I learned in church today

[Jarid in Cedar]

Really?



Really?



So misunderstood!

Yeah, but you are purposefully misremembering events.

[Jarid in Cedar]

It's not that complex. If your kid cries you take them out to the foyer. If they keep crying you take them home. I can't tell you how many times I took my kids home from Church...almost always happened when the Niners were playing.

This is why I love my 15 month old right now.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

You'll be praised for your opinion here while I've been ostracized for saying the same exact thing. Double standard...

You think Triplet is going to praise NonSeq for claiming Applebee's is fine dining? You have been paying less attention than I do to my kids in sacrament!

[Tim]

Tim, the reaction you are getting here can be explained fairly simply. There are two things that are inevitably experienced by just about any parent.

1. You are in a public place and having a rough time keeping your kids under control and some stranger thinks it would be a good idea to come up and tell you what a lousy parent you are, thus making your bad day even worse. It would be especially disheartening to experience this at church.

2. Realizing that parenting is far more complex than you ever expected and feeling sheepish about all of that silent judgment you passed on parents as a single person.

That's not to say that the backlash you are getting is entirely fair, but this is the underlying dynamic. You will sympathize someday.

I appreciate where you're coming from. One thing that continues to come to me is that there's an assumption that I'm somehow being judgmental of these people. You'd have to know me in person to understand that I spend a lot of time in my job and in my life thinking about operations -- meaning I spend far too much time thinking about and designing processes. This leads me to theorize and make hypotheses related to how things should be done according to inputs, scenarios, expectations, etc. It's just part of my nature to analyze the processes people use to do things -- I've long said that if there were any money in it I would've gone into the logistics side of the computing industry -- enterprise and consumer tech are much more lucrative. Anyway, everywhere I go -- the grocery store, the movies, sporting events, etc. -- I think and talk about how best to organize things, how best to build a process to achieve a certain end, how best to operate, how best to move a user through a flow, etc. It may drive people nuts, but I enjoying thinking about process. My wife also enjoys it, so we have some great conversations that aren't built around judgement, just a theoretical analysis of how "things can be done better."

What I'm apparently not good at, though, is framing my theories or hypotheses in a way that suggests that I'm in fact not making judgements, just thinking about scenarios and processes. I'm caught in a trap here wherein people think I believe a way that I don't, or they assume judgement on my part, so whenever I post anything even loosely related to that thing I get jumped on. I'm not going to stop theorizing, though, about things I observe -- why would I do that? And I'm not going to stop posting about those theories -- this is a messageboard, so why would I do that?

[Tim]

Really?

Really?

So misunderstood!

In the dozens of times we've rehashed that thread since then, I've clarified from the beginning that my real issue was with the parents doing nothing and making no attempt to resolve the situation. I established that years ago. Posting source material without corrections and clarifications that were made in the time period shortly thereafter is dishonest.

[Non Sequitur]

You think Triplet is going to praise NonSeq for claiming Applebee's is fine dining? You have been paying less attention than I do to my kids in sacrament!

I would cringe if I thought someone didn't know that was joke.

[fusnik]

In the dozens of times we've rehashed that thread since then, I've clarified from the beginning that my real issue was with the parents doing nothing and making no attempt to resolve the situation. I established that years ago. Posting source material without corrections and clarifications that were made in the time period shortly thereafter is dishonest.

I posted your first comment and the subsequent affirmation of the first in order.

I've read the thread in question and you sound like a whiny baby throughout. Your posts hurt my eyes.

Who really complains about crying/loud children in church or on planes? Old people and assholes.

[UtahDan]

I posted your first comment and the subsequent affirmation of the first in order.

I've read the thread in question and you sound like a whiny baby throughout. Your posts hurt my eyes.

Who really complains about crying/loud children in church or on planes? Old people and assholes.

We don't need a bro code ruling every day, but when the need arises you have to admit it is nice that fusnik pokes his head into CUF every few months.

[Non Sequitur]

Who really complains about crying/loud children in church or on planes? Old people and assholes.

Good hell, everyone complains about loud kids on a plane...doesn't mean we think the parents are evil. It's like when my grandma used to fart in front of my friends. I knew she had an intestinal condition and couldn't help it, but I still complained about it.

[FMCoug]

Maybe we need and "I was an asshole in Church today" thread.

Seriously though, I think the answer to this is in the middle somewhere. I get Tim's point, but as a parent I also realize it's not quite as cut and dry as some make it sound. I will say this though, kids CAN be taught to be reverent in Sacrament meeting, at a very young age. I've done it 4 times.

It is inevitable that little kids will be noisy, cry, etc. in Sacrament meeting. The more clueless parents just ignore it to others' detriment. The standard MO though seems to be to take the kid out, let them run in the halls or run around in the foyer, etc. This of course teaches the kid that they can cry in Sacrament meeting and get to go play. Duh.

Here is what we did with all 4 of ours.

1. Bring age-appropriate, quiet toys / activities to church.
2. If they cry or are loud, give them a warning.
3. If they don't stop, they go to the foyer with Dad.
4. In the foyer, they have to sit on Dad's lap with their arm's folded for the rest of the meeting.

It doesn't take long for them to figure out that the foyer is much more miserable than quietly coloring, looking at a book, etc. in the chapel will be.

Obviously I'm not talking about infants. And my sample size is 4 (girls at that) so I'm not saying this will work for every kid. But the point is, an awful lot of parents do just the opposite and get the expected results.

[Indy Coug]

I just want everyone to know that my 5 year old quietly sat on my lap cuddling with me, my 10 year old quietly played with his Lego toy, my 12 year old sat quietly listening to the talks and my 17 year old gave a talk. We were reverent as hell.

[FMCoug]

I just want everyone to know that my 5 year old quietly sat on my lap cuddling with me, my 10 year old quietly played with his Lego toy, my 12 year old sat quietly listening to the talks and my 17 year old gave a talk. We were reverent as hell.

This makes a lot of sense to me as reverent behavior 24x7 is exactly how I imagine Hell to be.

[Pelado]

It's not that complex. If your kid cries you take them out to the foyer. If they keep crying you take them home. I can't tell you how many times I took my kids home from Church...almost always happened when the Niners were playing.

Now that football season is starting back up, I think I will adopt this technique. I might try to be even more courteous by staying home with the kids in the first place.

[New Mexican Disaster]

We just don't go to sacrament when we have a kid under 3 except special occasions.

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

I just want everyone to know that my 5 year old quietly sat on my lap cuddling with me, my 10 year old quietly played with his Lego toy, my 12 year old sat quietly listening to the talks and my 17 year old gave a talk. We were reverent as hell.

You have a 17 year old? That just blew my mind.