I don't have the current capacity to give this the response it deserves, so I'm going to hit a few key points of where I believe misunderstanding exists and then let you reevaluate what points still need pressing.

I don't think I've ever moved the goalposts. My initial comment is what it always was, that you don't CURRENTLY have a toddler. I think this is directly relevant to my thesis that parenting evaluations from people who aren't themselves currently experiencing it need to be weighed as such (certainly not authoritative, and divorced from the reality of the experience)

Nextly, I think it's worth deconstructing two things:

did the observer genuinely think it was a kidnapping ?
why did the father feel the need to justify?

I'm going to say "probably not" to the first, and to the second probably because of the keen awareness that parents have about how much people love the armchair deconstruction of their parenting. Thankfully, I got some great advice very early on from another parent which was, in short, to get comfortable ignoring the musings of others on the subject of parenting.

But I do think, after reading your post, it would probably make me more inclined to feel the need to justify myself if I were I in the same situation. How do I convince this bystander I'm X, Y, or Z? This person is trying to gather the variables to ultimately determine what I'm doing wrong as a parent.

I also don't think it's realistic that you can't move a tantruming toddler through a public space... Especially if the immediate destination is the car. This hits me as very dogmatic.

The car, for example, IS my kids happy place. It IS the best place to calm him down. Get in the car and sing John Denver together. It seems, to me, cruel to deprive him of that even if I know he's going to be pissed off on the way there.

I can respond more fully when I'm off mobile... And maybe I've over-attributed judgement on your part. I think you've read much more into the original post than is there, and have mentally constructed a scenario much more disturbing than it was. I think the dad calling the kid an asshole was what made it post-worthy, not some level of violence.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 0 points 16 hours ago

I'm perfectly willing to scope down, I'm def not trying to say anything in between the lines.

did the observer genuinely think it was a kidnapping ?

Not likely, most parents have more fear about other people's thoughts than other people actually have during said thoughts. Unfortunately, you'd be hard-pressed for a stranger to act even if they thought the kid was being stolen. As initially said, we're scant on fact, he might have had somewhere to be and had to run with the kid. we'll never know. I don't love his asshole comment, it doesn't bode well for him, but I can't tell him how to live either. We don't even really have an age on the kid :/

why did the father feel the need to justify?

As others have said, maybe it was a bad joke. The observer seemed to be paying what he perceived as undue attention to them.

In public, I don't generally feel the need to apologize for toddlers' behavior unless people are more or less trapped with them (plane, restaurant, maybe a checkout line). If we're in a department store, they can generally just get out of earshot of us for a hot minute until the kid calms down. Most tantrums are shorter than they feel.

In a restaurant, I've historically spent about a minute with misdrecition or bartering serotonin before I just removed them to an outside space to let them calm down. If you have the time, it's best to take them somewhere without a lot of stimulation and basically ignore the behavior until they get over it. It's kind of like a minute per year timeout just to let them calm, not as a structured punishment.

It's not so much a worry about subjecting the public to it as it is about not reinforcing the behavior and helping them learn to soothe. They can be upset, cry, but we're not moving while we're having a commotion if at all possible. Over the years, they learn to take a deep breath when they're upset and not act in frantic rage. Well if you're lucky, anyway.

We fostered for a number of years before our kids, so I've had to deal with a few toddlers who haven't always been from the best home environments. My wife had been fostering for a decade before we met. However bad you've got it, someone out there probably has it worse. Oh god do I have stories.