No Kids Allowed!

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Nope, I was citing my neighbours as an example. I used to live in an area where white people were in the minority, that's where I got the impression

Anyway, it all depends on circumstances. You have a kid with special needs, I don't. Our situations are different. I have friends with kids who have various special needs, some of them act up in public, some don't. It happens.

At the end of the day, people are always going to have different perceptions. Personally, I don't think that having a special needs kid has anything to do with this discussion, it's supposed to be about disruptive brats (and I do mean BRATS) not being allowed in specific places.

 

BTA - Exactly.

 

I remember years ago reading about a woman who had a t-shirt made for her special needs kid because she was constantly getting b****y comments when they went out.

Plus people are tired of kids acting up in restaurants and cinemas. Saying no to all kids between certain times etc is fine. You can't say 'The rule is no kids because they act up...except for special needs kids' because you end up with discrimination problems everywhere. If a business wants to ban kids then fair play to them. I'm a parent and, even though my kid behaves when we go out, I'd be more than happy to go somewhere kid free for a break!

 

Seeing parents with a child they're having trouble controlling is one thing. Even adults play up sometimes.

Seeing parents not give a damn about their kids being destructive, violent or disruptive is another thing entirely. Most of the aggressive children I've been around in the past have been starved of much parental attention, they either get used to being able to do what they want or will play up because being scolded is the only act of parenting the adults can sometimes be bothered with.

 

Actually, I feel that way about a lot of "adults" that I see out. The lack of consideration and concern for others is now a part of our culture. Our children learn from us.

 

That is why you have to speak up. You are only reinforcing that behaviour by not saying something. The only way to change it is to discipline those exhibiting the bad behaviour. If that requires embarrassing the crap out of them in public, so be it.
Trust me, having a conversation about the situation with the manager of the establishment near the offending people(in a load but calm voice) works almost everytime.

Several of the movie theater chains here have instituted zero tolerance for kids or adults being disruptive. 3 complaints or any worker observing it & it's goodbye, no refund.

 

That will be the day....

If you took the time to read some of the other posts you would already know that is not the issue. The issue is that type of punishment should be used. Really, try doing some reading.

 

To curb the unwanted behaviour, I find this spesific example of false entitlement from the world of World of Warcraft suit exceptionally well.

Some background info first. WoW is a multiplayer online game where the most advanced rewards come almost exclusively from content that can only be tackled in groups. Group sizes vary from mere two (2v2 Arena) all the way up to 25 (most raid instances, was up to 40 at game launch). The preferred social structure to tackle the "looking for group" problem is to organize into guilds of like-minded people, and going at it with total strangers (so-called pick-up groups) is generally acknowledged as the 'ok, if you just absolutely can't find anything else' alternative.

However, some people started excusing their (often poor) behaviour by stating "I pay $14,99 a month for MY subscription and that entitles me to do whatever the <expletive> I please!". Until some shrewd people came up with the right answer: "Okay, it's your $14,99 against our $59,96* and we think you are a douchebag." Let me tell ya, that solved the problem pretty much there and then.

* = A group of five, most common in pick-up group scenarios tackling 'normal difficulty' grade smaller dungeons.

 

What a heated thread.

It's against the law to smack children in New Zealand. My son is 7 and I have managed to get this far without having to resort to hitting him even once.

 

I haven't 'hit' our daughter either, but that doesn't mean she's been untouchable. Just yesterday I pinched her nose, no harder than when I play with her and she goes 'bbttttbbttllll' (try to force air out of nose despite it being blocked and you get the idea) but combined with the sharp NO seemed to reinforce the point fine enough.

As noted before, you're doing it horribly wrong if corporeal punishment includes force that exceeds that of normal play. There are several orders of magnitude between that and actually hitting your child.

 

I've never hit my kid with enough force to cause harm. The worst I've ever done to him was whip a nerf ball at him when he really ticked me off the one day (the ball hit him in the stomach) - and he still cried, and I felt badly afterward.

But that's the thing with my son - he's typically very well behaved in public. I've done more harm to him play fighting than I've ever deliberately caused through anger. (And he fights dirty - he's drawn blood in more than one instance.)

That said, I don't NEED to stike my son. I have found that simply getting angry is more than enough to make my point. When my wife gets mad and yells at my son, he yells back at her. When I get mad a yell at my son, he cries. It's usually at that point that he runs over and grabs my leg, I pick him up, he says he's sorry and I hug him until he calms down.

 

I am finding that yelling is already losing its magic. What is working is our use of making them sitdown and explain why they did what they did. Not taking "because" as an answer. Sometimes it creates a cryfest, but mostly it calms them down and usually helps with no repeat performances. But they also have inthe back of their minds that a light smack on the bottom is always a possiblity.

