Parenting

Public Breast Feeding was recently Legalized in the US as something someone cannot be arrested for, thankfully.

Or was it somewhere else. I can't remember.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like the US.

See, I do recall that the baby food industry has been pushing hard to shame breastfeeding women to encourage more use of its products. And a big problem about not breastfeeding is that non-breastfeeding is unnecessarily costly.

It's one of the major issues I have with Nestlé, to be honest.

A lot of the guys (and it's predominantly guys, even these days; not just memories of walking around the areas I was allowed in in HQ in the '90s) working towards the top in the "baby goods" division become influenced by their bubble into honestly believing on some level that the guff they're pushing to get women to buy the stuff in preference to breastfeeding is healthier. (Hey, it helps them sleep at night.)

I really wish there were more women than men towards to top of that section. Specifically, ones with experience of juggling kids. You'd get less dumbass. But, only a bit less — getting influenced by your need to feel less shitty about some of what you do is a global phenomenon. <sighs>

By-the-by: if you want an example of hideous architecture, google Nestlé's attempts to make Vevey HQ look awesome on shiny sites. They can never quite manage it, even in panorama.

It's even more dismal close up and inside. The foyers and landscaping are odes to dismal opulence. The rest is functionally tacky.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jan 25th 2019 at 12:07:34 PM

To be honest, one of the biggest issues with breastfeeding comes from the mothers, grandmothers and mothers-in-law of the new mothers. It is very common for new mothers to find themselves being shamed as selfish for breastfeeding by their own family because that means no-one else can feed the baby.

Which is frankly appalling. But sadly very common.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 25th 2019 at 8:13:32 PM

And also untrue. You can bottle breastmilk.

Yeah, but that trips over the taboo on bodily fluids. People tend to get creeped out by holding a bottle of still-warm fluid that used to be inside another person moments ago.

Seriously, though, shaming people over breastfeeding is stupid, and even more so because you feel like your being left out of the fun baby times. Get your own baby!

All fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have laws that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or private location.

In late 2017, I know that there were three states that didn't, so it has changed within the last year.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/breastfeeding-state-laws.aspx

Even with public breastfeeding being legal, we really gotta work on societies reaction to it and the idea that it's somehow obscene.

Even people who lean towards it being acceptable tend to also go, "Well, but the mother could just use a pump and bottle her milk."

which ignores that 1) they shouldn't have to, 2) many women find breast pumping painful as hell and 3) the simple fact that many breastfeeding babies outright refuse to take from a bottle because it doesn't feel right to them.

So this is probably some of the worst parenting I've seen recently. My friend is a manager at Chick-fil-A and told me how a toddler who was there with a family of about three adults managed to escape the playground unseen, walk all the way out the main entrance and get to the parking lot without the family noticing. He was caught by two employees who brought him inside and tried to find if he belonged to anyone. They were getting ready to call the police when the family finally noticed and spoke up. Fuck it, I would've called 911 anyway, they clearly weren't paying an ounce of attention to their child and this could've easily ended with him killed by a car or kidnapped. Seriously, stop using the playground as a baby sitter, that's not what it's for.

9 to 1 they were busy texting.

Not betting.

Besides, I suspect mobile gaming.

That's not even the craziest Chick-fil-a parent story I have.

So it all starts with a woman and her sister sitting at a both in front of the playground while the woman's child plays. To the left of her table is a man, his son, and his friend. Suddenly the woman's son gets a little rough with the man's son on the playground and the two three-ish year olds begin to squabble.

The man notices, then goes in to the play area to break it up...then he yanks the woman's son away and proceeds to drag the boy by the arm out of the play area. The mom understandably loses her shit and starts screaming "How dare you touch my child!" The man thinks it's funny and starts laughing and telling her to calm down. Things escalate very quickly and they get into a big fight and the woman finds a manager to call the cops.

The man takes out his phone and calls his wife and puts her on speaker for his friend to hear, apparently trying to get someone to take their side and find out what to do, I suppose. His wife then loses her shit and starts shouting through the phone, "What the fuck did you do?! You can't touch someone else's kid!"

So management comes out and separates them, the cops show up, camera footage is examined (Chick-fil-a has an extensive camera system), and they straight up arrest the guy.

We don't know what happened to him after that but if any law enforcement professionals wanna theorize what happened, I'm genuinely curious.

Hey dude, guess what! Its not 1962.

Ive taken my kid to playspaces like that, Mc Donalds, etc, and they are designed such that if you even pay half a mind to your child they cant sneak away or anything like that. A three year old shouldnt even be able to get the door open by themselves.

Chick-fil-a's playground door isn't actually that heavy and can easily be pushed and pulled open. I think the real issue is that the toddler managed to get to the doors all the way on the other side of the room without the parents noticing.

Management checked the video footage and he went out of the large main entrance with a bundle of people leaving at the same time. Presumably everyone he exited with thought he was with someone in the surrounding group.

