Letters to the Editor
AncientAssyrian
Published Letters: 697 Editor's Choice: 53
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Ban Bratty Kids!!!!!!
[Read the article: Should cafes be kid-free?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have 2 children -- including an active, toddler boy -- and to cafe managers and restaurateurs who want only well-behaved children, I say HOORAY!!! Finally!!!!
When at cafes and restaurants, shops and most other public places, children are supposed to behave. That's part of a parent's job, to teach the children how to behave -- NOT to make excuses for why they CAN'T!!!
Most of the time, my children don't shriek, they don't jump up and down on the restaurant banquettes, they don't throw things at each other and patrons, they don't run around and around the table chasing each other, they don't try to use me as a jungle gym and climb up and down me, they don't whine incessantly (all things I've observed other children do in just the past 2 months at local cafes and restaurants!)
But the second my children would start up with anything, I take them out. Right away.
Yes, I wish I could lounge around in my local cafe all leisurely-like, as I did in the days before kids. Yes, I wish I could go to great, chic restaurants that don't have coloring books and crayons as placemats, and chicken fingers on the menu. But it is NOT MY RIGHT TO DO SO AT THE EXPENSE OF MY FELLOW PATRONS!!!!!
So, while I'm lucky and can take my children to many places for the most part, there are places I know will make my kids antsy that I just don't go. And if I'm somewhere and my kids have an off day and start acting up somewhere, they are bustled out of there, pronto.
Many a time my husband or I have walked outside a restaurant with a cranky child while the other finishes dinner and gets the rest to go. Howly child in tow, I've had to go to a drive through for a quick cup of fast-food coffee, rather than the venti concoction I really wanted.
Yes, it's a disappointment/inconvenience/big fat drag for me. But I do not feel like "kids will be kids" and that a few shrieks or howls are to be expected, and all the other excuses people give for their children's bad behavior. Because that's what it is... it's bad behavior. Plain and simple.
Why is discipline such a foreign concept to many parents? Why are parents more determined to ensure their own comfort (coffee, meal, etc) at the expense of others, who have to endure the shrieks and bad behavior of the uncontrolled children at large?
Proprietors wouldn't have to put up signs if people kept their children under control, and didn't sit idly by sipping their capuccinos while ignoring the fact that their children are breaking the sound barrier with their shrieking while trying to pelt each other with Splenda packets...
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Create a "Kids and Cell-Phone Users" Section?
[Read the article: Should cafes be kid-free?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One more point...
While I find howly shrieking kids annoying and cafes and restaurants, let's not forget how irritating and obnoxious the loud cell phone yakkers can be.
I think perhaps they should create special sections at restaurants for all the rowdy, howly children, and all those loud blathering cell phone folks who feel a need to provide a running narrative of every movement to the person on the other end of the cell phone.
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Happy Birthday Salon...
[Read the article: Ten years of Salon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Happy Birthday Salon!
Back in 95, when I first got on the Internet, I somehow found my way to you, how I do not know, but I do know you immediately became the homepage on my glacially slow AOL account. There were many a day I clicked to download a particularly juicy long Salon article, and went to get a cup of coffee while the page downloaded! (Remember those days?)
I wrote a fan letter way back when, and perhaps it was a novelty, but the Salon staffer on the other end wrote back that everyone was so excited they wanted to send me a Salon t-shirt! (I still have it!)
When you went subscription, I signed up right away, less to avoid the advertisements, and more because I felt I owed it to Salon, after all those years of enjoyment. I still ante up each year. It's a small price to pay for my sanity.
You see...you kept me sane during the last two presidential elections, and I don't know that I'd emotionally survive the Bush administration without you.
Salon's been my home page every day for 10 years. Here's to a decade of Salon, and a toast to many decades more to come!
-- Mary S. in Washington, DC
P.S. Cary Tennis, Patrick the Pilot, Tim Grieve, Farhad Manjoo and Sidney Blumenthal are totally wondrous beings!
P.S.S. Ayelet Waldman, I can do without...
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"Why Put Your Vagina Through All That?" Says Dr... (aka, Regular Childbirth is Doomed...)
[Read the article: Why is the share of cesarean deliveries rising?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These were the words of an ob-gyn I know, who said that she had her one and only child by elective C-section. She said there was no way she was going to "compromise my pelvic muscles, end up incontinent, and ruin my sex life by getting all flabby and loose down there."
This is an otherwise progressive ob-gyn, holistically oriented...but she was adamant about it. She even had a tummy tuck done as part of the delivery!!!!
When the ob-gyns are saying things like this, you know it's pretty much all over.
(By the way, I had a c-section for my only birth. Baby was breech, and the doctor -- not the one above -- refused to attempt a breech delivery... big sigh... I had hopes of an unmedicated doula-assisted birth... HAH!!!)