The kid was Katie’s kid. The difference is that I can name and shame because although I am in literally Australia I heard feedback that Katie’s attitude of “not interfering” towards her kid was problematic for other people’s experience of the solstice.
I have also been made aware that no one is willing to talk to Katie because they will be hit by a raging onslaught of ridiculous and insane behaviour. That’s fine, I’d rather have people come to Australia and tell me off for naming and shaming than to remain silent when I know information.
In future I hope that all people are agenty enough to tell a kid to shut up, and also to praise a kid who is well behaved (and their parent’s training).
It is taken that you would support kids that are well behaved at an event but this kid was exceptionally misbehaved. I consider this the common public opinion.
And yes the kid was literally running around shouting. (Feedback that made it to Australia)
I think it is important to be able to voice concerns like this, even in the face of social pressure. I also think this was more confrontational than it needed to be—I think you could have factually described things without adding adjectives like “ridiculous” and “insane.”
Possibly relevant point: I believe there was a quiet room and Katie took Andromeda to the quiet room, but the room was not as soundproofed as they thought it was and she could still be heard.
(I am another person who considers the tone this is being brought up in to be highly unkind.)
I think that Merlin and Alicorn should be praised for Merlin’s good behavior. :)
I was happy with the Berkeley event overall.
Next year, I suspect that it would be easier for someone to talk to the guardian of a misbehaving child if there was a person specifically tasked to do so. This could be one of the main event organizers, or perhaps someone directly designated by them. Diffusion of responsibility is a strong force.
I don’t actually think that parents have a huge amount of influence over the behavior of a person who is two months old. (I mean, it’s unclear whether parents have much influence over the behavior of a child of any age, but the case of two-month-olds seems particularly clearcut.) It seems unfair to praise them for the coincidence of Merlin happening to be sleepy at the time.
Fair enough! I think my general point still stands: for two-month-olds, parenting skill is probably outweighed by the mood and temperament of the child when determining how likely the child is to scream during Solstice.
The bad child rearing is one part of it. This child will likely learn the hard way in the playground or in young adulthood what constitutes acceptable behavior. This is often a painful process that could have been avoided.
The other part is the fact that this family is producing unacceptable behavior now and it needs to be dealt with and to stop. If people remain silent things degenerate and people silently stop going because it is so painful. This is just being adults and having standards of what you will put up with. Normal adult assertiveness. It is not .
Ugh… I get that you wanted to take it upon yourself to name the person, but you could’ve written this a bit more sensitively. My guess is that the mother will feel pretty awful reading your comment, and also be uber-defensive.
Edit: The comments replying to me seem correct, and I think it’s probably more important to positively reinforce you actually stating this.
Complaining about people who cause problems is an undersupplied public service in our community. I appreciate Elo’s willingness to overcome the bystander effect. At the same time, gossiping about people on the internet should only be done with great care.
My understanding is, in the relationship between Katie and Andromeda, Andromeda wears the pants. And letting Andromeda wear the pants sucks up time and energy. Using rich person parenting styles has costs if you’re poor.
I’m generally sympathetic to parents who complain about unsolicited childrearing advice. But lots of people in the community have been helping Katie with Andromeda. This is admirable, and I think if these people have a hand in supporting a child, they deserve a voice in how it is raised.
between Katie and Andromeda, Andromeda wears the pants.
I believe that Katie’s choices as to how to raise a human are her own. Right up until it starts influencing others.
Just like I would publicly berate people who won’t vaccinate their children, I would publicly name and shame someone for failing to take actions that are respectful of the other people at the event. (especially in times when it is within your control to do so)
Sure there are days when you still have to go to the DMV even though you have kids in tow and you have to somehow navigate public. Such is life. This is not one of those days. The solstice is an event that is optional in attendance. (even for the religiously inclined, other religious groups find ways to solve this problem)
unsolicited childrearing advice.
Absolutely. I won’t tell Katie how to raise I child, but I will clearly say, you have a responsibility to control your kid at times when they are causing trouble to others. How that is done is up to you.
If a kid is too young to understand (for example to be respectful of others) then you are to take actions that cause the correctly fair experience, as a burden on yourself to take action. for example, taking the kid into another room (as many have mentioned) so that the kid is no longer disrupting others.
My understanding is, in the relationship between Katie and Andromeda, Andromeda wears the pants.
I think “wears the pants” is a phrase that really needs to die. It embodies multiple different outdated, silly and/or potentially offensive assumptions.