I'd definitely consider it a freak accident given how many things had to happen for him to make it out and then back inside safely. 1) His parents had to completely ignore him, 2) he decided to leave the play area and walk around, 3) he got swept into a group of strangers that all assumed he was with one of the other people going out, 4) employees happened to be in the parking lot getting ready to come in for their shift and find him.

He's honestly very lucky that he was caught so quickly before something really, really bad happened.

As someone whom has babysat a whole bunch of kids and done a bit of parenting...yeah its possible that he could of gotten out fast but still unlikely that the family would not of noticed unless they were very distracted by their own devices or talking to friends.

I really have a hard time believing that a decent parent or older sibling in public would let their kids stray off that far. I almost always keep the kids I take care of in my sight unless someone else trusted is present that also can watch them. Its possible that maybe they had miscommunication to eachother on whom had to actively watch him but that is still on them if that is the case.

And yeah thank god they caught him. Thats prime kidnapping material.

Edited by Wispy on Jan 30th 2019 at 11:37:07 AM

Imo, he was more at risk of being badly hurt or even killed by a car. Most kidnappings of children are by non-custodial parents rather than strangers.

True but you still get those rare cases where a random pedo saw a chance and took it.

He definitely was much more at risk with being hit by a car though yeah. All in all its not a good reflection on the family and it is a bit worrisome that it might happen again to that kid in the future and that he might not get caught...

A kid walking into a parkinglot is probably going to be ok, but still isnt something a parent should let happen.

Depends on how busy the parking lot is. It's grossly irresponsible regardless.

A toddler is too small to see from most cars.

This Chick-fil-A shares a portion of it's parking lot with a Walmart, so I'd put the risk of him being hit very high if he would've strayed any farther. Walmart might as well be a racing strip given how some people drive.

So we talked about discipline again today and how it differs from punishment. Our book gives these words very distinct definitions: discipline is described as a true desire to teach the child and help them in their understandings of their actions, while punishment is defined in our book as a desire to cause harm to the child to some extent.

Something we all really agreed on is that punishment, even something small like time out for five minutes, rarely does any good without the parent taking the time to have a dialogue with the child. I know I've mentioned this before, but it can't be overstated how important it is for parents to make time to actually talk to their kids about what's happening and find out why the child is acting out. I think so much stress can be saved from the parent and the child if they just talk. Parents can spank, ground, and yell all they want and swear up and down that it works, but I honestly believe that all it really does is foster resentment from the kid and cause even more issues between them in the long run.

We talked a lot about how parents and teachers have a tendency to escalate a situation unnecessarily. For example, if a child gets excited about something and forgets to raise their hand before speaking this doesn't warrant anything but a "Please raise your hand first and I'll call on you." Nothing else needs to be done here, certainly not time out, spanking or shaming the child in front of the other kids.

I know a mom that spanks for everything and I can guarantee that kid isn't going to go to his mom to talk about anything, ever. She's built a barrier between them that says “I won't listen, I'll just punish.” There's kids that could literally be in some kind of deadly situation that would rather take the consequences of that than go to their mom or dad and talk. And I think a lot of these parents don't even intend to be that closed off, but that's what they've done.

I'll never forget an incident I saw years ago that's always stuck with me. The girl, probably three years old, was having a total meltdown in the grocery store and the mom just starts screaming at the top of her lungs that she's bad, an embarrassment, “Look at how everyone's staring at you!” (they were definitely staring at the mom) and just being a complete monster to this baby. Is it really any kind of surprise that the girl is having such an issue when she's got a mom like that? You have to model the behavior that you want your child to present, and if you're throwing a giant abusive tantrum in Walmart the only thing you'll accomplish is teaching your child fear, anxiety, and in all likelihood you'll cause more melt downs. “When a child cannot control their emotions it is the adult's job to be their calm, not join the chaos.” That's on the wall of my Professors office and damn, it needs to be everywhere.

Sadly, poor impulse control tends to run in families, so that the children who need the most support for this issue tend to have parents who are challenged to give it. Poor impulse control tends to be correlated with poverty, and poverty with stress, so parents of challenging children live lives that conspire to rob them of the mental resources they would need to take a moment and think their way out of the escalation. The take away here is that parents need support structures, but not all of them get it, and the ones that need it the most are least likely to have one.

But overall you are right, it's up to the parent to literally be "the adult in the room." Children learn from what we do, not what we say.

By the way, a nice practical approach is the "count to 5" technique. The child misbehaves, and you give them a steely eyed stare as you slowly count to 5. I did this once in a public place, and afterward someone nearby asked me what actually happens if I ever get to 5. I told them that I didn't know, since I had never gotten there. The point, of course, is that counting sounds like a tough line to take, but what it really does is give the child, and the parent, a moment to cool off.