Undisciplined Children at Retail Stores (teens, milk, baby, support)
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How is a stranger supposed to know the difference between a brat and a child with autism? Parents dealing with autistic kids have been very vocal in the media about dealing with situations such as public tantrums. They always ask for tolerance and understanding, and I think it has made many of us less likely to judge, because we could be wrong.
I'm not going to open a can of worms, or rather, I'm opening it and walking off. I'm just saying, FEW CHILDREN ARE AUTISTIC. Many children are bratty, with special snowflake parents. I've seen MANY people "shop" for an "autistic spectrum diagnosis" because, in my opinion, they are looking for some way to pass off their crap parenting and bad genes as protected under the "autism" holier-than-thou blanket, and to bend rules at schools.
My son certainly couldn't understand the world or stop his meltdowns. He didn't have the capacity. I HAD THE CAPACITY to not subject OTHERS to MY problems! In fact, I think it's bull*** and cruel to see parents let their kids get ape**** in public settings. If your kid is truly autistic, then you know better than to take them places where they will be unable to cope, and you can avoid traumatizing your kid 99% of the time. Geez.
Kids are part of the world, they are everywhere. If you don't want to be "bothered" by them, stay home. No child is perfect all the time. No parent is perfect all the time. Are YOU perfect all the time??? I have never seen someone get kicked out of any place, because their kid is acting up. I have seen employees engage the child and try to distract them from their fit. Kids act differently towards other people. Sometimes if the kid is in the thick of it there is nothing the parent can do, because the kid is mad at or rebelling against the parent, but sometimes a strange person talking to them catches them off guard and snaps them out of it. Why don't you try that next time instead of rolling your eyes at another "bad parent" with an "out of control kid?"
Why do I have to stay home? Why does your screaming child get to go to a store yet the quiet person who is actually buying items have to stay home?
And children aren't everywhere. I had dinner at a lovely rather expensive hotel last week and not a child was in the restaurant. It was wonderful!
Who ever said I was perfect or anyone else was perfect?
Actually, in my store if your kid starts screaming or damaging merchandise, I ask people to leave. The children who come in who are well behaved are rewarded with a goody from a basket I keep under the counter. There's candy and stickers in it.
I own an art store and people aren't coming in for screaming children. We also have classes going on most days and people need to be able to hear the instructor not a screaming child.
And I'm not the only one who asks people to leave. There was a post above where someone said something and the parents took the child and left.
I'm not going to open a can of worms, or rather, I'm opening it and walking off. I'm just saying, FEW CHILDREN ARE AUTISTIC. Many children are bratty, with special snowflake parents. I've seen MANY people "shop" for an "autistic spectrum diagnosis" because, in my opinion, they are looking for some way to pass off their crap parenting and bad genes as protected under the "autism" holier-than-thou blanket, and to bend rules at schools.
One of my aunts went doctor hunting. One of her children (she has 7 whom she never could control) was notorious for horrible temper tantrums. It got so bad that the rest of the family stopped inviting them to family functions. He came to my house for a day one time and didn't have a single temper tantrum. He was fine.
No one in the family believed it until they say photos from that day of him playing. They all wanted to know what my secret was. I set up boundaries and limitations for him the minute he left his parents house. He knew the first time he misbehaved, he would get a warning. The second time he could be going home.
Well, when he went back home he immediately went back to acting like a wild animal. My aunt claims she just couldn't control him. She started bringing him to various doctors.....one finally said he has a defiance disorder. How did this magically appear? He doesn't like to be told no. Well who does? How many of us act like wild animals when we're told no?
So now he's a special needs kid who has this magically no disorder. Now everyone is supposed to kiss the ground he walks on. I don't play that game with him. He acts completely differently towards me. He knows i mean business and his mother is airy fairy land.
He's going to have a wonderful life when he becomes an adult and needs a job! He's a teenager now and still throws temper tantrums like he's 3 years old. That should go over really well when a boss tells him to do something.
Why do I have to stay home? Why does your screaming child get to go to a store yet the quiet person who is actually buying items have to stay home?
And children aren't everywhere. I had dinner at a lovely rather expensive hotel last week and not a child was in the restaurant. It was wonderful!
Who ever said I was perfect or anyone else was perfect?
Actually, in my store if your kid starts screaming or damaging merchandise, I ask people to leave. The children who come in who are well behaved are rewarded with a goody from a basket I keep under the counter. There's candy and stickers in it.
