How would you react to a stranger shooshing your child at a restaurant?

[Anonymous]

It seriously is freaking me out how many people think a 3 year old has bad manners for saying "hi" in a loud voice.

I hope you don't live in my area, because I don't want your kids in my school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seriously is freaking me out how many people think a 3 year old has bad manners for saying "hi" in a loud voice.

I hope you don't live in my area, because I don't want your kids in my school.

because they will be better behaved and outshine your brats?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think you handled it correctly. It's fine to take loud toddlers to IHOP at busy times and they are going to push limits (like speak too loudly to others, which is disrespectful to many people). So up to that point I'm with you. However, from your description, I get the feeling you just think it's awful that someone made your poor dear baby cry. You and DH felt that you absolutely had to show that you as parents were in his corner. And DH "got into it" with these other people. These things disturb me about your situation. So your DS got "shushed". Get over it--he was being rude and he got put into his place. You didn't like how and that's fair enough but these other people were not over the line. I don't love how they did it from your description but it's not a big deal. You and DH made it into a big deal. Does your son not ever hear "Sh" such that he freaks if he hears it? To be fair, maybe it was just coming from strangers that made it scary for him. Fine. So hug him and tell him they weren't trying to scare him, they just didn't appreciate being YELLED AT when they come into a restaurant and next time he needs to speak in an inside voice and people will respond better. Make it a lesson. The only lesson you've taught him here is that he can misbehave and if he cries if he gets corrected, you swoop in to make it all better.

Furthermore, DH went a step further to reinforce bad manners by even responding to these people. I can see where your DS gets his poor manners.

This is fair enough. DH let his emotions get the best of him but I think he was in "protective" mode. I actually said nothing and tended to DS.

[Anonymous]

OP I think you handled it correctly. My 3yo son loves to engage people and 99 percent of the time, they love to chat with him. Occasionally there are grumps who hate happy people (adults or children) and live in their tiny insulated bubble. Perhaps they were just perfect little people as children.

[Anonymous]

OP, did the scenario play out exactly how you describe it, or are you leaving out other key elements? If things happened just as you said and all your kid did was say hi rather enthusiastically, then I would agree that the other people overreacted, esp. in an IHOP.

However, if there were other annoyances that you didn't mention, then their reaction would be more understandable (not saying they would be in the right or wrong, just that it would be easier to see where they're coming from). Did your child spend most of the meal kicking their seats, or hanging over the sides into their booth, or doing any number of things that could've pushed them over the edge?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, did the scenario play out exactly how you describe it, or are you leaving out other key elements? If things happened just as you said and all your kid did was say hi rather enthusiastically, then I would agree that the other people overreacted, esp. in an IHOP.

However, if there were other annoyances that you didn't mention, then their reaction would be more understandable (not saying they would be in the right or wrong, just that it would be easier to see where they're coming from). Did your child spend most of the meal kicking their seats, or hanging over the sides into their booth, or doing any number of things that could've pushed them over the edge?

"I admit, my kid wasn't sitting perfectly quiet, but this was a very noisy place and he would occassionally get loud. Each time, we told him to be quiet and he would be good for a while, but he's three and so we have typical toddler issues (in addition to my 15 months old stealing some attention). "

It wasn't all the kid did.

[Anonymous]

Agree with the others who say the couple was out of line. And there's nothing wrong with the kid for crying about the shoosh.

sheesh.

[Anonymous]

Monday morning bitches have come out to play. What is it about Mondays on this forum? This is ridiculous. Calling a child a monkey? Nice...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seriously is freaking me out how many people think a 3 year old has bad manners for saying "hi" in a loud voice.

I hope you don't live in my area, because I don't want your kids in my school.

because they will be better behaved and outshine your brats?

I'm sure your 3 year old is always a model of perfect behavior. Get over yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, did the scenario play out exactly how you describe it, or are you leaving out other key elements? If things happened just as you said and all your kid did was say hi rather enthusiastically, then I would agree that the other people overreacted, esp. in an IHOP.

However, if there were other annoyances that you didn't mention, then their reaction would be more understandable (not saying they would be in the right or wrong, just that it would be easier to see where they're coming from). Did your child spend most of the meal kicking their seats, or hanging over the sides into their booth, or doing any number of things that could've pushed them over the edge?

Absolutely not. At no time prior to that did he invade their space. They weren't even directly behind, kind of at a diagonal behind them. He did make noise at our booth a couple times - like a spontaneous loud word or something but we had him be quiet right away. He never got up from his seat. He never even looked at them before. Maybe they could hear them throughout their meal but it was so noisy anyway that I don't see how his occasional loud noises would be any different. Maybe they were and I am sorry that they were bothered but my gut was that they were wrong to be repromancing him. Especially since we were trying to keep him behaved the whole time.

I never thought people here would have such strong opinions on how terribly ill-mannered my family is. Thanks for everyone's input though. Well except the posters who were calling my son names while hypocritically criticizing OUR manners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The crying at age 3 over "Sh" is odd. Is there something wrong with the kid?

Nice. No, it's not odd. If someone speaks unnecessarily harshly to a 3 year old they are likely to cry. Unless they are so used to be yelled at for nothing that they don't even notice it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seriously is freaking me out how many people think a 3 year old has bad manners for saying "hi" in a loud voice.

I hope you don't live in my area, because I don't want your kids in my school.

because they will be better behaved and outshine your brats?

Not the PP, but no - they won't. Trust me. The kids who are "disciplined" for being 3 are the ones who don't end up anywhere good. But there's still time!!

[Anonymous]

Telling someone to "shhhhh" is rude, whether they are a child or an adult. There are polite ways to ask someone to be quiet. It is not helpful or useful to engage a three year old on that level. If the couple felt that the child was acting inappropriately, they should have spoken to the parents. While I do expect a three year old to have more control over his behavior in a restaurant than say, a fifteen month old, there are still some limits on a child's ability to regulate his behavior and emotions at that age - not running, throwing food, shouting etc. Forgetting to say "hi" in his "inside voice" is within the limits of age appropriate behavior, and should have been corrected gently by the parents, not rudely by strangers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seriously is freaking me out how many people think a 3 year old has bad manners for saying "hi" in a loud voice.

I hope you don't live in my area, because I don't want your kids in my school.

because they will be better behaved and outshine your brats?

I'm sure your 3 year old is always a model of perfect behavior. Get over yourself.

She doesn't have kids. I'd bet money on it.

[Anonymous]

Your DS' behavior is normal for a child that age and I'm glad to hear you were consistently working with him to keep him in limits. The problem is how you responded to these strangers for shooshing. I disagree that it was right for DH to turn this into a "teachable moment" for the strangers. They were within limits in shooshing when they were directly approached in a loud voice. If they'd come over to your table or gotten involved to shush him just because they didn't like how loud he was, I could feel more sympathetic. But he did try to engage them and they didn't appreciate how and they made it known. I wouldn't make this into a bigger deal than it is. I'd just work on teaching DS how to engage strangers (using a quieter voice). There's the teachable moment. Losing it or getting hot headed because of a shoosh and getting so upset just b/c your DS cried made the situation worse than it was.