The dying out of our race? Actually, I could use the world population as a good argument for a few less people having kids today.

My mother has an easy time understanding that grand children from me would most likely not happen.

My mother in-law wanted my wife to be pregnant before the honeymoon was even over.

Start your own thread!!!

You can call it "Yes babies, please!"



I'm just kidding, but this is a mild example of what often happen out in the real world.

Me (in a conversation about child rearing) - "I'm not going to have childern, I don't even like them all that much."
Them - "Oh, but childern are great!" Usually followed with (where Syd thankfully didn't go) "You might not like kids right now, but they're different when they're your own."

How do you think people would feel if I went around and told them how they should never have had kids because my life without them is wonderful. I'd be hung up by my toes!

Congrats to you. But don't wish babies on people who don't want babies.

I think people should have children if they want but I'm very much prone to getting in my childless friends faces about making a well informed decision on the matter. People need to spend a lot of time in the houses of people with multiple children. They need to try and incorporate them in to their daily and weekend routines. They need to know firsthand how dramatic the difference between the two lifestyles can be.

Why do I say that? Because too many of my friends had children without REALLY considering the implications and now regret the decision. Thats not fair to the child, the parents or the other people in their lives who have do deal with the aftermath.


I'm with ya here. Just took my friends 5 & 7 year old kids to the climbing gym for the first time over xmas. They loved it and and I was able to tolerate it. I am way more indulgent of children than I am their adult counterparts.

The real bummer with the "no kids please" crowd is how much they judge and chastise those who do have kids and include them in their lives and passions.

My favourites are the ones who bitch about kids at the gym, the crag... Or even the 20 year old ass holes who think a public park is just for them to play on the swings while tripping on acid.

Nothing wrong with choosing motto have your own kids, but at least temporarily cherish or offer kindness to other children. Don't help them become jaded assholes like the rest of us.

the prob with that isn't the children. It's shitty parents. I will put up with infinitely more screaming and dirt throwing from a child if the parents seem to be *trying.* It's when they give zero fucks that I want to murder the little shits.

the prob with that isn't the children. It's shitty parents. I will put up with infinitely more screaming and dirt throwing from a child if the parents seem to be *trying.* It's when they give zero fucks that I want to murder the little shits.

... He leads a route, kid and lady flails on the start.

lol it takes a village . . .

lol it takes a village . . .

lol it takes a village . . .

In the general world, it's B.S. If you decide to have children, take the time to raise them properly. Keep their needs in mind and others people privacy too.

The behaviour of ratbags with dogs is far worse than that of parents with kids. Dogs illegally off leash; in National Parks; on beaches; in our local climbing gym; and pretty much wherever there is a "Dogs Prohibited" sign, such as at our local swimming pool this morning.

the prob with that isn't the children. It's shitty parents. I will put up with infinitely more screaming and dirt throwing from a child if the parents seem to be *trying.* It's when they give zero fucks that I want to murder the little shits.

So I possessed a trick that we called “The Evil Death Stare” or EDS for short. The EDS consists of a look that conveys a threat of physical violence combined with outright distain. One of the great things about our monkey brain is that the human emotions are universal. A smile is a smile, a frown is a frown, and the EDS can be understood by all people, even those of a very young age.

Now the best trick with the EDS is to be able to turn it on and turn it off quickly. It became a game where I, or my wife, would shoot the EDS at a kid in front of us at Target (why always Target? I dunno, just almost always there). The kid would visibly wilt and always move to be closer to their parent. As well they should, when someone looks at a kid with a look of real malice and intent, the monkey brain makes the child go to safety. As soon as the child moved towards the parent, the EDS was lifted and my wife and I would go back to a normal conversation. We found that a well timed EDS will shut up a misbehaving child with a near perfect batting average. Meaning, it usually took only one EDS and the kid would shut up and start behaving better. The human equivalent of The Dog Whisperer’s “tschh”.

Yes, I just more than condoned threatening a child. I recommended it. But the EDS is a silent and well placed threat. One that gets children who are behaving badly in public to change their behavior.

Now, this isn’t quite a story that ends with a Grinch like “his heart grew that day” ending, but it is close.

My wife and I practice what we call “high touch parenting”. There are lots aspects of our parenting style, very few of which are accidental. One of them is that we have always treated our kids with respect. Even when they were at the “terrible twos” stage, we never yelled or threatened or spanked. We treated them with the same respect as we would have wanted to be treated, albeit one where the parent is still the responsible party and the child is still a child.

