Do you have kids?

oh yes I have noticed this. Once when my eldest was just a baby, we were at a restaurant...we didn't have a sitter so we brought him along. Next thing you know, he was crying. Mind you this was not some fancy upscale, adults only place. This woman very loudly stated that if she had kids she would never bring them to a crowded restaurant. How dare I inflict my child's crying on innocent people. So I turned around and said, "lady, if you ever stop being such a bee-otch (substituted word) you might actually get a husband and find out for yourself how hard raising a kid is, until then shut your mouth and finish your food. We wouldn't want it to get cold now would we ?" I thought my husband was going to crawl under the table. She turned all shades of red and left the restaurant.

Before you have kids you think they will do what you say how and when. After you have kids you relize it is not the perfect world you think it is. The way you think you will handle certain situation don't work and you eventually turn to the things you say you will never do.

oh completely!!! people without kids will never understand until they have their own, but that's excusable. i don't mind so much the kidless "parents" b/c i can slough em off and say "eh, what do you really know??", but what really busts my buttons are the actual PARENTS that insist on telling others how to parent their kids. that drives me bonkers. for example: my son was 2 weeks old. i was going berserk at home and my mother was visiting us for 2 weeks to help out, so we decided to take the baby on his first official outing to wal-mart. he had a clean bill of health from the dr and was sleeping peacefully for most of the trip. THEN, i was taking him to the car while my mom was at the check-out (he was waking up and would want to eat) and this woman, with her own child in tow, stopped to admire my little bundle. she asked "how old", i told, and i got a look like "you horrible mom" and she said "wow, that's pretty early to be having him out like this." i was shocked!!! HELLO it's september in SC, no cold weather issues and he's 2 weeks old!! i'm sorry, should i have waited until he was ready to graduate high school before his first trip to wal-mart?? gosh. nice question! one thing i learned from my mom... never say "my kid will never do ____." eventually you will have to taste those words!

Yes, definitely, I didn't even like kids before I had one. I was always commenting on the way parents couldn't control their children and such and saying that if I had a child it wouldn't act like that. Now it's my child running through the store like a banshee while I'm trying desperately to control him, threatening that if he's not good he's going to get it when he gets home. I am no longer fazed when my house looks like a tornado went through it and my general response to friends and family is, "oh well, he's just a kid." It's amazing how your perceptions change when it's your own child.