I am subscribed to various groups that I don’t enjoy being subscribed to, but do need the occasional bits of useful information that happen to get posted. Recently a “discussion” about manners has broken out on one. I decided to torture myself and read it. I do not always treat myself very well.
This is a large group which meets in person regularly. I very rarely attend. The flurry of messages started because somebody posted a complaint about the general behavior of many of the children at a recent lunch. Behavior such as yelling, sitting on top of tables, making huge messes with no attempt at cleaning, and purposefully spilling water were listed. I was not there. I do not know what happened THIS time. I do know that part of the reason that I rarely attend such things is because I am anti-social, and part of the reason is because the behavior of many of the members and their children is totally unpleasant for me to be around. This leaves me inclined to believe the original poster’s overall impression of the level of manners on display. Other aspects of the original complaint did rub me the wrong way, not that anybody argued with her on those points.
The responses started.
Boys will be boys. Kids enjoying being kids. I am blessed by a special needs child who is loving and full of energy. Every child is different and not all are calm and quiet as apparently you are lucky enough to have. We work so hard and it is nice to spend time talking to adult friends and that distracts us from watching the kids, but we all know what that is like and should be understanding. We all have bad days sometimes so we should be supportive when the kids are having bad days. Well I know, having four kids, I can’t always keep an eye on all of them at once. If you think a child is behaving in an inappropriate or unsafe manner you should say something, we should all look out for each other. Sorry if I am not as perfect of a mother as you. Yes they are a bit excited and enthusiastic but they are overall so much better behaved than other kids I see.
On and on and fucking on.
The whole thing irritates the shit out of me. I can’t attend events which should be interesting and educational because they let their kids be so fucking noisy and distracting that it drowns out the point of being there. I can’t set foot in a restaurant during certain times. I am rarely able to stand taking my daughter to those kid oriented places. We order books online rather than making use of the library because that is cheaper than paying the attorney fees when I finally snap from the noise and rudeness and running around, not to mention the scribbled on books in the library.
Yes dear parents, to me your precious “gifts from god” are nasty vile creatures that I take zero pleasure from knowing, and yes I blame you and the rest of your family for how damn unpleasant I find them to be. I do not care if junior is having a bad day. If his day is so damn bad that he cannot behave in a civilized fashion, that is YOUR problem and HIS problem and should not be my fucking problem. Stay home.
Is it MY fault that you have a special needs kid? Then why should it be my problem? Yes, I know that is very politically incorrect for me to say. I don’t give a shit. You have a kid who needs extra attention, give them some damn extra attention. Don’t give them the same amount you would give another kid, and then expect the whole world to just let them slide on the rest. Life is hard, at least for people who give a shit and try at it, and it should fucking be hard for you and your special needs kid too. I have serious issues myself, and I work damn hard to confine that to being a problem for me and my close family and friends, not every single fucking person I encounter in my day to day life.
I do not give a snorted rat turd how many children you have, it doesn’t excuse you one bit. You shouldn’t have had more than you could manage properly. I know how limited my own damn skills are and so I only had one. It was important to me that the parents outnumbered the kids in our household. I didn’t want to wake up tied to my bed one morning with the inmates running the asylum. For those who can handle more, excellent, but if you can’t don’t fuck up my day with your inept parenting bullshit. Hire help. Only let them out of the house in shifts. I don’t care. Take some responsibility. Breed less or parent more.
I, in no fucking way at all ever, think I am a perfect mom. I don’t even think I am a good mom. On a good day I manage to achieve marginal mom status. I am always trying to improve. I get that I am not great at it, and I try to improve. I don’t simply shrug and expect all of the world to cope with the results of my shortcomings. Eventually she will be an adult, and I realize that the world will have to cope with exactly how much I fucked it up. Until then it is my job to keep trying to improve things. Because I am fully aware she will be set loose on the world someday, I know it is of vital importance that I take my job seriously, for the sake of society and most importantly for her sake (because when it comes right down to it I care a hell of a lot more about her than I do about society). I am not “lucky” to have a “calm and well behaved child”. I worked my ass off to get her to behave as well as she does, and believe me, it isn’t well enough. We still have to work on it all the time, and I call her on it when she falls short. Ask her when the last time she got in trouble for something was. I don’t care when you are reading this, I seriously doubt it was less than 12 hours previously. Does she behave better than a lot of the kids I see? Yes, she does. Does that excuse the crap she does try to pull? Hell no. I am not comparison shopping. It is not a contest.
We set the standard for what behavior we expect of her in our home, and I fully support your right to do that in yours. What you want to put up with is your choice. What I expect from her out in the world is a different story. Out there I feel that everyone should take into consideration the general comfort level for the people around us based on the average societal expectations for our current location, failing to do so is rude. For instance, I will not stand in the middle of a restaurant and scream and swear all this to you at the top of my lungs. It might ruin your enjoyment of your meal that you are paying good money for and I don’t think that would be very polite of me. I also happen to think that allowing your child to stand on his chair grabbing food off of every plate on the table with his left hand and throwing it, while grabbing large fist fulls of food from every plate on the table with his right hand and shovelling them into his mouth is not very polite of you. Also, when all the cramming of food into his face causes him to gag and spit it out all over your table, I think that it is your fucking responsibility to clean it up, and not the waitstaff. Oh yeah, and I don’t think he is even a little bit cute.
Yes dear parents, I have to admit that if your kids are so fucking irritating that I, and many other people, are driven out of public places because we cannot stand to be near them for one more second, then I happen to think that you suck. I realize that you don’t give a shit what any of us think, any more than I give a shit what you think. The real difference being that I know I am a bitch, and you’re convinced that you are good people.
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