People who don't like children

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Children are adorable bundles of joy and love, and also copious amounts of barf and poop. This is the biological reality of the matter. Emotionally, children run the entire spectrum from "OMG SO HAPPY" to "Jesus fucking Christ would you please remove that thing." And every individual child is capable of existing at any point on that spectrum at any given moment, because, well, children are humans and that's just how humans are. I find, however, that the emotional reaction to children is more a thing that happens inside the brain of the person who's doing the reacting than it is anything the child is in control of (usually).

It is not the child's fault that parents seem to have lost all bearing in the past few generations on what the fuck it means bring new humans online on this planet. I blame Dr. Spock for starting a trend of know-it-all new-age parenting "gurus" telling people that the way our species has reared its young for eons is somehow inadequate.

Here are a few helpful tips on when to call "Bullshit" when your stupid 500-page book about how to ruin a child's life forever gives you advice:

- Fuck you. Spanking a child is not only legitimate, it is necessary. Have you been around children who have never been spanked? They are holy terrors, and often they rule their parents like some kind of a god damn demented Baby Hitler with a bottle full of Hate Juice. SPANK. YOUR. CHILD.

- Do not use your "Mommy loves you" voice when reprimanding your child. It is important that the child understands where she has crossed a line, and that consequences will bee SRSBSNS if she does not immediately withdraw her errant behavior.

- Do not bribe your fucking children with toys or candy. Holy mother of fuck, if I could punch a person every time I saw them pleading with their child to "PLEASE BE GOOD, I'LL PROMISE TO BUY YOU SOME RIDICULOUS THING MADE BY SLAVE CHILDREN IF YOU'RE GOOD!" I would have a lot of broken knuckles and I'd be much more at peace with the universe. Are you trying to reinforce the idiotic notion that simply doing what is expected of civilized people is somehow grounds for a bonus? No wonder the fucks I deal with at the office seem to think making approximately 1,000x more per hour than the average human is somehow "not enough."

- DO listen to your child when she has something to say -- even if your wrinkled, cynical, jaded old brain thinks it is trite or unimportant. In fact, listen especially hard in those cases, because your child is trying to convey to you the fucking meaning of life, you bitter old senior citizen.

- DO comfort your child when she is crying. Fuck this "let them cry it out" bollocks. Do you want them to begin life feeling like they are alone and there's no one around who gives a shit? Really? They'll grow up voting Republican that way. Think twice.

THIS. END OF THREAD.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Although I will say that I don't think spanking is vital. It can be useful for some children, but not at all for others.

[LMNO]

Of course, it is also nearly impossible to tell the difference, from a stranger's perspective, between a child who is behaving badly because their parents never enforce boundaries and good behavior, and a child who is behaving badly because they have a developmental disorder or are coming down with something or some other factor outside of the parents' control.

It's the Fundamental Attribution Error, but for kids.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Of course, it is also nearly impossible to tell the difference, from a stranger's perspective, between a child who is behaving badly because their parents never enforce boundaries and good behavior, and a child who is behaving badly because they have a developmental disorder or are coming down with something or some other factor outside of the parents' control.

Agreed.  Unless you can see the parents in action...Which might not be a sure indicator, but can let you make a reasonably accurate guess.

Big thing is, the easiest thing in the world is SCREWING A KID UP.  It isn't society.  It isn't vaccinations or violent video games or television.  It's parenting. 

Now, I think parenting is, more or less, BETTER than it was two generations ago, despite the media frenzy, etc...And I say this because children and young adults are far more civilized now than they were when P3NT and Nigel and I were little hoodlums.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Although I will say that I don't think spanking is vital. It can be useful for some children, but not at all for others.

I found it useful from age 1-5.

You can't reason with a 2 year old about a light socket, for example.

After age 5, it serves no purpose, in my personal experience.  RESULTS MAY VARY.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Although I will say that I don't think spanking is vital. It can be useful for some children, but not at all for others.

I found it useful from age 1-5.

You can't reason with a 2 year old about a light socket, for example.

After age 5, it serves no purpose, in my personal experience.  RESULTS MAY VARY.

Accurate statement. It's useful for those ages, but past that age you're playing with fire -- emotionally and disciplinary. After about 5 years, a child is cognitively mature enough to prepare for, endure, and then disregard a spanking. Especially if that's your only means of correction. I say correction because spanking should never be "punishment." It should be applied quickly and at the exact moment the infraction takes place. Not "go to your room and dread the next hour until someone comes upstairs to beat you." It's a corrective action, not a punitive one.

