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

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

my son had one of his worst meltdowns in this indian restaurant one time and the owner was such a dick about it, everybody in the restaurant was staring at us and it was just miserable. my wife was in tears, we ended up just packing everything up before we even ordered. i brought my wife and kid back to the car and went back in to order takeout. one customer was really nice about it, he came up to me and said he was sorry for staring at us, i mentioned my son has autism and he offered to pay for the food, i declined though but it made the whole experience a little better.

Yeah, you do get a comprehensive lesson in intolerance with ASC kid, but you do sometimes find some extraordinarily good people as well, just quite rarely sadly.

Tbh taxi drivers are amongst some of the most enlightened people I meet in their attitudes towards disabled children. Lots of them have done some level of training to work on the special school contracts. In my experience bus drivers tend to be the worst though. and some of them can't hide their contempt when gets his disabled pass out. I'm almost daring one of them motherfuckers to step over line one day, because they will regret it, oh yes!

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 have actually known kids wear "I'm autistic, what's your problem?" shirts, can see how parents would find them handy

might even've been "what's your excuse?" come to think of it

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

the kind of kid who's in for a shock when he gets larger and finds out that all the "grown-ups" around him are the other kids

Or similarly overgrown babies

we have a friend whose son has ADHD and perhaps other issues not yet diagnosed and sometimes he acts out. at our school, her son was acting out one morning and she had to overhear another couple parents talking loudly, saying things like "What is WRONG with that kid?" and the like. i think she often feels pretty helpless in the face of it, just both dealing w/her son as a single mom and dealing w/judgmental strangers.

tonight i was looking through some of our family photos over the past year. my sons are very young, ages 4 and almost 2, so they have changed physically and developmentally a substantial amount in one year. it occurred to me that one of the reasons i felt so emotionally invested in responding in this thread is that, ultimately, to me, children are innately fascinating. by observing and spending time with them, i gain understandings about the ways in which we learn, develop, and form fundamental assumptions about basically anything - relationships, ourselves, the physical world, cause and effect, trust, pain, love, anger, whatever, anything. this is kind of related to what local garda was saying about kids displaying adults' best or worst traits but it is more about just being curious about and interested in how we develop those traits, form those values, build those assumptions. when i talk to my son about something - whether about why it gets cold in the winter, what death and dying are, what it means when we cook with salt instead of sugar, or why his brother gets angry and cries when he hits him, we are discussing fundamental concepts and he is forming those assumptions and developing knowledge for the first time in his life. at a basic human level i cannot understand how someone could be so uncurious about or disinterested in talking with or spending time with children when that awareness and appreciation comes so easily from doing so. i know that sounds harsh - i realize i was/am taking some perhaps very strident moral positions in response to a hyperbolic message board post. i don't want this to be a moral argument. i'm also a little baked right now. but, like, is the birth, growth and aging process of humans, their emotional, cognitive, physical, and personal development, not fundamentally interesting to you in some kind of way?

i understand not feeling comfortable spending a lot of time with them and maybe being irritated by them in certain social situations, i definitely am. when my kids finally fall asleep at the end of the day it is honestly something i feel relieved about daily, without exception. it is a lot of work to be around them. i relish moments when i can talk to another adult or enjoy a meal at a restaurant without interruption. but, like, spending time with kids helps me reflect on and be aware of fundamental aspects of being human, that are as meaningful and important as, say, talking with and offering support to a friend whose mother is dying from breast cancer, to cite the example mentioned earlier in which a toddler interrupts the conversation.

they are also really cute in the same way that puppies are ffs

That's a great post, marcos.

^^

its a nice post but its a bit omg the wonder of being a parent which yknow fair enough.

it doesnt really address THE ISSUES

I'm 47 and my wife and I never had kids, and certainly I find *infants* exasperating to be around at times, but many of my friends have raised kids who are now graduating from high school, or are in high school now, and it's been really interesting to see them discover the world as they've grown up. And we have other friends who have all recently had their first children so the whole thing starts again.

