I have not said anything about the parenting side. Of course there is good parenting and bad parenting. My point is that non parents cannot know what the parenting experience is. One can watch and observe as an outsider and you can draw "objective" conclusions, but those conclusions are not based on what the actual parent is experiencing. Anthropologists face the same problem when studying primitive people. They can watch and learn and be objective or they can join the tribe, lose their objectivity and get much closer to the actual experience of being a tribal member.
Noise can be a serious matter and there is parent responsibility/culpability involved if kids are excessively noisy. But also, there are also folks who object to any interference in their daily routines and selfishly demand that others adhere to the silence or or other needs they have. They freely put what they want over and above whatever is going on in other peoples' lives. It's quite common and you can see in lots of places. Who's to blame? That is the wrong question.
O-kay... so if I see a parent beating a child, I should just shrug and say, "I'm not a parent, therefore I'm unqualified to decide that this is a bad thing" and walk away from it? SERIOUSLY?
Thank you for your views on anthropology. My anthropology instructor told us that no society is "primitive" from its own perspective, therefore it's not a word that should be used to describe that society.
And thank you for your refusal, after repeated explanations, to understand that the noise situation I'm talking about is not a "selfish" thing on my part. There are actually rules - spelled out in the standard lease we all have to sign - that say excessive noise is not allowed, nor is it permitted for children to run around in the hallways. The people I'm talking about are in violation of those rules.
I do try to be a good neighbor; I've helped my fellow tenants whenever I could, including returning lost cats that got shut out in the hallway, advocating for people who were too intimidated to talk to the manager themselves (that's why this place is now wheelchair-accessible, at least in the main entrance), and so on.
And they deserve to be. Parents have ensured the continued survival of the species by producing another generation of humans. That alone entitles them to better treatment than people who don't have kids.
Pretty proud of yourself for what any insect, amphibian, or intact tomcat can do, hm?
In my view, if any lifeform should get better treatment for reproducing, I'd vote for the honeybees. Without them, we humans would have a much poorer diet.
I can see it now: Some day in the future (could be tomorrow), a scientist announces that he/she has found the cure for cancer. You're pretty excited and impressed, and think that scientist should be praised and honored... until you find out that the scientist has never fathered or borne a child. Whereupon you throw insults at him/her, saying that it doesn't matter one bit what they have achieved that will benefit the entire human race (you and your kids included) - if that scientist hasn't produced his/her offspring, they're worthless.
And my experience in these matters makes me assume she's blowing it way out of proportion. People who don't have kids tend to be extremely intolerant of childish behavior, especially older people that never had children. So my experience tells me that Valka is just getting annoyed at kids being kids.
I'm right here; if you're going to complain about what I say, do it to
me, 'k?
You have experience with your kids, and your household. You have ZERO experience with me, my cat(s), my household, or the rules everyone here is expected to obey. If I went around the hallways, shouting and screaming, damn straight I'd get in trouble with the management.
Your "experience" in this case is worthless.
Okay, but did you know that family's exact situation though? Because if you didn't, then you have no right to judge them. Maybe their child had some developmental issue that causes them to act that way. If that's the case, then there's really nothing the parents can do about it. I'm not saying that is always the case, my point is that if you aren't 100% "in the know" of a given family's situation, then you are in no position to pass judgement on the quality of the parenting in that family. That's something you non-parents just don't seem to understand.
Possibly. And maybe the kids are just brats who have their parents wound around their fingers. Some kids get away with stuff by telling the parents, "If you try to stop me or say no, I'm gonna tell a social worker you're abusing me"... and then the fun starts as the social worker will automatically consider the parents guilty until they prove their own innocence - which could take as little as 10 minutes, or might escalate to 10 weeks, months, or years.
It's all about majority rules. If there are five apartments and four of them contain apartments with "annoying" children and there is only one apartment with some childless busybody who is annoyed, then it's the childless busybody that has to adjust their lifestyle to conform with the majority, not the other way around. Also, no one is forcing you to live where you live. If conditions at your current place of residence are considered unbearable, then move somewhere else. It's really that simple. Instead of causing conflict and bad blood, go find a community where the majority of the residents live a similar lifestyle to your own. If children annoy you, then it really is your fault if you move into a neighborhood or apartment complex where the majority of residents have children.
It's so amusing (not really) that you think you're qualified to lecture me on my living arrangements, especially without all the facts.
Fact: There are 120 suites in this building, 20 per floor. The building is roughly propeller-shaped, with three wings of suites all projecting from a central hub of elevators, storage room, laundry room, and stairway.
Fact: The first two floors are designated as "family floors" - children permitted, but not compulsory. That means the majority - 80 suites out of 120 - are not on a family floor.
Fact: Cats are permitted. Not many places in this city allow cats. One place would only allow one cat, and I wasn't going to be put in the position of deciding to get rid of one cat. I also wasn't going to consider the place that would allow cats if they were declawed. Mutilation of that sort should be illegal - and is, in some American municipalities.