I own an art store and people aren't coming in for screaming children. We also have classes going on most days and people need to be able to hear the instructor not a screaming child.
And I'm not the only one who asks people to leave. There was a post above where someone said something and the parents took the child and left.
In that case why don't you put up a sign which says "Only adults and well behaved children welcome".
Let's see what that does to your business.
I'm not going to open a can of worms, or rather, I'm opening it and walking off. I'm just saying, FEW CHILDREN ARE AUTISTIC. Many children are bratty, with special snowflake parents. I've seen MANY people "shop" for an "autistic spectrum diagnosis" because, in my opinion, they are looking for some way to pass off their crap parenting and bad genes as protected under the "autism" holier-than-thou blanket, and to bend rules at schools.
My son certainly couldn't understand the world or stop his meltdowns. He didn't have the capacity. I HAD THE CAPACITY to not subject OTHERS to MY problems! In fact, I think it's bull*** and cruel to see parents let their kids get ape**** in public settings. If your kid is truly autistic, then you know better than to take them places where they will be unable to cope, and you can avoid traumatizing your kid 99% of the time. Geez.
1 in 68 children in the US has autism according to the CDC. It's 1 and 42 for boys.
No parent I know goes shopping for an ASD diagnosis. They are scared of the DX. Very few people doctor shop to get the dx and if you had been around the autism boards, you would know that. Now, it is true that sometimes doctors misdiagnose kids and sometimes parents with sensory processing will try to upgrade that dx because ASD gets you services while Sensory processing does not. It is truly not like the parent is not already having problems when they go for an evaluation.
Btw, most doctors are very hesitant to dx a child very young, but there is an instrument called the ADOS which is used and if a child fails the ADOS, then he most certainly does have ASD.
Kids with autism can be unpredictable, btw. How do you expect parents to teach them how to cope without taking them out to places where they experience the world. Children with autism are not being *bratty* when they melt down. Something sets them off, but parents cannot always predict what it will be or when and where it will happen.
We did always take my autistic grandson outside and back to the car when he did melt down, but then you have the crazies who think that you are abusing him because of his kicking and screaming (he does not do it anymore at 11). My son was once detained by a woman who did not believe he was the dad and she was calling the police. My son had to call his wife to come out of the store to vouch for him even though he had a drivers license that showed his last name was the same as his son's last name. Still it is hard to get a license out when the woman would not let him get his son into the car seat.
This annoys me too (kids making a fuss in the store), and yes, I have children, and I wouldn't tolerate this out of them for a nanosecond. Heck I work at a store, and what I tell parents who tell their children to knock it off--"we have a bathroom back there, and there are no cameras." They tell me "I don't care, I'll spank them right in front of everybody right here, I don't care."
Good for them. That is what we need.
"Autism"--please. As the one person said, too many use this an excuse, and it isn't one. You're bigger than that child, aren't you? Well use your size and, dare I say it, FORCE them to stop. They keep grabbing at something--tell them to stop, if they do it again, do not move it where they can't get it, leave it there, but pop the ever-living snot of them, and then say "touch that again and see what happens." I did it to my daughter when she was little, and it worked. Or restrain them to where they can't run off, don't say "stay there"--hold them to where they're MADE to. You're the parent, act like it.
Don't tell me you can't stop them from screaming. Put your hand over their mouth, that'll stop it. They can still breathe through their nose, can't they? Okay then. Stop attacking my ear drums with that noise pollution--and yes, your child is precious, but it's NOISE POLLUTION. It was noise pollution when my children did it. Cover their freaking mouth already.
Heck our children were age 2 and 4 or so when we used to go to a church that had no nursery. Now, nurseries are great things, I highly recommend them, however, they had none. Before entering, I "set the table"--telling them they had to be quiet and still the entire time. My son started acting up. Within SECONDS I pointed to him once and muttered "stop it, now." He did, but maybe a minute later started acting up again. IMMEDIATELY I took him to the bathroom, and yes I covered his mouth as we went down the hall, and upon going to the bathroom I tore his butt up good. You think I had to tell him again? Not only did I not have to tell him again that day, on any subsequent days, all I had to do was tap him on his arm and make an ugly face, and he'd straighten up IMMEDIATELY and never make another sound the rest of the time. So DO NOT tell me if can't be done.
