Parenting

First off I'd like to say that I know I'm probably the last person who should be giving parenting advice. I'm not a parent, my youngest sibling is now 18, and I grew up in a pretty healthy household. With that said, even though I do not have children of my own, it sickens me to see some of the parenting I witness around town and when I'm working at a "family" restaurant.

I don't care how old your kid is, they are human beings and not dogs. If you just point and yell at them, they're not going to get it. There was this one guy who had two kids with him about the ages of 2 and 4. The 2 year old was upset about something, started crying, and this guy just starts yelling at the boy to be quiet. Yelling, mind you, louder than the kid was crying! That doesn't solve anything, if the kid's crying in a restaurant/theater/public place of any sort, you should remove them from the situation. What you do at that point, I don't care, I'm not here to discuss that. This goes beyond parenting, it's just polite. Let those around you enjoy what they went there to do!

Another thing I've seen are parents who issue out threats to their children, but not even good threats. A girl came in with her son once, and she couldn't have been older than 18 and the boy was definitely under 2 years old. They sat at a table and he started putting a spoon in his mouth. I've seen some parents let their kids put the forks and butter knives in their mouths before, so I was just glad it was a spoon this time. The mother pulled the spoon out of his mouth, placed it on the table, and said "Knock it off!" Sure enough, the boy grabs the spoon again to put it in his mouth. The same result, she took the spoon away and told him to stop. Because she still put the spoon within his reach, he still was able to grab it. Finally she yelled "Do you want me to put Orajel in your mouth? Put that in your mouth and I'm gonna put Orajel in your mouth!" Here's what I don't get, is it really that bad that there's a spoon in this boy's mouth? It's too big to swallow and isn't sharp enough to cut. And Orajel? Really? That's what's going to happen? Turns out this boy knew what Orajel was and started banging the table with the spoon instead, and that seemed to be better. I'd rather have a kid gnaw on a spoon quietly than make a drum out of a table in an already noisy environment.

There are so many other examples I could shell out, but at this point I'd rather not share anymore. And again, I'm no parent, so this is more observation than advice.