If You Don’t Feel Like Parenting, At Least Teach Your Children How Not To Be Assholes Before You Stop

I live in a part of town that the locals like to refer to as “God’s Country” (I’m not kidding). It’s not a super religious part of town with people preaching The Word or anything. It’s more that everyone who lives there is Irish Catholic and therefore have 18 kids each.

Seriously.

My house is on a block with a few of these families. So we’ve got an army of children running around at all times. I can’t speak for the other families, but the one that lives directly next to me has zero control over their children. Well either they have zero control OR just don’t care about their children OR don’t give two shits about anyone else in the neighborhood OR all of the above.

The kids next door stay out and play in the streets for hours on end with no adult in sight. I’m not talking “stay out until dinner time” or “stay out until a normal child’s bedtime”. These little shits stay out until ELEVEN O’ CLOCK PM. At least. And then they take their “games” inside and continue on, sometimes until 2 am.

Now I was once a child. I used to play in my neighborhood. Outside. And make kid noise! Until my mom would call me in (always at a reasonable hour, mind you.) Never once in all my years of being a kid did I play whatever f-cked up game these kids play.

If I had to describe what this game that they play EVERY NIGHT from the time I get home to work until AFTER I, an adult mind you, GO TO BED it would be called “Let’s play what it sounds like to be brutally abused and/or raped.”

I realize this sounds like a horrible description, but trust me, even that does it no justice.

From what I can gather, the kids – mostly little girls – just go outside and SCREECH like I’ve never heard ANYONE screech ever. It’s not a jovial “HAHA! We are playing a game! Isn’t this FUN!” kind of screech. It is a HELL ON F-CKING EARTH kind of screech. And it literally is CONSTANT.

My sister (who lives with me) and I have been totally fed up lately. The problem is, there are no parents around EVER to speak to. Finally the other day, we both had really long hard days at work and just wanted to relax and this screaming had been going on for a couple of hours, we asked the kids to be quiet. Not to stop playing, or go inside. Just to please be quiet.

The brother responded “YOU BE QUIET.”

Oh. No. You. Didn’t.

I’m sorry but if you have no interest in parenting and knowing when to tell your kids to shut up or, if you don’t want to be around, at least having the foresight to teach your kids respect or how to behave – you don’t deserve to have kids. Much less 14 of them.

Right now, I want all of my money and time for myself. I don’t want to invest either of those things in teaching some little person on how to BE. THIS IS WHY AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE I DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. Call me selfish, or call me honest. I know it might sound harsh, but trust me, me saying that is less harsh than having to listen to the little shits next door.

I want to hate them, but really, I just hate their parents. Clearly these kids have never been taught that screaming bloody murder out in the streets is just not acceptable. And their parents clearly don’t care what they do enough to scold them, so why should they listen when their two adult neighbors tell them to be quiet?

I was staying at Hooker’s on Wednesday night (thank god) and my sister called to tell me that she was lying in bed – you know, trying to go to bed at an adult’s BED TIME – when she heard incessant banging. She thought first that someone was trying to break into our apartment, then she thought maybe our new neighbors downstairs (boy are they in for a surprise) were hanging pictures, and then finally after ten minutes of being entirely freaked out because the noise started to get louder, she looked out our kitchen window to discover the source:

Directly across the way in the window of the house next door, there was their 2 year old boy, in ONLY a diaper, jumping up and down on the washing machine.

I’m sorry, but it was 11:30 at night. Where were the parents?! If my sister, in the house NEXT DOOR was actually FRIGHTENED by this racket, how is it even possible that his parents did not hear?

Have they tuned it out? Are they not home? Are they drunk? Do they just not care?

I do not know the answers to these questions because like I stated earlier, I NEVER SEE THEM. EVER.

These people are BAD PARENTS. And they are raising their children to be ASSHOLES. And they are making me not want to have children ever. Ever. Ever. Ever.

I know that there are good parents out there who want to be with their children and teach them right from wrong and how not to be assholes. In this entry I am certainly not talking about them. I am friends with many and were raised by those kinds of parents aka good parents.

And for the record, before anyone slams me, I am not talking about “when kids will be kids” kind of situation. Trust me, I had my moments as a child: once my father took me food shopping and I had a MELT DOWN in line because I WANTED A CANDY BAR. I screeched, I screamed, I turned in to Jell-o on the supermarket floor. My father told me “NO. YOU WILL NOT HAVE A CANDY BAR AND YOU WILL BE QUIET RIGHT NOW.” Well I wasn’t having any of it, so my father did the right thing. He removed me from the store and apologized to the other patrons for my asshole-iness. He, get this, PARENTED.

That is NOT what I’m talking about. I am talking about when something like that happens and parents are either a) no where to be seen or b) don’t do a damn thing about it.

Now I tell you the story of my asshole “parent” neighbors for two reasons:

1) to tell you if you are reading this and think you or someone you know wants a child to go back to the beginning of this entry and read again. Then ask yourself some questions. These questions should include things like “When my child is old enough to make noises voluntarily, will I have the patience and know-how to teach him or her how to do it in an acceptable way? Do I have the time and energy to dedicate into not making my child an asshole?

2) to point you in the direction of a blog that makes my day on a regular basis: Violent Acres. I’ve been reading her for sometime and today, there in my Google Reader, was an entry she wrote that was eerily on a very similar topic as the one I had planned to write Out of Control Children Are Safety Hazards In Public Places. Go read that entry. After that you will probably want to bookmark her, or if she’s not really your taste, want to comment and tell me what a bitch she is. Well I like her, so I’d probably just ignore those comments anyway. Thankfully they’re easier to ignore than a bunch of shrieking children.