Sunday, March 23, 2008

A point of clarification

A point of clarification

It is only now, 2 weeks later, that I'm actually starting to feel like myself. It appears that muchly over the last 2 weeks, I've felt like Ernest Borgnine. And, aside from flying in airplanes and eating at Gondolier in the 1980's, there's very little that feels good about being Ernest Borgnine.

Anyway, I made a bitch about other people's children, and I got a response that I call "the generic response." The commentor, when childless Tommy made a comment about how apparently easy it would be to raise kid, responsed with "please have children." I would now like to retort.

No, I don't know what it's like to raise a kid. I'm sure there are no words. That difficultly is kinda why I've blanched at the idea of having kids myself. I can barely take care of myself, much less somebody who's half as potty-trained as I am.

And, it is not that I don't like children. It is that I do not like badly behaved children who are not taken in hand.

If there is one thing I've learned in my time in customer service is that obnoxious parents breed obnoxious children. If you raise children with bad habits...bad habits such as yelling "Mommy Please" at the top of their lungs until they get their way...and do nothing to correct them, then you're not doing your job as a parent. It appears my problem is the parent.

I'm not trying to say that you need to take the kid out and whoop them, though I received my share of them for acting out growing up. I can probably drive through Athens and point out a dozen and a half storefronts where I got a buttwhuppin' or two. (I got a humdinger in the old Kroger, for stealing my sister's cookie.)

I'm not trying to tell you they need a "Time Out," though I got jerked to the car my share of times, too.

I'm trying to tell you that when your children become a disturbance to the community around them, then they need to be taken in hand. However that works. And, if you're able to tune out both the obnoxious yells of your child, and the problems its causing the people around you, not because of the irritation but because you're talking twice as long as you would in line were you not encumbered with a 60 pound sack of yell, then maybe you're the problem and not the kid.

And for the record, finally doing what that kid wants to do? Not the right thing to do. It teaches the troll that if you scream and yell enough, you get your way. Which is precisely the problem in this country and these past two generations, as I see it.

Anyway. No kids for me.

That I know of.

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