OK. I thought you were Eugene because he’s been creating sockpuppets to post low effort SJ content and discredit SJ ever since downvoting was disabled. You know, mean girls feminism type stuff that treats ideas like clothes (“outdated”, “makes me laugh”, “someone somewhere might think it’s ugly”, etc.)
Oh yes, I understand how you got to that conclusion.
I think I have been the #1 target of Eugine’s mass-downvoting for some time, which is why I was amused. But of course I shouldn’t expect other people to be as aware as I am of what Eugine has been doing to me :-).
(If you look at pretty much any comment of mine made in, say, the 3 months before downvoting was disabled, you will see it sitting at −1. And then if you hover your mouse over the karma score you will often notice that it’s actually at +7-8 or +5-6 or +9-10 or something. That would be because, finding that downvoting everything I wrote once wasn’t enough, Eugine decided on a policy of using his sockpuppets to put everything I write below zero. Most of the upvotes on those comments are probably from people who saw them at −1 and thought “meh, this doesn’t deserve to be negative” … only to have their attempt at correction nulled out by Eugine’s socks.)
For context, calling her out specifically is extremely rare, people try to be very diplomatic, and there is definitely a major communcation failure Elo is trying to address.
I’m unsure about the overall rights and wrongs, but surely this is definitely incorrect: you could e.g. have said “I know whose child it was that was making the noise, and it was definitely not Alicorn’s”.
I think it’s a separate issue: in principle, you could have pretty much any norms about calling out other people’s bad behaviour along with pretty much any norms about how one person gets to find out what another wants. But I’d guess that willingness to make public objections like this correlates with Ask+Tell as opposed to Guess, and probably also with Tell as opposed to Ask.
At this point the motivation of “feeling awful” is being made to encourage her to improve her child-managing skills. She can be defensive about it, but no amount of defensiveness can apologise for her bad form which offended a great number of people (I have to wonder how many people have not posted on the thread, once voice of dissent is probably equal to at least 10 silent participants with the same opinion)
She can be defensive about it, but no amount of defensiveness can apologise for her bad form which offended a great number of people
FYI “defensiveness” is bad because she will not change her mind. I didn’t mean “she’ll be offended”. Katie not being defensive is positive for your goals.
The kid was Katie’s kid. The difference is that I can name and shame because although I am in literally Australia I heard feedback that Katie’s attitude of “not interfering” towards her kid was problematic for other people’s experience of the solstice.
I have also been made aware that no one is willing to talk to Katie because they will be hit by a raging onslaught of ridiculous and insane behaviour. That’s fine, I’d rather have people come to Australia and tell me off for naming and shaming than to remain silent when I know information.
In future I hope that all people are agenty enough to tell a kid to shut up, and also to praise a kid who is well behaved (and their parent’s training).
It is taken that you would support kids that are well behaved at an event but this kid was exceptionally misbehaved. I consider this the common public opinion.
And yes the kid was literally running around shouting. (Feedback that made it to Australia)
I think it is important to be able to voice concerns like this, even in the face of social pressure. I also think this was more confrontational than it needed to be—I think you could have factually described things without adding adjectives like “ridiculous” and “insane.”
Fair. In using those words I refer to the history books of events that I was not part of, and know better than to get specific.
Possibly relevant point: I believe there was a quiet room and Katie took Andromeda to the quiet room, but the room was not as soundproofed as they thought it was and she could still be heard.
(I am another person who considers the tone this is being brought up in to be highly unkind.)
I think that Merlin and Alicorn should be praised for Merlin’s good behavior. :)
I was happy with the Berkeley event overall.
Next year, I suspect that it would be easier for someone to talk to the guardian of a misbehaving child if there was a person specifically tasked to do so. This could be one of the main event organizers, or perhaps someone directly designated by them. Diffusion of responsibility is a strong force.
I don’t actually think that parents have a huge amount of influence over the behavior of a person who is two months old. (I mean, it’s unclear whether parents have much influence over the behavior of a child of any age, but the case of two-month-olds seems particularly clearcut.) It seems unfair to praise them for the coincidence of Merlin happening to be sleepy at the time.
He wasn’t that sleepy. I had to feed him twice during the event.
Fair enough! I think my general point still stands: for two-month-olds, parenting skill is probably outweighed by the mood and temperament of the child when determining how likely the child is to scream during Solstice.
The bad child rearing is one part of it. This child will likely learn the hard way in the playground or in young adulthood what constitutes acceptable behavior. This is often a painful process that could have been avoided.
