LillyPip

That’s fair. People who are actively trying to parent will naturally be a bit more defensive, tbf. They may have encountered that guy more than once just today. It’s likely to be less raw a subject for the rest of us, honestly.

Right, you haven’t. That’s my point.

You’re reacting to the worst parenting you’ve seen in public, but they’re thinking of the worst experiences they’ve had, too – which was people overreacting to relatively small transgressions.

Everyone is talking about a completely different set of people than who they’re talking to. Both of those different sets of people are terrible: the parents who haven’t even tried to teach their children, and also the people who overreact when a child steps out of bounds. You are neither of these, and it looks like neither is your interlocutor.

Right, and if their child does only occasionally act out (as literally all children do at least a few times in their life), they might assume a commenter is that one guy who is overly put out over a minor social infraction, because just like you’re picturing the stand-out moments you’ve seen when it was bad, so are they. But their stand-out has been someone confronting you because your* eldest started stacking boxes in the aisle whilst you were tending to the baby for 30 seconds.

We’re all thinking of our own extremes and are kinda talking past each other. It seems that, unlike some conversations lately, everyone is kinda right, but it also seems that we need more empathy towards the fact that raising young children has been more societally difficult lately, and kids need less hostility to become emotionally healthy adults.

My son was, too. I didn’t raise him strictly (I was a hippie mother, raised in the 70s), but gradually acclimatised him through smaller interactions (small groups to larger, to regional to public), because I had that luxury. Lots of parents over the past 10 years were deprived of that, and it’s been exceptionally difficult to get a child acclimatised to an increasingly hostile world.

People have been far less patient in public – which is entirely understandable, given the circumstances – so many parents and other caregivers (teachers, counsellors, etc) who are trying their best can’t help but be defensive when they hear negativity towards children online, because I’d wager everyone encounters people who are excessively put out by the slightest transgression of a child in their proximity.

It may not be the way the majority react, nor how you react, but it happens regularly enough to become exhausting.

So, in these conversations, I feel like many people are responding to children who are clearly being publicly misparented, and then there are many parents who are thinking of the times someone overreacted to a social faux pas by their child.

I feel like people are misdirecting their anger here.

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

I found that distressing. I’m gonna assume OP manhandled that dude’s nuts after filming for my own sanity.

I can vibe with that.

I guess my question is more about the ‘challenge’ objects. Like I get wanting to put things places, but it’s the stuff that lands you in YouTube compilations due to ‘misadventure’, that clearly looked risky, that gets me.

Putting the OP bottles in places, or getting your nuts trapped in the slats of a park bench such that the fire department has to remove them, things like that.

Woe, despair, and agony on me.

But the aliens are plant-based…

Who could have seen this coming? Wow, it’s like nobody even tried to warn them.

I’m so sorry this is happening, but my capacity for empathy has been strained to the breaking point – especially because it really seems like there’s nothing to be done now.

I hate to say ‘have the day you voted for’ when circumstances are this tragic, but…

Fucking LOL!

Yeah. I believe that exactly as much as everything else you and your fascist compatriots have said.

Gotta be able to absorb and deflect magic attacks.