We have never punished our children, only talked with them. Sometimes at the end of a one of our parenting conversations my wife and I will turn to each other and say “do you think they got it that time” to which the other person will inevitably reply “oh yeah, this time they understood”. It takes a great deal of effort and energy to only be on the positive side. It is much easier to threaten or to put the child in a “time out”, but we fundamentally believe that the only lesson that is learned from punishment is that the parent has more power. By talking and listening to our children we demonstrate on a fundamental level the behaviors we expect them to have.

Not that I pass up too many occasions to say so, but my kids behavior is, for the most part, fantastic. People consistently praise how respectful they are, not just to strangers and adults, but to each other. There is no sibling rivalry, only support between family members. We let our kids do odd things like wander around a restaurant, but they don’t cause any disturbances. They are just curious what the rest of the place looks like, so we let them. They come back and politely “report” what they have seen.

Now, I did say we never punished. But we do occasionally point out to the children that they are getting a bit squirmy and that if a stroll doesn’t help them sit still then maybe something like push-ups or sit-ups or jumping jacks are in order. Yes, my kids do jumping jacks in Target if they aren’t listening. But this is a rare occasion, except for each night before bed when energy fills the children and some form of exercise becomes inevitable.

While I could go on about “high touch parenting”, my story is about the time when my wife didn’t. She didn’t break our guidelines in that she struck the kids, it was about the time she didn’t stop them when they acted in the way that children do, but they shouldn’t.

It was about 4 years ago, Ann had learned that her mother had an incurable but exceedingly rare disease. So rare, that only 10 people a year in the US ever have the disease. Her mom has been slowly dying ever since then. Her father had, less than 6 months before, also been given a death sentence in that he had a lung issue that would slowly rob him of his vitality. Now, mind you, both of them are still alive today, and have had the best and longest dying period. But at the time, we didn’t know if we would even have a chance to see them alive again.

It was on that day, when Ann’s heart was so burdened with concerns that, while at Target, she just ignored the kids. They were “those kids”, our great and fantastic kids who rarely put a foot wrong, were tare assing around ‘nam looking for the shit. And that is when Ann saw a well dressed man recoil with horror at our kids. Now clearly this young gentleman didn’t know the secrets of the EDS. He only knew bad behavior when he saw it. And, did he see it that day.

When Ann made it back home and collapsed into my arms, she told me how while she was there, she didn’t have the energy nor the will to stop the kids. She just couldn’t. Her heart was too heavy with concerns for her mother and she just looked at the kids in a fog. She could only sit there and quietly in her head wish that her children would behave better. She didn’t have the energy or the will to move faster out of Target only to plod hopelessly out. She would have felt ashamed, but a life sucking sadness was all she could feel.

And the Grinch aspect of this was that I was forced to acknowledge that by commission or omission other parents make this same choice. They choose at any given time not to be that parent that smiles at their kid and gets their kid to behave by showing them love. But sometimes, people have other things in their life that prevents them from making, what I feel, is the right choice. And when I see strangers, again in the Target, and their kids are acting up, I don’t know what else is happening in the parent’s life. I don’t know if they have financial issues or someone is dying or, like a coworker of mine now, has their in-laws trapped in Syria. All I see is the snapshot now: badly behaving kids. There may be a thousand things wrong with their life and some of them make it impossible to, for my convenience, make their kids shut the fuck up.

So now, I just smile. I know my kids are safe, my kids are happy, and those kids are not my kids. My life is blessed and I don’t know why those other parents are choosing at that time not to enjoy being with their children. It may not be a choice they can make at this time. And for me, that is OK. I still try to shoot an occasional EDS, but the power is weakened. Mostly I just smile. I’ve found that, while not as effective as the EDS in getting a kid to act right, a smile goes a long way. It makes me feel better about the situation, and really, that is all I can really change.

So I possessed a trick that we called “The Evil Death Stare” or EDS for short. The EDS consists of a look that conveys a threat of physical violence combined with outright distain. One of the great things about our monkey brain is that the human emotions are universal. A smile is a smile, a frown is a frown, and the EDS can be understood by all people, even those of a very young age.

Now the best trick with the EDS is to be able to turn it on and turn it off quickly. It became a game where I, or my wife, would shoot the EDS at a kid in front of us at Target (why always Target? I dunno, just almost always there). The kid would visibly wilt and always move to be closer to their parent. As well they should, when someone looks at a kid with a look of real malice and intent, the monkey brain makes the child go to safety. As soon as the child moved towards the parent, the EDS was lifted and my wife and I would go back to a normal conversation. We found that a well timed EDS will shut up a misbehaving child with a near perfect batting average. Meaning, it usually took only one EDS and the kid would shut up and start behaving better. The human equivalent of The Dog Whisperer’s “tschh”.

