Parents always feel guilty in public spaces when their children cry, speak loudly, take a long time to do things, make a mess, drop stuff, bump into stuff, etc.
This guilt is misplaced, however. People react with frustration and annoyance to children who are of the same age they were when they sustained their most lasting traumas. Those who are driven up a wall by a crying infant suffer from traumas of infancy. Those who detest seeing a toddler covered in food and throwing toys around were traumatized as toddlers. People who hate children of all ages experienced long-term abuse or neglect.
In short, don’t worry that your children are causing discomfort. They don’t have that power. The passerby who is cringing with irritation at your toddler would feel the exact same anger if you and your kid were currently on the beach in Australia.
Psychologically healthy people see your drooling 5-month-old, loudly singing 18-month-old and the question-per-second 3-year-old and feel tenderness and joy. Everybody else should be grateful to your kids for giving them an opportunity to recognize that they need help to address their childhood traumas.
Clarissa's Blog 
I must be the most psychologically healthy dude ever! Crying/yelling children legit do not bother me. Even in confined spaces like airplanes. In fact, it is a great source of entertainment for me to watch people get all upset at the sights and sounds of babies crying in airplanes or toddlers acting like toddlers. My girlfriend can’t believe how patient I am with children.
And, of course, all my friends’ children love me!
This is one of the many worth-nothing life skills I have that I am inordinately proud of. The ability to have a sound sleep every night without fail, that’s another one.
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This is really good to hear. I am never irritated by children. Even on a airplane. Even when I’m tired and trying to get some sleep. Now I know it just means I have no trauma from early childhood.
I do find teenagers extremely annoying and even intimidating but that’s a different story…
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Put me down for lots o’ trauma then. I generally don’t mind very small children and am ready to put up with some noise, but I was in a train recently that was overcrowded (8 people per compartment instead of the usual 6), hot (w/ no ac), too many people with huge-ass suitcases and one of the passengers was a toddler who kept up a consistant barrage of crying, screaming and trying to crawl out the window of the moving train (that might be an exaggeration).
Part of me could sympathize that the trip was no fun for the kid but the screaming meant I couldn’t talk with the colleague I was travelling with (or try to pass the time by reading). The mother and grandmother were doing what they could to calm the kid but it mostly wasn’t working
I was really relieved when the grandmother found a different compartment.
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How traumatized am I if I’m not bothered by loud kids as long as they don’t interact with me/I don’t have to take care of them?
Also, how old do they have to be for me to be healthily annoyed by them? 😛
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Oh please! Children certainly do have the power to annoy others in public places, just as loud and disruptive teenagers and adults do. Are you seriously trying to argue that anyone bothered by crying babies or out of control kids in public places should just suck it up so as to avoid being labeled as pathological? Did you feel this way before you had a child, or is this a sudden insight?
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I’m seriously trying to argue that any experience can be a source of insight into the self. For instance, an excessive preoccupation about “being labeled” is not conducive to great happiness.
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I couldn’t agree more that an excessive preoccupation with “being labeled” is not conducive to great happiness, but I also think it’s crazy (not to put too fine a point on it) to say that people who object to being bothered in public places by other people’s out of control kids are not being reasonable but rather displaying the traces of some sort of early trauma. Any experience can, you’re absolutely right, be a source of insight into the self. At the same time, surely you must agree that objecting to having a conversation in a cafe or restaurant or train or any other public place interrupted by other people’s loud and boisterous children is not in itself a sign of anything other than not wanting to have to deal with annoying interruptions not of one’s making. Seriously, though–did you always feel that children should be able to run amok in public and anyone who objects should shut up and seek psychiatric help, or is this a new insight brought on by parenthood?
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It works exactly the same if you are annoyed by adults or objects or anything. Emotions originate within the self and not without.
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So all annoyance should send one into therapy to seek insight into internal reasons rather than trying to deal with the external annoyance-trigger? That doesn’t seem like a good way to live. If there’s a jackhammer blasting away under your window at 7am do you view your interrupted sleep as an occasion to contemplate the early trauma that made you sensitive to loud noise?
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It’s ok, I’m not going to force anybody into the insights they are not ready for. 😃
But there are people who will be interested in approach.
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Your condescending response doesn’t address my questions.
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My own insight into the issue happened when I realized that I had an uncontrollable need to shush my niece. It started when she turned 5,5 years old. I noticed that I’m not bothered by the noises made by younger children but only by those made by 5,5 year old son. And then I realized: this was the age I was when my sister was born and all of a sudden I was being shush ed by everybody. In my niece, I was trying to shut up my much younger self who still feared being in trouble.
I can also share a story about discovering why the sound of a vacuum cleaner drives me nuts like no other sound.
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Clarissa:are you talking about minor annoyance or the kind of people who go into rants and fits on message boards about children as a topic of conversation?
I either generally come across well behaved babies or small children or parents who attempt to corrall their children so I don’t care.
I wonder what feeling frustration or annoyance at the elderly says about people’s developmental stages.
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Annoyance with the elderly is fear of usurping the symbolic role of the leader, the wise elder.
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Your response above didn’t have a “reply” possibility so I’ll reply here. What you say about your experience with your niece makes total sense, but I really don’t think it’s generally applicable. Some things are annoying for reasons that have nothing to do with early experiences, and I’d say that being annoyed by disruptive children, or anyone or anything else, when one is trying to converse, or read, or just be quiet and do nothing, is a reaction that doesn’t necessarily require early-trauma analysis. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as our friend Freud noted, and sometimes the irritation of a screaming child is just that.
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I can only repeat that I fully recognize everybody’s right to reject this approach.
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My first thought when I hear other people’s kids crying is “Phew! Not mine. I don’t actually have to do anything!” It’s quickly followed by deep sympathy for the parents who are generally overwhelmed by guilt and look like they wish they could disappear. I don’t mind other people’s kids at all.
I remember flying overseas, sitting next to a mom with a baby. The baby cried intermittently, nothing special, he’s a baby; the poor mom was so apologetic, I couldn’t convince her that I really didn’t mind, that I have plenty of kids at home so it doesn’t faze me. I think she finally believed me when I offered to hold him while she went to the bathroom or then sat down to eat using both hands.
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Maybe I am not as traumatized as I think? Kids don’t bother me and now I am trying to figure out whether there is any particular age that does. Yet, I’m traumatized and I have reactions that show it — they just aren’t irritation reactions. Hm.
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You might be quite traumatized but if you don’t identify with the abuser and are not afraid of putting figures of authority under critical scrutiny, you won’t be angry at kids.
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