Taking sides: Children vs. (non-human) animals

Xps he did say that was the nadir of what io was talking about! just didn't think it fair to say either is "blaming the child"

the word "hated" was used

By lex?

you have to wonder about the motivation behind interpreting "i dislike being around children and am annoyed by them and their parents" as "i hate all children and they make me an irate monster"

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i hated children when i was a child, it's not a new development

― lex pretend, Monday, December 12, 2016 12:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As an adult, hanging out near the elementary school playground every day is finally YOUR choice.

you know who loved children?

Humbert Humbert

oh shit now I don't know what to think

xp Jimmy Savile

He loved corpses too, so he doesn't really count.

you know who loved children?

― Our Sweet Fredrest (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, December 13, 2016 2:35 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he was also a vegetarian iirc

Corpses are much more polite than children tbf.

if we can ban both strollers (Britishes "prams") and dogs then I'll consider this thread a winner

lex's selective memory perhaps some indication that he is, just maybe, dimly and partially aware of being wrong here

sorry i swore at you - i just don't get what your view is based on these interjections.

I wasn't ignoring this I just got pissed off at the xpost bug

don't worry about it - I think I gave my view above, such as it is: I'm not much of a dog person but took the original revive in the spirit intended; then everybody literally - literally - I mean this literally - went insane

your posts have been good lg fwiw but otherwise tombot otm basically

lex's selective memory perhaps some indication that he is, just maybe, dimly and partially aware of being wrong here

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, December 13, 2016 7:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this overreaction to mild hyperbole is completely fucking ludicrous and, I'd posit, far more bizarre behaviour than merely ~hating children

I hate hyperbole with the fury of a hundred suns.

Two things based on what I have read:

1/ Misanthrophy does indeed come in a couple of flavours. Patricia Highsmith was def one for people hating and animal loving. Lex is hating on children and loving of dogs so both his love and hate are too particular.
2/ Not sure about this notion that children are the only disruptive ones. Dogs can be quite disruptive in pubs, crawling under your leg and begging for your attention. Often in the same class as small children. They are similar and must be trained well to behave. I try to avoid both.

3/ Plants and stones are the best.

lol Aimless

Mild hyperbole can be irritating because of the sweeping statements involved e.g.

oh and another thing is that 99% of the time having children turns formerly interesting and fun adults into complete bores (the 1% mostly comprises naturally gifted raconteurs who can make any anecdote entertaining). this thread seems evidence of that

and the 'hey I don't know why everyone gets so wound up - it's only a bit of mild hyperbole' escape clause.

he really meant only 96%

can you imagine anyone being called a bad person for not enjoying the company of dogs or cats?

If you don't enjoy the company of dogs or cats, you are a bad person.

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex, but it has driven me mad in the past. It's too much of a pose and it's one that's definitely worth resisting strongly, IMO.

On the other hand, resisting middle class indulgent parents who'll let their children do anything they want is something we should all get behind. I once saw a 5-7 year old boy climb into the freezer cabinet at waitrose (the kinda trough ones) and walk over the produce, climbing over the glass patricians that separate the trough while his mother, pushing the trolley alongside him, occasionally meekly called out "Charlie [or whatever - one of those old fashioned classy names] the man will be very cross if he sees you in there.... We could get thrown out... You might be told off soon. " & similar while I looked on aghast.

"Glass patricians" o_O

smash them

shouldnt stow thrones

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex

hmm if only there was enough evidence for us to determine this conclusively

I've heard that from all kinds of people. Including my wife. And me.

no one likes kids, the parents itt are hardcore lying to themselves because that's what they have to do. 'you tell a lie so much, you start to believe it's real...' - vito from the sopranos

gay vito?

I like kids, I just don't think anyone should be having them based on my entirely pessimistic view of what the world will be like in 50 or 20 years.

Or two years.

Everything he did was pose—a pose so deeply calculated that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Ralph had never met a man who lived so much in the land of calculation. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been a pose of years. His solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world’s curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It made him feel great to play the world a trick.

Fair to say: I probably like my (late) dog more than I like most other people's children, and one reason I loved him was because he was very tolerant of the children who wanted to interact with him. Probably also fair to say that I had a lot of issues with other kids when I was a kid, because what kind of asshole decides it's OK to bully another kid who is in the middle of chemotherapy?