"Punishment" should be much worse than just spanking. It needs to involve the revocation of privileges or luxuries (not food, you Barbarians), with the understanding that they are extras the child has access to only because of good behavior.

[Salty]

I used to be one of those people who hated hearing kids scream in a store. Now i just get a big ass grin because it's not me that has to handle it. Also, I'm just more at ease around them now.

I like it when little kids scream in public places if only because adults don't scream enough.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Although I will say that I don't think spanking is vital. It can be useful for some children, but not at all for others.

I found it useful from age 1-5.

You can't reason with a 2 year old about a light socket, for example.

After age 5, it serves no purpose, in my personal experience.  RESULTS MAY VARY.

Accurate statement. It's useful for those ages, but past that age you're playing with fire -- emotionally and disciplinary. After about 5 years, a child is cognitively mature enough to prepare for, endure, and then disregard a spanking. Especially if that's your only means of correction. I say correction because spanking should never be "punishment." It should be applied quickly and at the exact moment the infraction takes place. Not "go to your room and dread the next hour until someone comes upstairs to beat you." It's a corrective action, not a punitive one.

"Punishment" should be much worse than just spanking. It needs to involve the revocation of privileges or luxuries (not food, you Barbarians), with the understanding that they are extras the child has access to only because of good behavior.

After age 5, if the kid hasn't learned to listen, he/she probably won't.   In addition, after age 5, spankings are only humiliation, which is the WORST form of discipline except for possibly no discipline at all.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I like it when little kids scream in public places if only because adults don't scream enough.

THIS.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Although I will say that I don't think spanking is vital. It can be useful for some children, but not at all for others.

Kid 1 is doing remarkably well from a discipline standpoint, kid 2 is having serious problems listening to any authority ever no matter the context. I don't know how much of it is gender, birth order, or temperment, but we didn't spank either.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I have the joyous duty of parenting a child who is, in all honesty, about twice as smart as I am. This keeps me on my toes, which is a necessity at this stage of my life. Without this job, I'd probably be grotesquely satisfied with my life. Still, I know that one day, probably sooner than I think, I will run out of knowledge- and aptitude-based authority over him. I dread that day more than I dread dropping dead. I also can't wait for it, because I'll get to find out whether my mad floundering about and many strings of consecutive fuck-ups will outweigh my successes in parenting.

My other child is unfathomably more intelligent than me, as her intelligence is an emotional one. She somehow knows how to be nice to people in a way that they respond to positively. This year at school it took her 2 weeks to turn the class bully into not only her friend, but also into a reasonably decent person. She makes doing the Right Thing look cool. I have no way to describe this, and it is definitely nothing I can take any credit for, so I know it must come from somewhere inside her own little being.

So, in relation to this thread, all I can really say is that anyone who dislikes children must be operating from a set of internal instructions that cannot be translated into my language.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I have the joyous duty of parenting a child who is, in all honesty, about twice as smart as I am.

All children are smarter than their parents.  This is why nature gave us "treachery".

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I have the joyous duty of parenting a child who is, in all honesty, about twice as smart as I am.

All children are smarter than their parents.  This is why nature gave us "treachery".

Nature gave us treachery.

Karma gives us Alzheimer's.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like it when little kids scream in public places if only because adults don't scream enough.

THIS.

Seconded.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Having raised two sprogs of my own, my personal peeves are:

1.  People who give parents shit about their kid crying on an airplane (they can't take the kid outside, and they can't do shit about the pressure changes).

2.  People who let their kids run wild in stores, etc, and/or allow the kid to make a scene when the kid doesn't get the impulse item of their choice at the register.

3.  People who try to outlaw any fun thing a kid might want to do (rollerblade, skateboard, etc), simply on account of DAMN KIDS.

4.  People who get offended when a woman breast feeds.  It's biology, you stupid bastards, deal with it.  And NO, LMNO, YOU DO NOT GET TO ASK FOR A SAMPLE.

On point 2, I had to do that once...just once. Somehow my daughter had gotten it in her head that pitching a fit in the middle of the store would provoke a response (positive or negative, she didn't give a shit...she is her father's daughter). She warned me she was going to do it, "Well what if I start screaming?"

"Go right the fuck ahead," I said...

AND SHE FUCKING DID.

So I'm standing there in the middle of a crowded ass store staring dispassionately at this wailing 3-year-old who was pissed off cause I denied her some trinket she desparately needed to go on living, and all I really had short of dragging her ass out of there (which would have been inconsistent with my cockamamie ideas about parenting), was to say, "wow, you certainly are making quite a scene of yourself right now."

The upside was that shit like that, you only ever have to do once. The downside, dear lord, did I ever want to shrink away and hide.