Yes, I just more than condoned threatening a child. I recommended it. But the EDS is a silent and well placed threat. One that gets children who are behaving badly in public to change their behavior.

Now, this isn’t quite a story that ends with a Grinch like “his heart grew that day” ending, but it is close.

My wife and I practice what we call “high touch parenting”. There are lots aspects of our parenting style, very few of which are accidental. One of them is that we have always treated our kids with respect. Even when they were at the “terrible twos” stage, we never yelled or threatened or spanked. We treated them with the same respect as we would have wanted to be treated, albeit one where the parent is still the responsible party and the child is still a child.

We have never punished our children, only talked with them. Sometimes at the end of a one of our parenting conversations my wife and I will turn to each other and say “do you think they got it that time” to which the other person will inevitably reply “oh yeah, this time they understood”. It takes a great deal of effort and energy to only be on the positive side. It is much easier to threaten or to put the child in a “time out”, but we fundamentally believe that the only lesson that is learned from punishment is that the parent has more power. By talking and listening to our children we demonstrate on a fundamental level the behaviors we expect them to have.

Not that I pass up too many occasions to say so, but my kids behavior is, for the most part, fantastic. People consistently praise how respectful they are, not just to strangers and adults, but to each other. There is no sibling rivalry, only support between family members. We let our kids do odd things like wander around a restaurant, but they don’t cause any disturbances. They are just curious what the rest of the place looks like, so we let them. They come back and politely “report” what they have seen.

Now, I did say we never punished. But we do occasionally point out to the children that they are getting a bit squirmy and that if a stroll doesn’t help them sit still then maybe something like push-ups or sit-ups or jumping jacks are in order. Yes, my kids do jumping jacks in Target if they aren’t listening. But this is a rare occasion, except for each night before bed when energy fills the children and some form of exercise becomes inevitable.

While I could go on about “high touch parenting”, my story is about the time when my wife didn’t. She didn’t break our guidelines in that she struck the kids, it was about the time she didn’t stop them when they acted in the way that children do, but they shouldn’t.

It was about 4 years ago, Ann had learned that her mother had an incurable but exceedingly rare disease. So rare, that only 10 people a year in the US ever have the disease. Her mom has been slowly dying ever since then. Her father had, less than 6 months before, also been given a death sentence in that he had a lung issue that would slowly rob him of his vitality. Now, mind you, both of them are still alive today, and have had the best and longest dying period. But at the time, we didn’t know if we would even have a chance to see them alive again.

It was on that day, when Ann’s heart was so burdened with concerns that, while at Target, she just ignored the kids. They were “those kids”, our great and fantastic kids who rarely put a foot wrong, were tare assing around ‘nam looking for the shit. And that is when Ann saw a well dressed man recoil with horror at our kids. Now clearly this young gentleman didn’t know the secrets of the EDS. He only knew bad behavior when he saw it. And, did he see it that day.

When Ann made it back home and collapsed into my arms, she told me how while she was there, she didn’t have the energy nor the will to stop the kids. She just couldn’t. Her heart was too heavy with concerns for her mother and she just looked at the kids in a fog. She could only sit there and quietly in her head wish that her children would behave better. She didn’t have the energy or the will to move faster out of Target only to plod hopelessly out. She would have felt ashamed, but a life sucking sadness was all she could feel.

And the Grinch aspect of this was that I was forced to acknowledge that by commission or omission other parents make this same choice. They choose at any given time not to be that parent that smiles at their kid and gets their kid to behave by showing them love. But sometimes, people have other things in their life that prevents them from making, what I feel, is the right choice. And when I see strangers, again in the Target, and their kids are acting up, I don’t know what else is happening in the parent’s life. I don’t know if they have financial issues or someone is dying or, like a coworker of mine now, has their in-laws trapped in Syria. All I see is the snapshot now: badly behaving kids. There may be a thousand things wrong with their life and some of them make it impossible to, for my convenience, make their kids shut the fuck up.

So now, I just smile. I know my kids are safe, my kids are happy, and those kids are not my kids. My life is blessed and I don’t know why those other parents are choosing at that time not to enjoy being with their children. It may not be a choice they can make at this time. And for me, that is OK. I still try to shoot an occasional EDS, but the power is weakened. Mostly I just smile. I’ve found that, while not as effective as the EDS in getting a kid to act right, a smile goes a long way. It makes me feel better about the situation, and really, that is all I can really change.