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[Grimshot]

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[DJ]

I could read both Latin and Cyrillic scripts at 4, so there

Anyway, back to the logistics of watching children while shopping, don't majority of kids have two parents? One can watch the kids at home while the other gets groceries.

[MonkeyHead]

Or in my case... Daddy is off earning money to pay for things, while mummy takes both the kids. Chances are the shops wont be open when daddy is home from work, and the weekends are spent doing family things like staring out the window at the rain rather than shopping. Granted, now one is in full time school, she only has to take one of them, making her life a lot easier.

[DJ]

That must be some weird work hours, because over here grocery stores generally work from 6AM to 9PM.

[MonkeyHead]

Rural North Wales. Not exactly your 24hr shop hub. You are lucky if most places stay open later than 5PM. That and my work not allowing an abundance of free time kinda defines the issue. Not forgetting most parents prefer to do things together whilst involving thier offspring as opposed to having one parent trapped indoors. In fairness to my partner she chooses to do the daily grind with them in tow in order to allow family fun time when daddy is availiable as opposed to carting them places to shop etc when we could and should be off feeding the ducks or playing on the swings as a family. Its a pathetic cliche I am embarrased to trot out, but until you have kids, its hard to comment with much accuracy - they are life consuming.

[DJ]

Oh, thought you're in USA. Hm, if it's Europe and rural what most people do here in Bosnia should work then. Over here couples with kids take turns watching each other's children, and kids love getting some playtime with other kids their age. I didn't want to bring that up because AFAIK something like that would be completely unthinkable in USA.

[Vector]

But it usually wasn't about anything in particular*, just words slung together, because I mostly didn't know how to convey meaning--I just thought rhyming and alliteration were kind of cool.

This reminds me of a friend's younger brother I once knew.  He understood the structure and delivery of jokes, but he didn't seem to understand what made them funny.  As such, he would come out with some pretty bizarre ones ("Q: Why was the plant sad?  A: Because it was on fire").

Hehe, yeah, I remember doing some of those myself.  I used to power through joke books and just read them like they were anything else, but I didn't find them funny at all.  Back before I developed a sense of humor, which really did take between 15 and 20 years, I'd see the "what's the cross between an x and a y" jokes and try to follow the format.

I ended up with "What's the cross between a car and a motorcycle?  A bicycle."

I mean, come on, how absurd do you have to be >_>

Oh, thought you're in USA. Hm, if it's Europe and rural what most people do here in Bosnia should work then. Over here couples with kids take turns watching each other's children, and kids love getting some playtime with other kids their age. I didn't want to bring that up because AFAIK something like that would be completely unthinkable in USA.

We do have so-called playdates and things like that, but there the issue is less with trusting other parents and more about being worried about being sued/liability.  Or so I think, anyhow.  It'd be unimaginable to ask another parent to take care of your kids for long periods of time, yeah, because over here the obligatory individualism means that another parent cannot discipline your children, period, in case they teach a lesson the parents wouldn't like.

I think that's pretty silly, but that's how it is.

[DJ]

Over here not only is it normal for kids to get disciplined by people who are watching them, but they will also get disciplined by their parents for getting disciplined by those people.

As for legal liability, these parents are usually friends, and here it's unthinkable to take a friend to court.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A lot of people in the USA don't have any friends. A study done in 2006 showed that one in four Americans had no personal confidants whatsoever, and that the average number of friends has dropped from three to two since 1985. With our population, that means 75,000,000 people with no friends in the nation.

[DJ]

Wow, that's really sad. But it does explain how seemingly simple things can get complicated, life's a lot easier when you got people willing to help you out with stuff.

[Neonivek]

Lots of people think they're demeaning, but the few that have identified themselves as parents have been very open to the concept

We also found one who thinks it is demeaning... but find children so difficult that it is like "Yeah I am treating my child like a dog, but have you tried to take care of them? Suddenly the leash seems a lot better"

Which I found a bit funny.

[Euld]

Sorry to skip out on 7 pages of reading, but I'm in a hurry 

My parents had to use a baby leash for my younger brother.  He was the type of child who would simply run off for no apparent reason at all, get lost in stores, get lost anywhere at any time for no reason.  The leash was for his safety.

[Neonivek]

Sorry to skip out on 7 pages of reading, but I'm in a hurry 

My parents had to use a baby leash for my younger brother.  He was the type of child who would simply run off for no apparent reason at all, get lost in stores, get lost anywhere at any time for no reason.  The leash was for his safety.

Nessisary evil in otherwords.

So until they invent a GPS for children that also electrocutes kidnappers and teleports children to safety...

[Starver]

...rather than the current ones that electrocute children and teleport kidnappers to safety.

('Teleport' wasn't in my spill-chucker?  It is now!)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The whole thing reminds me of parents who buy shoes for their children that have tracking chips in them, it's an overprotective and clingy way to parent.