It's called "PAYING ATTENTION to your children"
Is this a hard concept? Am I the only parent that thinks it's part of your responsibility when taking your kids out in public? Does anyone else care if their children are annoying the piss out of people in their vicinity?
Picture this. We are at hockey game on four end seats in front row of our level. A Mom and Dad are sitting in the middle of the row behind us. They have a 2 year old on their laps which they devote all their attention to (besides the game). They ALSO have a cackle of boys with them. Not sure if they were all their biological offspring or friends and assorted other hellions. The 7 year old behind me was the last one in the line of brats (I don't use this term loosely). He continually kicked the seat in front of him, which resulted in my seat being shaken and a vibration of the metal (and therefore me) taking place approximately every 1.7 seconds. My headache ensued quite quickly. I made a few annoyed glances in his (AND THE PARENTS) directions to no avail. The parents were clueless. Finally I could hold out no longer and turned around and NICELY asked him to please stop kicking the seat. He never even said sorry. He stopped for a while. Then gratefully they left for a dippin' dots run. Unfortunately the dippin' dots line did not last the rest of the game. I would have loved that. Spawn returned and instead of kicking he began making this awful grating humming noise, LOUDLY. It was on and off. In between the musical tribute to tone deaf america he was arguing with the other brats and saying mean things to/about refs and players. By the 3rd period he was back to kicking on and off. My most evil face did the trick that time. Just think....it was tied 2-2 with 2 minutes left. If we would have gone into overtime I may have been forced to tie the kids feet together with his jacket and stuff his socks in his mouth!
I just don't understand how you can ignore your kids for 2.5 hours. Is it that odd to expect the parents to spread out and keep better tabs on their row of children? grrrrrr....off for advil.
Comments
We had the same type of issue on the plane from Rome to Paris. Two small children, two parents. The Dad did practically nothing to help out and the Mom just basically ignored them. So, the plane was subjected to Luka's LOUD babbling (could have been understandable language if it weren't for the fact that I don't speak/understand Italian), his insistent cries that something obviously belonged to him and not his sister, and the poor person in front of him was under constant attack from his feet. In the beginning of the trip it was 'someone' else I was feeling sorry for....then the kid must have spilled a drink or something because suddenly they were behind me and I was the victim of his feet, hands, voice...etc. I know the Mom didn't ever say anything to him about his actions. A person can just tell by tone of voice----he did get fussed at for doing 'something' to his sister----but not for attacking my seat, repeatedly or for being loud or anything else.
(Luckily the plane was not at capacity and I could move from the center seat to the window seat as necessary depending on which seat Luka had deemed his current enemy.)