Screaming baby at ski resort -- who's right and who's wrong?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dad-on-the-run/to-the-person-who-left-my-sister-this-judgmental-letter_b_4890969.html

I'm kind of on the fence here. I have young kids and I know how tough it is to deal with a crying baby, and you can't always predict what's going to happen, so I sympathize with the predicament the parents are in. But I also sympathize with the couple in the room next door -- shelling out big bucks for a vacation and then having it ruined by someone else's kid screaming its head off all night. Were the parents wrong for bringing the baby to an expensive ski resort when it's too young to ski anyway? Was the couple in the next room wrong for feeling the way they did (I never would have never handled it as rudely as they did rather than offering to help; requesting another room, etc., though it's unclear whether other rooms were available)? Certainly the blogger is wrong for implying that the parents (his sister and her husband) are such important people -- a lawyer on maternity leave and a surgeon -- that they should be entitled to bring their kid wherever they want, other peoples' interests be damned. It's certainly creating some crazy debates among the morons in my Facebook feed. I'd be interested to see what people here think.

 

If you stay in public accommodations, you run the risk of hearing from members of the public. Including babies.

Now, there are places like certain restaurants or movie theaters or whatever that I wouldn't have brought my kids when they were babies. But ski resort or not, it's a hotel room, so you could end up next to a screaming baby, or a drunken bachelorette party, or coked-up frat boys, or who knows what.

I love in the letter how they write about considerate they are. Irony much?

On the other hand, in-law blogger didn't need to drag this out in public, too, by writing about how his family is doing God's work. Just be pissed off, and move on.

 

Wow, that's tough...

The person who wrote the letter was justifiably pissed, but should probably get a grip. Sometimes shit happens and we have to be understanding or at least roll with it, no matter how much it must suck. Crying babies suck for all involved. It's not like the baby was in a movie theater or a wedding or something like that.

The response was equally lame. His brother-in-law being a brain surgeon should have nothing to do with anything. Parents don't have to justify taking a baby with them on vacation.

 

We never thought twice about taking our kids on vacation when they were babies. But when they were between the ages of 18 months to 3 years? Uh, no.

 

This is easy.
Guy who wrote the letter is an asshole. Being in a hotel doesn't guarantee silence.

 

The brain surgeon piece is the part that bothered me the most. This notion that because they have important (high-paying) jobs, they should be entitled to do whatever the hell they want, screw everyone else who might be affected. It injects class entitlement into the whole thing (as does the annoyed couple's presumption that everyone can leave their kid with a "nanny" when they want to go on vacation).

 

I remember being on a flight and the woman behind me was trying her best to calm a crying baby. A businessman turned around and said, "Can you shut that kid up?" and the mom said, "She's one!"

Nobody wants to sit next to a crying baby anywhere, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

As someone who slept in hotels 70-100+ times a year for 12 years, I was kept up by people fighting, people fucking, cheerleader tournaments, gymnastics tournaments, drunken fans, loud cleaning staff, ice machines etc... I can't think of a single instance where I was kept up by a crying kid.

 

I agree with this.

 

If this is a ski resort as she says, they have all kinds of accommodations -- including single-family rentals -- for just this very reason.

At every resort I'm familiar with, the #1 rule is you don't stay in the main village if you want to get any sleep.

 

Hmmmmm. I think I recognize that handwriting.

 

First off, I want to add the disclaimer that I know the blogger and this has been a huge deal to him for a few weeks. Second, I think he overreacted some with the letter as I think he more or less did the same thing to the original letter writer. That said, if you know him it makes sense and he was just trying to stick up for his family. I don't think he at all expected this to go viral (as soon as he wrote his letter, originally on FB, I figured it would) and I don't think he's loved the attention positive or negative.

Now, what I hate about crap about the original letter is that this person's opinion and many like his or hers have this idea that if you have young kids or kids in general you shouldn't do anything. It drives me crazy. I mean, a ski resort is a public place and where they were, from what I can understand, was not incredibly swanky. If your kid starts to act up, it's way tougher on the parent than the people who are annoyed and I think any parent here can vouch for that. But sometimes you want to do stuff or go places with your family. There is plenty this person could have done to avoid the inconvenience. As I've said in response to this and many other like situations, adults are often times way more annoying than any kid.

As for the physician aspect of it, I think the blogger might have overblown that, but as the spouse of a doctor I get his point. You could insert many professions into that. The brother in-law is often away from his kids because of work. He went to a conference. Instead of guaranteeing much more time away from the family he decided to make a family trip out of it so they can all be together a little more. I think that's a great thing to do.