One of the most amazing child-related things I saw recently: I play guitar in a cover band, and our singer Josh has a little girl about 2 years old. Josh's wife brought her to one of our recent shows. They sat at a table right up front, and Jordan was amazingly well behaved. But not just that, she sat there and watched her dad sing like he was God Himself. She was in absolute awe of her father, like maybe he had *invented* music. It was fascinating to play while watching her watch him.

by observing and spending time with them, i gain understandings about the ways in which we learn, develop, and form fundamental assumptions about basically anything - relationships, ourselves, the physical world, cause and effect, trust, pain, love, anger, whatever, anything.

i gain understanding about these things from observing and spending time with (and talking to) adults, which...p much goes for the rest of your post too? fully-grown humans are really fascinating to learn about. what i'm saying is i don't get why there's any more ~wonderment in engaging with children than with people who have been and are still being shaped by the world, and who can actually articulate that

I feel the opposite of lex, dogs seem like such a pain compared to children, and they're guaranteed to die within like what 15 years?

and such small portions etc

at this point i'm not 100% certain lex knows where adults come from

Lex, I think you are drastically overestimating the malleability of adults.

which is a source of some wonderment itt, you have to admit

at this point i'm not 100% certain lex knows where adults come from

i don't see what relevance it has? i am interested in food, i am interested to know from a distance where it comes from, i have no interest in actually physically being on a farm.

Lex, I think you are drastically overestimating the malleability of adults.

malleability isn't what necessarily interests me about adults tho. i'm not especially invested in shaping them.

Good recent posts, I feel better now than I did before, sometimes anxiety can be overwhelming! I have limited reserves!

i am all for lex hating kids. sheesh, let the guy hate kids.

this thread got long! don't know if i can read it all.

i think we can all agree that people who REALLY love dogs want to have sex with dogs though, right?

Woofbert Woofbert

Somebody up the road from me actually got convicted for getting Hot under the Collie :p

Man's best friend with benefits

bad parenting -vs- people who want to control and dominate and yell at their captive dogs every day

i mean people legally get to walk around in public with a living creature on a leash and they are constantly yelling at and choking these innocent creatures. closet nazis, if you ask me. or maybe not even so closeted.

but those fuzzy little guys are cute. don't get me wrong. BAD DOG!

i gain understanding about these things from observing and spending time with (and talking to) adults, which...p much goes for the rest of your post too? fully-grown humans are really fascinating to learn about. what i'm saying is i don't get why there's any more ~wonderment in engaging with children than with people who have been and are still being shaped by the world, and who can actually articulate that

― lex pretend, Thursday, December 15, 2016 8:42 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with that! the wonderment specific to children though is that formation is in its nascent stage and it is way more dramatic because those basic assumptions that adults often take for granted are still being questioned and developed. adult humans obviously can do that too. but to brush off that development happening in kids bc you can just say "oh that's true for adults too" i think is missing something very important about childhood.

also kids CAN articulate that!!! my 4-year-old (and just about any other verbal kid that i know, really) ) asks remarkably sophisticated questions about the world and shares insights that most adults might take for granted. talking to him about stuff is obviously different than talking to an adult but imo is not any less interesting. children are incredibly articulate about things if you meet them where they're at.

Parents vs. animal owners would be a funny poll.

I suspect lex got caught in a negative feedback loop in his interactions with and thoughts about kids and has not been yet forced into a position of intimacy with a child sufficient to break that negative cycle. He expects the worst and finds it.

Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe vs. Old Macdonald

also kids CAN articulate that!!! my 4-year-old (and just about any other verbal kid that i know, really) ) asks remarkably sophisticated questions about the world and shares insights that most adults might take for granted. talking to him about stuff is obviously different than talking to an adult but imo is not any less interesting. children are incredibly articulate about things if you meet them where they're at.

― marcos, Thursday, 15 December 2016 18:36 (forty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again this is nice but imma say right now that no yr four year old does not converse at the level of a sophisticated adult

that is not what he said

and i mean caveat im sure you have a bright kid and good conversations with same etc

xp its not what he was asked either tho!

nb im nkt v invested here but its a strange thread for parents to double down on the wonderment of parenthood iycwim