However, entitled parents are far, far worse than their progeny, and parents being cruel to their kids in public gives me rage. See also: friends with boy children who are all 'go for it kiddo, be the best you can be' but with girl children, 'sharing is important, wait your turn'.

I've only ever heard "I don't like children" from gay men and quite supercilious ones. I'm not saying that that's you, Lex, but it has driven me mad in the past. It's too much of a pose and it's one that's definitely worth resisting strongly, IMO.

i've most often heard it from straight women, but almost always online, in the context of a vent they wouldn't be able to say out loud. hardly ever from straight men. i don't know why you'd say it's a pose or pretend to have that sort of insight into how people really feel

don't want to imagine how many different kinds of cancer my mom would have to have for me to be shocked someone spoke to their kid while i was talking about them

I may or may not be a straight woman who has ventured an opinion on OPCs while in proximity to Lex.

i think most straight men i know show a vague disliking for kids - maybe even some who have kids. i sort of agree a lot of people don't enjoy the behaviour of kids, who would enjoy it at times, i said as much about myself throughout, i just think we have a duty of tolerance towards them because they are young.

was thinking about this this morning and i think it also just depends on the person - my brother gets on prob a little better with my nephews than me because he is willing to mess-fight with them for the endless amounts of time they want to do this. i'll read them a story or watch football with them or play in the garden or interact in whatever other way, and that's grand, i enjoy hanging out with them like this and we get along well. i think over time they kind of know this as well so they're less likely to just jump on me or whatever. i wouldn't have wanted to arm-wrestle someone for an hour when i was a kid either, i liked sport but not rolling around on the ground.

I tend to find being around children exhausting and stressful, or at best boring, generally agree that it's unfair to blame the children for this though, and that parents are mostly exhausted and trying to muddle through as best they can and it's unfair to be too judgy about strangers parenting techniques.
I was waiting in line at the supermarket checkout the other day and there was a woman in front of me with two boys who were running up and down shouting and smacking each other while she determinedly looked ahead and ignored them, but if she'd turned around and said "look, I have to look after these kids 24/7, and I'm exhausted, and at the moment I don't have the energy to make them quiet down, so you're just going to have to suck it up for 5 minutes" then I couldn't really say that she was being unreasonable.

i wouldn't have wanted to arm-wrestle someone for an hour when i was a kid either, i liked sport but not rolling around on the ground.

I didn't like this kind of stuff either, it makes me think about Lex saying that even when he was a kid himself he didn't like other kids and wonder if a lot of adults who dislike being around children were the kind of kid who always got on better with adults than with other kids and looked forward to being a grown-up as a time when they would no longer have to deal with other kids, and kind of resent being pulled back in again? I think this is true of me to an extent.

i've never thought about it in exactly those terms but that's scarily accurate

I was waiting in line at the supermarket checkout the other day and there was a woman in front of me with two boys who were running up and down shouting and smacking each other while she determinedly looked ahead and ignored them, but if she'd turned around and said "look, I have to look after these kids 24/7, and I'm exhausted, and at the moment I don't have the energy to make them quiet down, so you're just going to have to suck it up for 5 minutes" then I couldn't really say that she was being unreasonable.

― soref, Wednesday, 14 December 2016 13:58 (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

RONG

execute eldest child imo as a warning

Pour encourager les enfants.

enfant terrible man

I often find myself in situations where my kid is physically attacking me and I have become so efficient and calm at dealing with it people's facial reactions to the situation can be quite comical at times. The other week I was casually maintaining a conversation about the local traffic system with a taxi driver while holding Alex off, in peak meltdown as he is trying to strangle me and clawing at my face, none of that stopping the conversation dead for the sake of the kid nonsense from me!

I probably wouldn't want to hear what some people would say about my kid's general behaviour, but fuck 'em all is the only realistic option.

I have a special needsy guy myself; his behavior in public is usually pretty benign, but it can be... unorthodox. I don't have a lot of extra mental energy to spend on what other people are concluding about my parenting skills based on his behavior.

Sometimes there's not much to be done, short of having him wear a vest that says I'M NOT A BRAT, I'M DISABLED

Yeah that period of trying to explain his condition to people didn't last very long with me either, it was often a pissing in the wind exercise of futility.

Sometimes there's not much to be done, short of having him wear a vest that says I'M NOT A BRAT, I'M DISABLED

haha