BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Today's rant: The eye glass store.

No where is safe. My husband and I went shopping for new glasses today, and in the store there parents were letting their toddler run around the store unsupervised while they shopped. I mean, I semi-understand when one parent tries to deal with a kid alone when they have to shop, but TWO parents, no one dealing with the kid.

They were halfheartedly calling to him occasionally, "Danny, come here." Then went right back to trying on glasses while "Danny" grabbed glasses off the wall and ran around with them and I even saw him put a few in his mouth. I could see the staff was visibly distressed and not sure what to do. As I'm sure many of you know, glasses can be expensive, so "Danny" was running around with probably about $1000 worth of merchandise at any given time. At one point, the kid had a pair that my husband wanted to try on again, and had to pull out the fake smile and baby voice and say to the kid, "Hi sweetie, Can I have those please?" He yelled "No!" and ran away with them.

I could tell my husband was getting upset, but he doesn't have a confrontational personality and wasn't sure what to do. So, I told the sales lady who was helping us, "Thank you for your time, we'll think about these and come back another time." I think she understood.

This was seriously, by far, the worst "child encounter in public" I have ever had. I mean, I've dealt with screaming babies at restaurants and stuff, but I've never had merchandise held hostage by a kid before! I don't even know if his parents were paying attention to the ordeal or not. Probably not. I almost hope he broke something and his parents had to pay for it. ARG.

If it were my retail store, both the children and parents would have been spoken to.

Gees...that sounds awful. I hate when parents don't seem to care enough to control their children. I was bowling with my husband one day and this little kid comes up to me when I was about to roll and yells "that's MY ball!" and tries to grab this heavy bowling ball from me...his dad just passively mutters "we have to share." and went back to his phone.

I'm crossing my fingers as I post this as I did catch some heat for my previous statement about feeling bad for kids of parents who work full time. Actually, I feel bad for both kids AND their parents. I shudder at the thought of this life:

I think it goes something like this: A day in the life of a parent...Wake up at 5am (two hours earlier than if you didn't have kids).

Dress your kid, shove a pop tart or some other food-like substance down their throat (if you were child-free you could actually have the time/ money to enjoy a relaxing breakfast free of chemicals.)

drop your kid off at day care

Go to work where you're either happy to be away from your kids, or feel guilty because you have to leave them.

pick your kid up at 6:00

go home and start dinner (probably kraft mac n cheese with some microwave salisbury steak....OR DRIVE TROUGH at some [censored] fast food chain.)

rush off to whichever sport/activity your kid is involved with.

home by 8 to chores, misbehaving/fighting kids.

in bed by 10.

Next morning: the awful "groundhog day"-like phenomenon begins all over again.

Now tell me, during what time in this day was a child taught manners, or how to behave? These kids have such busy parents that they HAVE to fight for their attention...annoying the rest of us...lol. In my opinion, this type of upbringing is the reason that kids nowadays have no manners and are always having a tantrum in public. I'm just thankful I could go home and get away from it!

Yes misstalia you are going to catch some more heat. I didn't see your other post but I am sorry your write up is bs. For one thing, as someone kid free, I also get up at 5am and have rushed breakfast. Not due to having to get stuff done for a kid but to go to the gym and then get to office on time. And for another, both of my parents worked fulltime back when it was unusual for that to be the case. And worse they also moved out to the 'burbs before everyone did it. I can remember the routine as a child....my mother would drive my father and I from the suburbs to the city, approximately 45 min drive at that time. Drop my father off at a bus stop so that he would take a bus across the city to his office then drive another 10 mins to drop me off at school then drive another 15 to her office. She would work a full day, then drive back up to get me, then either we would get my father at the bus stop and back home or we would drive to his office and wait for him to finish before driving back to the burbs. Sometime we would stop for dinner on way home, other times my mother would have put something in a crockpot to be ready when we got home. No microwaves, tv dinners still took a long time to cook in oven. And you know what? I was a well behaved child. My sister arrived a few years later, my mother still worked. Still fed us proper meals morning and night and we never ever ran around like idiots in the stores. Plus both of my parents took us to our activities (mainly on weekends as there was little time by the time we got home) and had hobbies of their own. We were taught manners at every opportunity....eating dinner at the table as a family, going out to restaurants, going to visit relatives. It was not easy work and it's part of why I opted out. Your write up is full of excuses for not doing the job properly.

BUTTTTTT fastfox, your family was (must have been) one in a million.
cp

[quote=cream pie]BUTTTTTT fastfox, your family was (must have been) one in a million. ;) cp [/quote] lol I don't think so. Perhaps it does happen as it was described and that way of life sucks but those people either should have remained kidfree or should get themselves some outside help to get their lives in order.

fastfox, your write up doesn't sound much different from mine. Parents living their lives in whirlwind of crazyness. To each is own, though. I wasn't implying that everyone brought up that way doesn't have manners. there are exceptions. Also, The fact the you rise early to go to the gym is your choice not something that you're burdened with. If you had childern you'd probably be up at 3..lol.

As far as the manners, you're one of the lucky ones whose parents used every opportunity to teach you.


Also, I'm not making up excuses really, I think it's a disgrace. I guess the point of my post was that often (not always) when people are overwhelmed important tasks (like teaching kids how to behave)are overlooked. I'm only stating what I have seen. You do not have to agree with me.

Parents working many times has little to do with manners.
Also, not all parents rush like that. I work 7 blocks (one traffic light) from my house - we leisure most mornings since none of us need to be at school and work until 8:30. They get home at 3:30 - I get off at 4 and home by 4:06 (depending on the traffic light. I know and truly appreciate that CF couples/individuals do not like to be stereotyped. I don't think it's fair to stereo type parents either because you run into some with bad kids... but if you're going to do it - at least it should be accurate that there are exceptions. :-) all said with deep respect for the CF lifestyle.