Children

Adorable little jerks.

Like many people with no children of their own, I have a lot of opinions about how they should be raised. One of these crazy ideas is that they should behave themselves in public, and not act like crazed, wild animals. Weird, right? Apparently parents in the US think so. 

Yesterday, I went to a brewery with my parents. Straight up bar, not a bar/restaurant thing. There was a group there, I'm guessing it was a couple of families. The parents were sitting there chatting away while their kids screamed and ran all over the damn place. I'm not even exaggerating this time. They kept running laps or something, and I was about two seconds away from tripping one of them. They were probably 7 or 8, so they were definitely old enough to know better and not act like complete imbeciles. But, it's not really the kids' fault. Because who taught them how to behave decently in public? Obviously not their parents. 

We went out for a nice dinner the last time I was in Paris. (Which, btw, I have become obsessed with again. I think I should probably just live there. Anyone want to fund my move to Paris? And...uh...my life after that? Cause Paris is expensive and I still don't speak French well. That language is hard. Plus, Duolingo keeps teaching me ridiculous phrases like "Did you come to kill us?" Because I'm sure that will be helpful at some point and GOOD-GOD I hope that's never actually a helpful phrase!!! Um. Yeah. I think that's a good place to stop this rant.) 
Anyway so we went out to a nice dinner and after we were there for a while a group came in with a little girl. I'd guess she was about 5 or 6, and an absolute angel. She colored or something the whole time, and talked to them a little bit. There was no screaming or running around or general tomfoolery. I remember commenting to Sister and BroInLaw that it would be a completely different scene in the US, and the kid would be running around like a neanderthal. 

Why is that? There seems to be a trend in the good ol' U S of A that kids reign supreme. Nobody is allowed to make a noise that might wake the sleeping baby, anywhere and everywhere is a playground, teachers are blamed for a kid's bad grades, and anyone who questions the child-ruler has to deal with the mama grizzly (thanks Sarah Palin). 
Again, I don't have kids so it's easy for me to judge, but I really don't think I'd have the selflessness or patience to let a kid run my life. And I wouldn't want them to. A parent's job is to raise the kid; to teach them how to be a halfway decent human being and get them ready for the world. Because they don't have the cognitive ability to make logical and reasonable decisions. 
I have a niece who's first instinct is to be afraid of things. If she's not familiar with something, it's scary. Two of those things are nutcrackers and fire. Nutcrackers...silly. Just a kid thing. But her parents' run around and remove all the Christmas nutcrackers instead of being reasonable. Fire...okay, that could be useful. But it goes to things like birthday cakes and fires for warmth. When one of my sisters tried to explain that it was okay in the fireplace, she got yelled at. Obviously there's a whole lot more to that. There's a whole mess of crazy there. 

Then you've got the parents who want to give their kids absurd names "to be unique." UGH. I mean, this kid is stuck with a weirdo name that nobody can pronounce for their entire life. They have to deal with peers, try to get a job, face the world with some sort of confidence. But they've already been set up with their stupid effing names. I completely support the judge that wouldn't let a couple name their kid Nutella. Wtf. Don't reproduce anymore. I honestly read an article around Christmas about a girl whose name was Abcde and pronounced ab-suh-dee. It made me angry. It still does. 

As you can see, I have a lot of opinions on this, and most of them are negative. Maybe if I get to have kids someday my opinions will change. I kind of hope not. If any of you have offspring and would like to put me in my place, I'm all for it. I'm okay with being wrong. 

All that being said, I finally get to meet my youngest nephew this year. He's almost a year old, but the drive is about 8 hours and I hadn't been able to make it with my dumb legs. 
Don't get me wrong, I really do love kids. They're needy and drooly and poopy and screamy and fantastic.