Fact: When kids throw eggs at people's doors, throw garbage on the floor in the garbage chute rooms, run in the hallways, ride their bikes and skateboards in the hallways, yell and scream in the hallways, interfere with firefighting equipment, vandalize the laundry rooms, this is a huge problem. It breaks the rules, puts people at risk, and in the case of the garbage rooms, one manager decided to lock it so nobody could use it - thus punishing 19 tenants for the bad behavior of one.
Fact: I'm physically disabled. There are not many apartment buildings that are accessible for me. This building has an elevator, which really helps when I need to go from one floor to another. Of course it cuts off during fire alarms, so thank goodness for being on the first floor now. No more worries about falling down the stairs or having to leave the cat behind because I couldn't manage both the cat and me on the stairs.
Fact: Cat-friendly, affordable, wheeled mobility-accessible apartments don't grow on trees. My previous apartment was in a very bad part of town, with drug dealers, addicts, domestic violence upstairs, and a murder in the next building. I got out of there as soon as I had enough money for a damage deposit, cat fees, and movers. It was a
dangerous part of town, and the place here is much safer, even considering that I nearly became a statistic two months ago (and the guilty party is still living here; they can't evict him until his third rules violation).
Fact: The standard lease here includes rules about noise, behavior in the hallways, and other things that add up to being a courteous and considerate neighbor to everyone else. I comply with those rules. So do most other people... except the ones who let their kids run wild in the hallways, the ones who let their kids scream and yell in the hallway, the ones who didn't bother explaining to their kids that "take the garbage out" means either go downstairs to the dumpster or put the garbage bags down the chute - not throw the garbage on the floor (seriously, finding soiled diapers and rotten food on the floor in there is really sickening), and so on.
So I fail to see why I should be the one to move, when I'm the one who complies with the rules, and they don't.
I haven't switched sides on this at all. If it is adults making noise and being annoying, I'll report them in a heartbeat and get them evicted because adults should have the good sense and manners to be considerate of their fellow residents. Especially residents with children, since children tend to go to sleep earlier. If it's another family with children, I let it slide because I understand how hard it is to keep kids quiet, especially in an apartment building that has walls with almost zero soundproofing or noise reduction capability.
So you'd get a brain-injured person evicted? What about some other adult who has some cognitive or other impairment that means they don't have the same capacities as you? FFS, what about someone who has a chronic condition or illness that makes them appear drunk but they're really suffering from Parkinson's or they're diabetic and having a problem, or maybe someone like me who has balance problems?
And what about the rights of shift workers who sleep during the day - should they go sleepless because a neighbor lets their little darlings scream and shriek, rather than use their indoor voices?
Of course now that I think about it, maybe we should start having government mandated segregation of families with children and childless individuals or couples. I'm thinking of the latter being banned, by law, from renting or owning a house (for use as a personal residence, I'm okay with childless people owning a house for the purpose of renting it out as a landlord) and being relegated to apartments since they don't really have a need for all that extra space that comes with a house. That way, all the families with children will have their own houses with yards that children can play in and be as loud as they want while you childless people can live in the peace and quiet of your apartment complexes.
The house I lived in before moving to an apartment was my home for 34 years. I was 11 years old when my grandparents, dad, dog, and I moved in. So I take it that the fact I lived there as a child makes it marginally acceptable that 34 years later, it was just me and two cats? Sorry, but everyone else either died, or had to move to a seniors' facility. If I'd been able to keep up with everything, I'd still be there.
It's amazing, how you turned a simple rant on my part into such a judgmental, self-entitled "I'm fabulous because I have children and you don't" batch of arrogant
stuff.
I realize that I might have misinterpreted things a bit, and if so, I apologize. What I meant to say is that of course it's going to bother you if it seems that people are complimenting you on your kids for the wrong reason. However, without asking them why they complimented you, it's hard to know why they said what they did. It might be genuine, it might be backhanded, there might be bigotry implied... it's hard to say, and each situation is a bit different, isn't it?
My advice to simply say "thank you" means that whatever their reasons were,
you are the one who is definitely the courteous one, and it's also a valuable lesson to teach your kids. I know I complain about how my mother acted for much of the time we lived together and some encounters afterward, but one good thing she taught me was that if someone complimented me (for whatever reason), the correct response was "thank you." If the other party was expecting any other sort of reaction, that's their problem. You're the one doing the right thing, and your kids will learn from your example.
And also tend to differ from person to person, let alone remain non-binding. Now i am as annoyed by people playing music loudly as the next person, but fact is that if it is done at hours not designated as hours of silence (eg past midnight) there is little to nothing you can do about it.
It depends on local bylaws. My city has a noise bylaw that's enforceable 24 hours/day. I'm as entitled to complain about a loud stereo at noon as I am at midnight. Mind you, the cops would take the midnight complaint more seriously, and they don't usually do anything unless the offense is either really late or it's been going on for several hours.
Small children yelling for hours can be dreadful as well, but at best you can write a note to their parents and hope for the best. No one owes you anything, they don't even owe you to fundamentally care.
They don't owe caring, but they do owe compliance with the rules.
