Comments on: Hear No Evil

By: Phyllis

Phyllis — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 19:13:41 +0000

Well I have to say that every kid I know who has a potty mouth has one because their parents set the example, not strangers. And for every smoker blowing toxins towards my kids there is also a parent using their gigantic stroller as a Humvee to hog the sidewalk and push people into the street.

By: Eowyn

Eowyn — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:05:37 +0000

I’m a twenty-something without kids. Sometimes I’ve notice foul-mouthed people and children present, I gently say “Hey, there are kids present.” Usually the people are so shocked to be chastized (but not lectured) that they mumble an appology and do change their language. I’ve even done that to customers when I worked retail.

I don’t try the ‘holier than thou’ attitude. I think the key is just pitch like you’d know they’d do the right thing and just didn’t notice the near-by kid.

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:29:41 +0000

I’m both a twentysomething AND the parent of an 8-year-old, so I try to be sympathetic when my peers get a little inappropriate with the language… but even I was a little taken aback when my neighbors (a rental house with half-a-dozen twentysomethings living in it) carved an obscene hand gesture into their Halloween pumpkin, and had it gracing their porch for, like, two weeks. I gearing up to politely ask if they would mind moving it, but then I realized the neighborhood kids were totally oblivious–to the various 5-to-10-year-olds on our street, the antics of unknown twentysomethings are of no interest whatsoever.

By: class-factotum

class-factotum — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:05:59 +0000

RE: the lady smoking on the sidewalk, I would be annoyed if she didn’t move because I was trying to get past her with an unwieldy baby carriage, but I am not a big fan of telling people they cannot smoke in a public place. It would be different if she walked into my home and lit up. My property, my rules.

By: Eilish

Eilish — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 05:29:15 +0000

Generally, my experience has matched dgm’s. Most guys are pretty cool about it, and it’s the teenage girls who have the worst attitude. Usually, though, if I phrase it right (Hey, guys, my son’s at that age where he repeats EVERYTHING he hears! Would you mind keeping it PG?) most young people don’t have a problem.

By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:33:53 +0000

Yes, the problem with public spaces is that there are so many of the public there.

My take is: if you’re out in public, you take what you can get. Unacceptable behaviour is defined by law and etiquette, and there is no rule about not swearing in front of children. If you don’t want your children to hear it, you can keep them in private spaces their whole lives, provided you have the money, or you can say, “some people don’t behave the way we do, and those people are inferior. If you behave that way too, you’ll become inferior like them,” which is how all right-thinking snobs such as myself are brought up.

By: Bellamama

Bellamama — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:08:14 +0000

Swearing isn’t the only problem! I took my baby for a walk and a lady was smoking on the sidewalk. She glanced our way and didn’t move. When I did a little off-roading to get away from her cloud, she rolled her eyes at me and made a “tsk” sound. Nice, huh?

By: Awesome Mom

Awesome Mom — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:23:05 +0000

I risked the wrath of a coup of foulmouthed kids that were standing in front of my house swearing when we had the windows open. I chewed them out big time especially since they had no business being in front of my house anyway (I hate that we live cheek to jowl with our neighbors). It frustrates me to hear stuff like that.

By: gamma

gamma — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 14:59:05 +0000

Holy cow, Glinda, how have you been able to maintain that separation of adult-and-childhood? All I had to do is say, “Do this” when I was doing else, and I was immediately caught, be it seat belts/car seats or language or movies or whatever. Now I am the best seat-belt wearer ever, and my language could slip unedited into a “G” movie.

Such is the power of parenting.

By: Suzanne

Suzanne — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:46:27 +0000

Well, once I almost worked up the nerve to ask two teenagers to watch their language. And then they walked away from my kids. Maybe next time I’ll be able to close the deal.