agonyaunt | Dear Prudence: Help! A Kid Messed With Our Dog Despite Being Warned. Now His Mother Is Threatening U

My girlfriend rescued a small, fluffy, abused dog. We have been working on the training, but one behavior will not go away: the dog hates kids. He will growl and try to hide if one approaches him. Taking him on walks is hazardous because there is apparently an uncountable number of idiot parents who think letting their screaming spawn run up to an unknown dog and stick their hands in its face is fine. Half the time I have to pick up my dog because they will not listen when I say not to approach and my dog isn’t friendly. I actually had a mother argue with me that her kid “knows” when a dog is friendly and implied my dog would be better off put down than out in public. I told her she was better off putting a leash on her own kid.

So, my sister knows all about the situation with our dog. She came over with her new girlfriend … and the girlfriend’s 8-year-old kid. We put the dog in the upstairs bedroom and closed the door. My girlfriend explained that he was a rescue and not good around kids, so no going upstairs. The adults went out on the porch for drinks and the kid was playing on their tablet. The next thing you know, the kid comes out bawling and says the dog attacked him. He went upstairs, into the bedroom, and tried to drag our dog from under the bed.

Once we made sure the kid hadn’t been bitten, the fur flew. My sister’s girlfriend started to rant and rave about our “dangerous” dog and threatened to report our dog to the authorities. My girlfriend lost her cool. She told my sister’s girlfriend that she was a “moron” and a “bad mom” considering her kid refuses to follow basic instructions and thinks going through a private area is okay. At that point, I told my sister it would be better if they leave. My sister is furious with my girlfriend and demands an apology or she is skipping Christmas. This has my parents very upset. The thing is, I think the girlfriend owes my girlfriend an apology. We explained the situation and put our dog in our bedroom. The fact her son thought it was alright to wander throughout home and stress out our dog—that is on his mom.

— Dogsbody

Dear Dogsbody,

A couple of rules to live by: Don’t tell people to put their children on leashes and don’t call those children “human spawn.” Don’t call anyone a bad mom or an “idiot parent.” These things make it kind of hard for you to claim the moral high ground. And don’t spend too much time worrying about whether a person who’s mad at you owes you an apology. I mean, what’s the point if you know the person doesn’t mean it?

That said, you and your girlfriend were right when it came to how you handled the dog, and your sister’s girlfriend made a bad choice when she left her son alone in the house, presumably knowing about his capacity to follow instructions. Sure, from a legal and trying-to-avoid-having-your-pet-taken-by-the-authorities perspective, you would have been smarter to refuse to allow a child to be unsupervised with access to an aggressive animal. But you didn’t do anything that justifies your sister’s anger.

She can skip Christmas if she wants, although I think she’s bluffing and will actually be there. You and your girlfriend don’t have to do anything at this point—except hire a really, really good dog trainer.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I wonder if some of that boiling frustration folks have with parents and kids is the fact that a ton of parents allow their kids to run rampant, take little to no responsibility for said kids getting into trouble and in fact scream at everyone else that its their fault that precious Susie refused to listen and got scratched. Or precious Liam tripped the waiter because you all had him running around in the restaurant and refused to get him to sit down, but hey, its the waiters fault somehow. Or precious Jenny has just turned over a pile of clothing in the store and well isn't it your job to clean it up? How dare you be pissed off at the extra work for shit pay? The customer is always right! And like why would you not have headphones for folks who are watching media on a plane bus or any enclosed area? Of course loud as hell media on in already uncomfortable and enclosed space is bloody annoying! Folks get mad at adults who talk loud on the phone and play their media loud too? I just feel like there are a ton of parents who seem to feel that kids should be able to run free, or that its not their problem to watch their kid. And there should be no complaints about the destruction they might cause, and its everyone else's fault when the kid gets hurt. And I really disagree with that point of view.

I wonder if some of that boiling frustration folks have with parents and
kids is the fact that a ton of parents allow their kids to run rampant,

Some of it definitely is. But as ever there are people who use reasonable annoyance as an excuse for unreasonable bigotry. Some suggestions I've heard for dealing with problems with parents, all of which I think would not help:

1) stop offering maternity leave because it encourages people
2) fire pregnant women
3) ETA: ban anyone under 5, or 8, or 20, from air travel
4) forcibly sterilize women "who won't be good parents", often BIPOC (I've been told I should be one of those forcibly sterilized, more than once)

As ever the unreasonable make it harder for the reasonable to be reasonable.

