For someone who has very little interest in children, indeed often a blatant dislike of them, I frequently find myself in situations where I strongly disagree with various examples of parenting and feel the need to do something about it.
This happens most often at work, where I witness many parents making Bad Food Choices for their children. I couldn’t calculate the amount of times I’ve served a parent who buys their child a large chocolate milkshake and some kind of cake at 9 in the morning. CAKE AND CHOCOLATE ARE NOT BREAKFAST FOODS, PARENTS (at least not until your child is a twenty year old arts student). When this happens I can’t stop a disapproving expression from appearing on my face, and in my mind a big judgemental, sparkly sign pops up: this person is a bad parent.
Chocolate and cake for breakfast, however, were mere baubles in comparison to the parenting decision I witnessed on Sunday. Two small children, aged about 8 and 6, were demanding from their parents coffee. Mark that, coffee. Now if my small child was wanting coffee I’d tell them that coffee was not for children, that their teeth would turn brown and fall out and that if they complained I’d take them straight home and there’d be no bran muffins for anyone.
These parents however, seemed to think it utterly reasonable that their children should have coffee and ordered them two lattes.
I, in turn, thought it entirely reasonable that I should deem these people UTTER IDIOTS, and felt absolutely no qualms in making sure that that the kiddie lattes were made with decaf.
Later a fellow employee asked me didn’t I think it was wrong that I changed a customer’s order without them knowing. I answered no, I didn’t think it was wrong. I thought it was wrong that someone was allowing their own children to drink a known stimulant. Can you imagine how strung up those kids would have been afterwards?
So, to add a third reason as to why I can never have children (the first being that I’d dress them in ridiculous woolen hats for entertainment, the second that I’d give them outlandish names like Tarquin and Cassopeia because bullying builds character), I’m too busy secretly correcting other parents’ poor decisions to have any time left to make sure that my own children aren’t dismembering grasshoppers or cussing at the elderly.
You evil bastard! My mum used to take me to the supermarket shortly after I had just sprouted teeth and she’d purchase a small bag of chips for me to eat while she did her shopping. they’d keep me satisfied and entertained for the entire experience, much to the disgust of other mothers.
When I was 11, on a 10 day jaunt on Brampton Island with my family, I had full access to the room charge and consequently lived on the healthy combination of a plate of chips and a banana milkshake, three times a day for the whole ten days. I was know to the staff as the ‘neglected child’ and by the end of the week they knew my order and room number off by heart.
The moral of the story is: I turned out ok! Let kids eat what they want and they’ll be happy. If I wanted to teach ma and pa a lesson I would have tweaked it up to a double shot of coffee and watched the kids bounce off the walls.
I’m tempted to tell you why decaf is bad for the health to make you feel mega guilty, except I’m pretty sure the kids will survive. I could also tell you that according to Jane Eyre (the source of most of my information of course) European children are all for a bit o caffeine.
But… what I actually will say is, as much as I wanna judge, after running around after kids for months, is that I’ve come to realise that it’s pretty hard from the outside, from one encounter. There are zillion things that I thought I or my sister’s would never do- among them was a bunch of things that I thought I would never feed the kids- but I/we did. Plus the time they’d get something ‘bad’ was usually when we were out- to appease them sometimes, but also a good time for them to have a treat given the dearth of options anyway. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to pump their children with caffeine, but god who knows, maybe it eventually tires them out with hyperactivity. And that is a plan I can back.
argh- didn’t mean to sound preachy- just reminiscing… I miss my babies! Ignore me.
You don’t sound preachy Jen, in fact both you and Scum bring up some great points. I didn’t mean to come across as having the opinion that children should NEVER have bad food, and that any parent not feeding their children exclusively on mung beans and multi-grain bread is evilly negligent. I’m fully aware that children are for the most part ill-behaved, manipulative bastards, and that sometimes the only way to get them to behave or shut the hell up is to shove something sugary into their gaping maws. It is a tried and true method of parental bribery which I fully endorse (although Scummy, you got your treat during > the supermarket experience? My mother would only ever let us have ours after. This leads me to two conclusions: mere promises of treats lead to my good behaviour, meaning I was clearly too trusting a child; and secondly, what kind of supermarker horror were you that your mother have to stave you off before you even had a chance to misbehave?!)
What is important is that these foods are only ever a treat and don’t become part of the kid’s everyday diet. If they are only ever treated as special food, as treat food, holiday food, what have you, there’s no problem. It’s when children expect to have these foods all the time because their parents consistently give it to them as appeasement, because its easy to give kids what they demand, whatever, that is becomes dangerous. It will never pay in the long run for a parent to be continually indulgent and fulfill their child’s every demand concerning sugary or fatty food. Just giving kids the food they want whenever they want it is ridiculous – kids are kids, they don’t give a damn what’s best for them, they just want what they think tastes good! Parents need to teach them good food habits from the very offset. Letting them eat crap all the time only results in unhappy and unhealthy kids who only have their parents to blame for spoiling them.
Understatement of the year: parenting is hard, damn hard. Yet there are a lot of parents out there who are making their job a hell of a lot harder by not using common sense. Sure, appeasing your child by caving in to their demands for something nutritionally suspect makes them happy for a while, but what is it teaching them? And how are the children training you to respond to their behaviour?
Of course, all my arguments can easily be swept aside due to the fact that I don’t have children, don’t know what it’s like, and am clearly a bitter spinster driven to harsh judgement as a result of being sideswiped by prams in the supermarket one too many times.
But I don’t care what anyone says, giving a 6 year old coffee is never justified. It is Just. Plain. Wrong.
I agree that kids needs to know the difference between good and shit food, and the importance of having a balanced diet, and don’t get me wrong, I had that thoroughly beaten into me as a kid (I’ve been good and avoided KFC for over 6 months now). I just think if you’re going out to have a coffee, or if you’re on holidays or meandering through the supermarket eating a bag of cashews, why not give it to your kids as well? It’s not a war between light and dark, as if you give your kids something they haven’t earned they’ll be condemned to an eternity of demanding selfishness and obesity.
There are ways of teaching your kids that eating an excessive amount of something is unhealthy. For example my poor dad had to drive my brother and I to sydney when I was about 9 and my brother was 12. To stop us nagging he stopped at EVERY SINGLE MCDONALDS on the way, buying us whatever we wanted. After spewing into buckets and having to clean the mess at the end of the journey, my dad had claimed victory. Neither my brother nor I wanted McDonalds for years to come, convinced we’d be violently ill if we ever attempted to go near a happy meal ever again.
I think kids are smart enough to figure shit out for themselves, or at least learn to reach some sort of happy medium. I think the most important part is to teach them to care for themselves and the people around them they’ll soon put together what’s good and bad.
After all that I feel like getting wasted on beer.
I belong to the “hating on bad parents” party too.. especially when the kids in question are particularly adorable.
I saw a little boy in a stroller once on the train, along with his absolute nuffer parents. They whined about benefits, the price of “ciggies” and how they couldn’t understand why Kath and Kim is funny (honest), while this darling little child asked questions and got idiotic answers, like, “Why is the sky blue?” (It just is), “What happened to all the dinosaurs?” (They died) and “How does the train go so fast?” (It just does).
I wanted to punch his parents in the head and steal him, just so that I could answer his questions, encourage his curiosity, give him useful presents like pipe cleaners and egg cartons to play with, feed him organic vegetables.. et cetera. I’m so idealistic..