Mr. Overly Indulgent Fun Guy Dad may think his child’s antics are really cute, but he needs to get a clue that the rest of us don’t. And this is from someone who generally thinks all 2 year olds are pretty much wonderful, and that the very idea of “Terrible Twos” is a horrible smear campaign against our society’s best people.

Some years back, I ventured with the stair-step brigade into a local coffee/tea shop to buy a cute little teapot for my sister-in-law. Youngest Child was, at the time, an INTENSE TODDLER, and my attempts to decide on the perfect teapot were severely hampered by all the effort it took for me to make sure INTENSE TODDLER was not disruptive. Finally I selected my purchase and headed for the counter, questioning all the while the wisdom of bringing INTENSE TODDLER out in public before he turned…oh, 12 years old.

Now, in my defense, I have to say that most of my anxiety was over what I was afraid he might do, rather than over his actual behavior. I kept him from touching anything (and that wasn’t easy) and I kept him from attempting to make a run for freedom — and I managed to do all this without arousing loud protests. But the effort it took was exhausting for me, even though it seemed to energize him.

We were the only ones in the shop at the time, besides the owner, who had been observing us the entire time. So she had noticed what had seemed, to me, like an extended wrestling match. If I were her, I would have been tempted to suggest that maybe my child would do best kept at home, in a padded cell, along with his mother who was obviously a lunatic for thinking that toddlers should be brought into places that sold fragile china.

Instead, the shop owner praised the entire stair-step brigade for their exemplary behavior. She insisted on serving us free goodies. When my older children seemed bewildered as to why she was gushing about their amazing manners, etc. (afterwards they said to me, “But we didn’t DO ANYTHING. We were just being normal!”) she began regaling us with horror stories of children who broke her glass table tops, climbed up on her shelves, broke dishes, threw things, ran around, screamed, knocked things over, etc. — all while the parents stood by and did nothing.

It’s parents like that who give kids a bad name.

So yeah, it was definitely more of a parenting issue than a general kids-in-Starbucks issue. But in the moment, I was really wishing for a “no kids allowed” sign! LOL!

It’s sad, really. I totally understand your point and have been there myself, many times. What popped out at me as I read this was not that I understand and agree, but the true underlying problem as I “see” it: in general, parents are not teaching their children to behave properly in these situations. It seems like maybe there was a lack of discipline/instruction going on with these parents. If they were OK with the children behaving this way then they should have gone to McD’s or some place like that.

I posted pics of our library outing from earlier this week, we ended the outing with a trip to Starbucks, we were the only ones there: Hubby, me, the two oldest (12 & 10), the two youngest (3 & 15m). I let the baby get down a do a bit of wondering near me when he finished his muffin and juice. As soon as someone else came in and/or if he started to get loud I reigned him in to my lap again. I don’t let my children act that way when we are out, at some one else’s home, or in our home - that kind of behavior is for outside on a jungle gym.