Children Behaving Badly

*Note: I am writing this post from our vacation in an internet cafe. We're having a great time! Please excuse any of the spelling errors and lousy punctuation you many come accross - thanks!

We live in a day and age when parents now take their kids everywhere - even to places that were once considered adult only public venues (the one that comes to mind most readily are high-end dinning establishments). Kids, of all ages, are now found at concerts, resturaunts, movie theaters (at times, inappropriately), etc. And apparently this is not appreciated by all. There is an article in the September '06 issue of Parents magazine (www.parents.com), titled "Baby Backlash", which describes apparently two different cultural ideals, clashing. Some thinking that children belong in a certain time, place and at a very low voulme only, thank you very much - and the other choosing to have their children participate with them fully in whatever thing or event they are attending. The article specifically refers to certain resturaunts putting up signs asking parents to have their children behave appropriately. (As a fellow diner, I actually appreciate this) As a mom, and just as a person, I value children and don't understand the antiquated thought that children should be seen and not heard. Beyond that, I see children as deserving as much respect and consideration as adults - they are fully human. (Unlike the a quote I heard recently in regards to an 8-yr-old being "almost a real person" - not intended as a put down, but just as a way of noticing how big the child was getting). So my question after I read the article is: Is it really a backlash against children as a whole, or just poorly behaved ones? (And I say this as a mom who has definitely had her share of a poorly behaved child in public)

Ok, bearing all this in mind, I will share of a recent experience while being on vacation. My spouse and I had the opportunity to hire a babysitter - while on vacation - and went out to breakfast. The area we are vacationing in is a very small beach town on the Central Coast of California. The resturaunt consists mainly of an outdoor eating patio, which is shared by a public walkway and general hangout area. In fact, we've been there before with our son, and there are big cement slabs that kids just love to run around and jump off of - nobody really minds that part - it's a shared area - and the slabs aren't right next to the dinning tables. So, we are eating our breakfast and a family shows up with two kids - a boy of about 4 (maybe 5) and an almost 2 yr old girl, and the mom and grandma proceed to sit down on the patio, and the kids run off to play on the cement slabs. However, the boy proceeds to get up on one of the slabs, using it as a stage, and begins to sing a song he knows- very loudly. His singing goes on for about 10 minutes (the same song over and over), and in the span of this time, the other diners are making comments to themselves about the volume of the singing and how it's affecting their dinning experience. A waitress even walks by and loudly makes a comment in earshot of the mom about how this isn't the place for a 'show'. So, the child continues to sing and the mom then gets his attention - and I'm thinking "ok, she's going to ask him to stop, or something." Not exactly. She tells him to pick a different song. "Sing a different song?! How about stop singing, or be a little more quiet?" - that's what I was thinking. And in the midst of it all I reflected that this very thing could be the reason there is somewhat of a "Baby - or more specifically, Child - Backlash". One of the things we do try to teach our child is respect for others and thinking about how our actions could affect others. On many occasions - in public - I've had to take the litle guy aside to ask him to speak more quietly, or to change what he was doing so that it wouldn't negatively affect someone else. He's not the center of the universe, and there are activities and voice volumes that work in one's backyard, but not in other places.

Now, having shared all that . . . . . I will share a time when my son behaved very inappropriately in a resturaunt. We were eating at a family friendly establishment -the kind where you order at the counter, get a number, and the tray of food is delivered to your table. My son was about 2 & 1/2 at the time. We were sitting in a booth with a very high partition between ours and the other booth. A man, woman and two kids sat down at the booth opposite ours (over the partition). I don't know if it helps that I include this part, but I will - the man (dad?) was very rude and snobby to begin with. So they get their food, and we get ours and the meals are progressing along very normally (or as normally as meals do when you are dinning with small children), and my son grabs his napkin, crushes it into a ball - and proceeds to launch it over the partition, where it lands- on the dad's plate! At that very moment I had two compltely different reactions - I was simultaneously laughing and then trying VERY hard to stop laughing so I could let my son know that wasn't OK, and then go and apologize to the man. Maybe a better mom wouldn't have laughed, but I did. And I wholehartedly aplogized to the man, but being the jerkish snob that he was, he didn't even say a word to me. I just received an evil glare - all while his angelic children ate their meals without incident. (I still find myself laughing about this one).

So, where do I come to with all this? Children are definitely a 'work-in-progress', they have not assimilated and mastered all the social graces that most adults have. (And I say 'most adults' - many adults find it perfectly ok to engage in behavior in public that shows complete disgregard for others.) I don't think the answer to our 'delimma' (is there one?) is to have the kids stay home all the time. There has to be some degee of grace and understanding of where the kids are at - they're kids, so they are going to act like kids. But, at the same time, the parents do bear some responsibility to step in and take action in situations where the child's behavior is infringing on someone else's enjoyement of a meal or other event. (If one's child insists on screaming in a resturaunt, the parent may need to pick up that child and take them outside - been there, done that.) Please comment and let me know your thoughts on all this. Am I completely out to lunch on all this?? (With my child dinning with me, of course.)