"Oh that's abuse"--of course, to some people, ANY form of discipline that isn't a timeout or a scolding that has no teeth to it is "abuse." There's your problem right there, people think anything is "abuse" anymore. Please. Give them a very Jr version of the Adrian Peterson brand of parenting and I guarantee you that they'll be quiet. "Oh but it upsets them, it hurts their self esteem, it embarrasses them in public"--TOUGH. I say the child ASKED FOR IT it for not doing as they're told. To me, a child's very reason for existing is to do as they're told, whether they like it or not, no matter what they think. You're a child, what you think isn't the litmus test for what's done in this situation. I'm in charge, and that's that. Case closed.
Why do I have to stay home? Why does your screaming child get to go to a store yet the quiet person who is actually buying items have to stay home?
And children aren't everywhere. I had dinner at a lovely rather expensive hotel last week and not a child was in the restaurant. It was wonderful!
Who ever said I was perfect or anyone else was perfect?
Actually, in my store if your kid starts screaming or damaging merchandise, I ask people to leave. The children who come in who are well behaved are rewarded with a goody from a basket I keep under the counter. There's candy and stickers in it.
I own an art store and people aren't coming in for screaming children. We also have classes going on most days and people need to be able to hear the instructor not a screaming child.
And I'm not the only one who asks people to leave. There was a post above where someone said something and the parents took the child and left.
Why should children have to be caged in at home because they MIGHT throw a fit somewhere?? How are they going to LEARN how to behave in public if they don't get to experience public?
Parents do their best to prevent these things, but they can't always predict when and if something is going to set their kid off. My kids are good 99% of the time. If they ask for something and I say no MOST of the time they don't give much of a reaction, but every now and then they cry or throw a fit. I can't help it. It happens. If I give them what they want, it'll stop, but what does that teach them? I am lucky that they have never completely lost their **** and carried on for 20+ minutes, but other kids are just more dramatic and it takes them longer to concede. Maybe it's the parents fault, maybe that is just how the kid is. How do YOU know?? Maybe try being less judgemental about a 5 minute snippet of a parent/child interaction and start being more compassionate and empathetic towards someone having a hard day.
That is really what is wrong with the world today. Children have not changed. Children are born into this world as they are, unknowing. Kids have thrown tantrums since the dawn of time. What has changed is how adults receive this. Everyone is so self involved these days and expects everything to go their way and have their world be perfect with ZERO disturbances, that even witnessing a 10 minute tantrum from a strange kid once in a blue moon ruins their whole day and is cause for complaint on an internet forum .
But why do other shoppers have to listen to your child carry on while trying to shop? It hurts businesses. I know because I've left stores when people weren't controlling their kids. It cost those stores money since I left without my purchases Sorry, but when I'm out in public I don't want to listen to your precious snowflake screaming like a wild banshee. It's bad enough at WalMart, but I don't expect it in Hallmark or Lane Bryant.
I have seen a few mom & pop shops kick the parents and kids out. I said thank you and continued to shop. They couldn't stand the noise either! Probably didn't want merchandise broken by little Johnny either.
Actually, I'm not sorry. I have a right to shop as do the other customers and the employees have a right to work without listing to children scream. Be a parent!
I had a deal with my kids when we went to the supermarket:
If you walk through the whole store with me without whining, "Can I have this? Can I have that?", when we are finished, I will let you choose one item. Whatever you want. So, they spent the shopping trip scoping out everything. You could practically hear them thinking, "Is Nutella better than peanut butter ice cream?"
My 14 year old STILL does this. We got chocolate marshmallows last week.
I think especially for small children if they know what to expect and they know there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they are capable of a lot more than you think.
YES! I think this is such a big part of it. My mother was one who used to drag me along for a FULL day of shopping. I'm sure I embarrassed her mightily as a little kid and she was one to dole out whoopins. It's too much to handle. Manage expectations and keep a handle on when they need to go home.
I think most people have some compassion if it looks like the parent is trying to do something but it's not working. It's the parents who seem to just be staring off into the distance and ignoring the situation that usually tick people off. Whatever the technique, if it isn't working after 20 minutes, time to reassess for everyone's sake.
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Kids are part of the world, they are everywhere. If you don't want to be "bothered" by them, stay home. No child is perfect all the time. No parent is perfect all the time. Are YOU perfect all the time??? I have never seen someone get kicked out of any place, because their kid is acting up. I have seen employees engage the child and try to distract them from their fit. Kids act differently towards other people. Sometimes if the kid is in the thick of it there is nothing the parent can do, because the kid is mad at or rebelling against the parent, but sometimes a strange person talking to them catches them off guard and snaps them out of it. Why don't you try that next time instead of rolling your eyes at another "bad parent" with an "out of control kid?"
