I've driven a carriage in the Von Steuben Day parade. We were the Berlin Bears two years in a row.

Gotta disagree with you on that one Hec. If you took them in, you can sure as fucking shit explain it for your own damn self on the way out.

Gotta disagree with you on that one Hec. If you took them in, you can sure as fucking shit explain it for your own damn self on the way out.

Man, all we're talking about is assisting with the exit strategy after they already made a mistake. Parenting is pretty much non-stop mistakes and exit strategies.

Lend a convenient Adult Nod and MmmHmmm of backup. It's good for the family; it's good for America.

Elsewise zip it when we're establishing the perimeter on a DefCon3 meltdown that's ruining your outing.

In the end, the kid never did come back to get the opinion of us two ladies. I only heard him from around the corner of the building shouting, "NO! We came here for NOTHING!"

I only heard him from around the corner of the building shouting, "NO! We came here for NOTHING!"

Better than nightmares, junior.

To be clear, it's certainly not your responsiblity to help in a situation like that. But socializing the little critters is a whole lot of trial and error, and it costs nothing to nod and say "Uh huh" to maintain the general peace.

As someone who received a horde of nieces and nephews at too young an age, and subsequently harbors VERY W.C. Fields attitudes towards children, I'm going to withdraw from this discussion. Through my friends kids I've been learning to be tolerant, and I AM grateful for that.

It also costs nothing to ask an unrelated adult to back up your stated position, rather than putting words in their mouth and rudely cutting them off when they disagree.

Maybe if I hadn't watched that Dog Whisperer marathon right before work I wouldn't have been quite so affronted.

I'm going to withdraw from this discussion.

Sorry, Frank, I was far too acidic. Sorry to each of you.

It also costs nothing to ask an unrelated adult to back up your stated position, rather than putting words in their mouth and rudely cutting them off when they disagree.

That's true, but she was probably just hoping/expecting for a play-along-with-me moment. Her hand gesture was undoubtedly rude, but would suggest to me that she didn't really expect deeper participation in her point. She was probably trying to break the dynamic with her kid so that wasn't just a parent-on-child moment (which she might have guessed would spiral down), and was going for a this-is-socially-understood angle with the kid.

Sometimes a head to head confrontation with the child can only descend to where the parent has to exercise an ultimatum. But if you triangulate it, you can sometimes make the moment not about parent-child dynamics but something closer to the actual point: "It's socially understood that this movie is too violent for somebody your age."

Pure speculation on my part, and rude to impose on Laga there but I do think she was just looking for a rebound off Laga rather than requesting actual involvement.

Has anyone seen Night at the Museum? I'm seeing a zillion previews for the sequel on Nickelodeon (SAVE ME from Fairly Oddparents Wishology Weekend) and it actually looks, um, good?

But then, previews often make a terrible movie look good.