The other part is the fact that this family is producing unacceptable behavior now and it needs to be dealt with and to stop. If people remain silent things degenerate and people silently stop going because it is so painful. This is just being adults and having standards of what you will put up with. Normal adult assertiveness. It is not .
Ugh… I get that you wanted to take it upon yourself to name the person, but you could’ve written this a bit more sensitively. My guess is that the mother will feel pretty awful reading your comment, and also be uber-defensive.
Edit: The comments replying to me seem correct, and I think it’s probably more important to positively reinforce you actually stating this.
Complaining about people who cause problems is an undersupplied public service in our community. I appreciate Elo’s willingness to overcome the bystander effect. At the same time, gossiping about people on the internet should only be done with great care.
My understanding is, in the relationship between Katie and Andromeda, Andromeda wears the pants. And letting Andromeda wear the pants sucks up time and energy. Using rich person parenting styles has costs if you’re poor.
I’m generally sympathetic to parents who complain about unsolicited childrearing advice. But lots of people in the community have been helping Katie with Andromeda. This is admirable, and I think if these people have a hand in supporting a child, they deserve a voice in how it is raised.
I believe that Katie’s choices as to how to raise a human are her own. Right up until it starts influencing others.
Just like I would publicly berate people who won’t vaccinate their children, I would publicly name and shame someone for failing to take actions that are respectful of the other people at the event. (especially in times when it is within your control to do so)
Sure there are days when you still have to go to the DMV even though you have kids in tow and you have to somehow navigate public. Such is life. This is not one of those days. The solstice is an event that is optional in attendance. (even for the religiously inclined, other religious groups find ways to solve this problem)
Absolutely. I won’t tell Katie how to raise I child, but I will clearly say, you have a responsibility to control your kid at times when they are causing trouble to others. How that is done is up to you.
If a kid is too young to understand (for example to be respectful of others) then you are to take actions that cause the correctly fair experience, as a burden on yourself to take action. for example, taking the kid into another room (as many have mentioned) so that the kid is no longer disrupting others.
I think “wears the pants” is a phrase that really needs to die. It embodies multiple different outdated, silly and/or potentially offensive assumptions.
Eugene?
Me? Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
No, I am not Eugine and the above was intended seriously.
OK. I thought you were Eugene because he’s been creating sockpuppets to post low effort SJ content and discredit SJ ever since downvoting was disabled. You know, mean girls feminism type stuff that treats ideas like clothes (“outdated”, “makes me laugh”, “someone somewhere might think it’s ugly”, etc.)
Oh yes, I understand how you got to that conclusion.
I think I have been the #1 target of Eugine’s mass-downvoting for some time, which is why I was amused. But of course I shouldn’t expect other people to be as aware as I am of what Eugine has been doing to me :-).
(If you look at pretty much any comment of mine made in, say, the 3 months before downvoting was disabled, you will see it sitting at −1. And then if you hover your mouse over the karma score you will often notice that it’s actually at +7-8 or +5-6 or +9-10 or something. That would be because, finding that downvoting everything I wrote once wasn’t enough, Eugine decided on a policy of using his sockpuppets to put everything I write below zero. Most of the upvotes on those comments are probably from people who saw them at −1 and thought “meh, this doesn’t deserve to be negative” … only to have their attempt at correction nulled out by Eugine’s socks.)
feel free to message me any suspicious activity.
For context, calling her out specifically is extremely rare, people try to be very diplomatic, and there is definitely a major communcation failure Elo is trying to address.
I could be more diplomatic. But I’d still have to name katie for the sake of sparing Alicorn the confusion about her own child-raising.
I’m unsure about the overall rights and wrongs, but surely this is definitely incorrect: you could e.g. have said “I know whose child it was that was making the noise, and it was definitely not Alicorn’s”.
I wonder where this form of communication lands in Ask, Tell, or Guess Culture?
I think it’s a separate issue: in principle, you could have pretty much any norms about calling out other people’s bad behaviour along with pretty much any norms about how one person gets to find out what another wants. But I’d guess that willingness to make public objections like this correlates with Ask+Tell as opposed to Guess, and probably also with Tell as opposed to Ask.
At this point the motivation of “feeling awful” is being made to encourage her to improve her child-managing skills. She can be defensive about it, but no amount of defensiveness can apologise for her bad form which offended a great number of people (I have to wonder how many people have not posted on the thread, once voice of dissent is probably equal to at least 10 silent participants with the same opinion)
FYI “defensiveness” is bad because she will not change her mind. I didn’t mean “she’ll be offended”. Katie not being defensive is positive for your goals.