a place that no one brought kids to. It was just during a school day.
When our waitress came by, I loudly asked her if she’d be so kind as to find these nice ladies a new table since they were so bothered by a baby’s happiness to enjoy their lunch. She happily asked the ladies if that was a problem and they just refused to get up and move. I tipped our waitress highly for trying. The lady who was being rude also was being crabby towards the waitress.
Some people man….
This is like when I take my kid to a popular dog spot in town and people apologize for their dogs coming up to us and interacting with him. I’m at the dog place. It is known.
What an unexpectedly reasonable thing to see on the internet.
I was fully expecting some kind of baby-hate aggressively childfree nonsense but was pleasantly surprised.
Pre-COVID I often worked in cafés. Recently found out I have ADHD and apparently it’s a popular method of working where lots of background noises helps you concentrate, so now I understand why I found café work so productive!
See how they feel about a baby learning to shriek.