Free Range Children
The Taste of Heaven cafe in Andersonville, Chicago is taking a stand against free range children. A couple of months ago they put a sign in the window asking child-patrons to use their indoor voices. Some parents are outraged that some one had the guts to tell them how bratty their kids are. Parents are banning the cafe. It seems that behavior of children in public gets worse and worse. We've gone to restaurants and seen children hanging from the chandeliers.
Now, that time we walked into the Colonial Cafe on clown night, we sucked it up and ate our dinners without complaining about all of the noise. I don't think it's reasonable to expect kids to be seen and not heard. I’m not advocating the breeding of an idealized eugenically pure race here. I don’t think Stepford children is the answer. But I’m hard-pressed not to throttle parents who, when their kid is disrupting everyone around them just get them the box of Captain Crunch. I’m never surprised when I see the kid in the next aisle yelling about something else.
It’s not just about lack of discipline, either. It’s really not smart to take young children to the subtitled version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Of course they’re going to be running up and down the aisles. I shouldn't even have to say it: a five-year-old can’t read that fast. Many parents don’t seem to understand that it is their job to see that their children are entertained. Bring them to age-appropriate movies, if not for the violence for the sheer boredom. Young children don’t grasp complex plots. Duh.
posted by Sarah Letnes at 8:43 AM
3 Comments:
The other day my wife saved a child from toppling out of a grocery cart. The little girl was standing in the kid seat.
Where was mom? 20 feet away, looking at some Hip Hop magazine. Two other syblings were in the next aisle arguing over peanut butter.
The child's mother didn't say thanks, didn't acknowlege my wife, just came over, yelled at her daughter for being so "fucking" stupid and pushed the cart closer to her private library.
Sad planet.
11/12/2005 12:43 PM
With Jethro and Thelma Lou for parents the kids don't have a chance. Hillbillies, once confined to Appalachia, can now be found in your local market and yes, they bred. Said it once, say it again - stupid breeds true. Unsupervised stupid is just the next step. Like the kid in the shopping cart, mom can just squeeze out another one (and probably will (mouth breathers are prolific if nothing else) so she's not worried. And dad? He is in the magazine aisle eyeing up that copy of Monster Truck Weekly thinking how great those super swamper tires would look on his 65 pickup truck. Of course the fact little Billy Bob or Josey Sue have TV in their room along with that pile of slasher videos doesn’t help. Disney be damned (too late!) Joe Bob likes the movies where at least ten people are snuffed in the first few minutes.
No church, no role models, no moral compass it is no wonder children are running amuck. The parents just figure they had the kid, now he or she is the public school systems problem.
11/15/2005 3:10 AM
Cursed Tongue is sure you didn't mean to say that all inattentive parents come from Appalachia. I've seen perfectly normal people, medium income by all appearances, win some pretty high-mark bad parenting awards. Ghastly parenting exists everywhere.
Disney, now that's a whole other kind of evil.
11/15/2005 7:15 AM
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