 

I just tell him he can't play on the computer for a day if he keeps playing up. There are some advantages to having a son who likes playing computer games.

 

"No computer" is currently my most effective bargaining chip with my eldest. He has an amazing ability to sort himself out when computer time is on the line.

The occasional spanking, though, is still more profound for my son in a lot of ways. If he messes up badly enough to warrant a spanking, he pretty much by default will be losing some computer privileges as well. PC privileges (and it's important to point out that they are privileges, not rights) always require top notch behavior (we have a whole list of criteria that have to be met).

 

There's pretty much ALWAYS something a kid ain't willing to let go just to keep on acting up. It does, however, become problematic if that's used exclusively to curb anything from unwanted behaviour to small misunderstandings to anything done in a whim. At some point, the kid might actually consider giving up a minor/no longer wanted/replaceable priviledge for a free card to do whatever the <expletive> they please.

I know, I've been there, and it ain't pretty.

---------- Added 0 hours, 44 minutes and 20 seconds later... ----------

To illustrate, here's what happened.

One of my three son-in-laws (now 18 years old) has always been the spoiled brat and princess of the family, long before I figured into the family picture. He's become an expert on abusing his mother's sore point since she had to leave her small kids at grandma's to be able to move to a larger city to get a job and to be able to provide for the family from there. (No social security nor anything like that in their country of origin.) And she's been naive enough to think that she'll make things better by soothing her kid(s) with material things.

Inexperienced in parenting as I was, I honestly thought I'd get away easier by taking the nice step dad role, instead of laying down the law from the moment we moved together. A huge mistake. We did manage to sort out the worst by reasoning and creative coercion, such as "no, it's not OK if you borrow the prepaid monthly bus ticket you borrowed from your mother to a friend of yours", "yes, you DO need to take your vespa to service once a year, otherwise the spoiled oil WILL destroy its engine, as it just did" and "no, it's not too much to ask if you and your older brother take care of the dishes, and only that".

Things went relatively smooth all the way until I learned that family economy had gone down the toilet without me being aware of it. (Yes, stupid of me, but I honestly thought I could trust my own wife when she says we're doing OK.) So, it was either bankruptcy or the two elder brothers helping us out out of their hugely liberal monthly allowances (Over 2000 SEK plus free cellphone, bus ticket and gym fee for both). But alas, that's THEIR money and rather than accepting any cuts, they demanded we'd subside their soon upcoming driver's license, a car and preferably a trip to their home country as well since we hadn't traveled there yet, and.. Well, you get the idea.

Things have degenerated to the point that they'll rather (try to) live on their own with everything that entails rather than pay even a symbolic sum as rent to us. "It's not OUR debts so why should we help you guys out?" Social Security Services have confirmed to us that the monthly allowance the elder brothers have received so far is humongously over our budget so that we're perfectly reasonable in our claims, rather than being complete idiots as we get to hear daily.

So.. tell me guys, what else besides good' ol' ass-whupping would get the point across? Other than letting them find out the hard way, when they're penniless, evicted and marked for life?

 

Nasty situation, that. Well, if the money is coming from you and the Mrs, then you do have the right to reduce it if necessary. And if you don't have any money, obviously subsidizing them is not possible. Not only their problem, but if they are part of the family with no income of their own, well... it's how things are. Sometimes the money just isn't there. How much was 2000 SEK, btw - around 300 USD, if I remember right?

Paying a rent to live with your parents is somewhat of a Swedish thing, apparently - a friend told me she was quite surprised when her BF (a Swede) told her he did that with his own parents, which struck me as odd, even for someone over 18 (though shopping from my own pocket would be fine). Then again, you are most likely offering them a much better deal - if they move out they'll spend a lot more.

Again, the problem is where the money is coming from. If it's you, well, too bad for them. Unless they signed a contract how much their allowance is, whoever giveth can taketh away.

At that age (18-ish if I understand right), I'm not sure even that helps. On the other hand, especially if they aren't your own kids, you can get in a heck of a lot of trouble. If words don't work, better go for the money and squeeze that way.

 

Walk out of the entire situation, does not seem like a good place to be in.

 

Interesting thing there ... I don't know if this applies to parenting at all (and suspect that it doesn't), but a young adult can indeed learn a lesson through an ass-kicking (or maybe moreso just be inspired to modify their behavior as opposed to internalizing any right-wrong scenarios). What I'm thinking of specifically here is like, for example, putting a beating on a guy who physically abuses his wife or girlfriend. If it's done the right way and the right message is sent, such as "any further abuse on your part of your wife/girlfriend will result in more of the same," it can indeed change one's behavior. I wouldn't suggest that for Sir Rechet, but it's interesting to note that 'righteous' negative pain reinforcement can have some behavioral affect on adults.