Edited 2022-12-02 18:18 (UTC)

I just feel like there are a ton of parents who seem to feel that kids should be able to run free, or that its not their problem to watch their kid.

In a literal sense, sure. A ton of people is actually not very many people, even if they're all underweight.

But I see people make this claim over and over again, and I gotta say - it never matches my perception, which is that most kids are about as reasonably polite as most adults.

in fact scream at everyone else that its their fault that precious Susie refused to listen and got scratched

I've never seen this

Or precious Liam tripped the waiter because you all had him running around in the restaurant and refused to get him to sit down, but hey, its the waiters fault somehow

or this

precious Jenny has just turned over a pile of clothing in the store and well isn't it your job to clean it up? How dare you be pissed off at the extra work for shit pay

or this!

And like why would you not have headphones for folks who are watching media on a plane bus or any enclosed area? Of course loud as hell media on in already uncomfortable and enclosed space is bloody annoying!

I *have* seen this. It is just as likely to be adults only who are playing their music and videos without headphones - and the sneering resentment I got the one time I told a couple to turn it down because my two niblings had massive crippling migraines and we just had half an hour more before we were home and they could go to bed. Like, wow.

I am very glad that your experience has been free of those issues. Awesome for you! And I am sorry that the adults were assholes to your kids.

Oh god they were the worst, just like the worst. After five minutes of listening them bitch and moan about how asking them to turn down their sound was literally assault, I finally went back to them, pointed out the highly visible police who are stationed on the SI Ferry for every trip, and told them that if they really thought I assaulted them they ought to just tell the cops.

As someone who works customer service in a place where we get a lot of kids, this is true -

--Kids are loud, kids run around and make noise and touch things they aren't supposed to touch. If a family with kids leaves, everyone in the whole library immediately notices the noise reduction. This is pretty much regardless what the parents are doing because: kids, no volume control. But if this is your only exposure to kids, you're going to see this as a 'kids out of control' problem.

--One adult cannot effectively supervise more than about three under-sixes by themself in a public place while also doing other things. They just can't. They can probably keep them from running into traffic but that's about it. (There are more families like this than you might think if you don't spend time in public spaces that explictly invite them in, because the parents are *very aware* that this is true.)

--Some parents are really bad at attempting even minimal supervision of their kids. This is a parent problem, not a kid problem, but it's still a problem.

--The worse a parent is with their kid, the more likely they are to throw a fit at anyone who tries to improve the situation, or make a giant fuss if the kid gets hurt or upset (and by "worse" I don't mean "kid throws a loud tantrum" or "three-year-old is high energy", those parents apologize and are sweethearts. I mean "pays absolutely no attention to them" or "encourages them to commit property damage".) Unfortunately, once they have encountered two or three of this sort, most people just assume all parents with loud kids are that way, because it's not worth the risk of finding out.

(Vast majority of parents: kid they were supervising closely manages to trip and hit their head on furniture, is bleeding profusely. Parent comes to the desk and asks if we have a paper towel or something because they're afraid they made a mess. We have interrogate them to even find out there was an injury and talk them into even borrowing the first-aid kit.

Small yet very consistently loud minority: kid they were completely ignoring in favor of their phone trips stumbles slightly while running full-speed across the room, worried staff member politely reminds them no running in the library, parent suddenly appears and cusses them out for trying to parent *their* #%W$ kid who they know what's best for, get the @#%W# away from us, they'll sue.)

Or precious Liam tripped the waiter because you all had him running around in the restaurant and refused to get him to sit down, but hey, its the waiters fault somehow

I've been the waitress in this type of situation. Back in late 2007/2008 I was working a few shifts a week at a pizza place - parents and two kids came in on a busy night, their son was wearing Heelys and kept skating around the dining room. I asked him a couple times to please be careful, within earshot of the parents, because their table was right next to the area where I had to pick up pizzas to deliver them to tables - kid skated right into me and a hot pizza fell on him, the parents threw a fit, and the family had their entire bill comped. I'm pretty sure that the only reason I didn't get fired was because the table next to them told the manager they'd heard me tell the kid to be careful and saw him slam right into me as I turned around from the pizza window

Dear Prudence: Help! A Kid Messed With Our Dog Despite Being Warned. Now His Mother Is Threatening U

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter

Re: Discussion of letter