Intergenerational divergences

On holiday with my children, 10 and 7, plus my father and a couple his age who are family friends. We visit a castle on top of a hill. My dad meets our friends at the top and by the time I reach them with my two children in tow, the adults have decided we're visiting the castle and then we'll eat. It's 1pm. So the minute we get to them, they get up and enter the castle. I manage to grab a snack and give it to the children (no eating inside). We start the 90 min visit. I'm stuck with the children, who are grumpy because hungry and when told we'll eat after the visit, start rushing through to get to lunch faster. I was fuming at the disregard for what the kids needed and by extension, what was needed for me to have a nice visit (happy fed children). I realised at that point that the issue is not that they ignored my children's needs, it's that when they were parents, they didn't think their children's needs should be taken into account as much as we do now. They would have acted the same with their own children. The children were expected to follow and tough luck if they weren't happy. It made me wonder who was right. On the one hand, if you tend to your kids' immediate needs (I'm not talking about spoiling them) you get a more peaceful time, on the other, you get kids who are less resilient and flexible. Funnily enough, when I expressed my frustration to my own father, as his daughter, his reaction was "oh well they have to wait. And you have to deal with it." Lack of empathy alround. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2AzAzRj