For once, a topic about something the Chinese people are doing right. Patience with kids.

I have 2 young boys, naturally they're boisterous and curious. They can be hard to control at times, and at other times, they are passive and ready for bed. If they behave badly in public, I'm fully prepared to apologize, clean up and either control my kids, or leave.

I lose patience and get angry at them from time to time. As a parent, I understand that other people can't be expected to have the same amount of patience as me, because they are my kids after all, not theirs. In China, the patience people had for kids may perhaps have been higher than I could expect back home, which set me up for a reverse culture shock.

I'm frankly amazed by how quickly people lose patience and start tapping on my shoulder with parenting judgements. Some people have completely unbalanced responses. In some places, my kids are out of control, rolling over the floor screaming and climbing everywhere, and nobody will say a thing. I discipline them, of course.
Then in another place, the kids are just walking, curious, gently touching non-breakable items, and some angry store worker shouts at me that it isn't a playground and they can't just do what they want.

We had that a few times in supermarkets, pharmacies and restaurants. The reaction is completely out of proportion. One supermarket worker practically chased us out the store with chastisements.
In a pizzeria, a waiter gave angry comments about my 1-year-old spilling spaghetti bolognese on their clean table napkin: "dry cleaning costs money!", then he angrily takes away all the napkins, and puts my wife's spaghetti onto a different type of plate.

Is it because i live in a quiet North-German village with lazy wage workers? Northerners are famous for being cold and impatient. And wage workers have no vested interest in satisfied patronage because they get their salary regardless, so perhaps they forgo customer service to chase out children because they can't be arsed to do any contractually obligated cleaning duties?

In China, most restaurants are family owned, so they all want to keep people happy. But even employees in department stores don't shout at us if the kids touch valuable or breakable things.

This is probably reverse culture shock, that I'm so surprised that people complain about children too readily. China gave me unrealistic expectations. However, tolerance for kids being kids is generally a positive thing, that I see too little of back home.

Some of you expats regularly comment about how reckless kids tear the place up in China, so I expect some of you have a different opinion about things. I'd be interested to hear what you think of this.

Having children in Europe is already an unrewarding practice. We have actual pension plans, and society is too individualistic to be able to reliably count on your kids helping you when you get old. Local people generally consider people with children to be selfish in some form, and all the collateral consequences for others are a direct result of their selfishness.

Europe's population is dwindling, and a lot of people are concerned how immigrants are replacing the local population. Perhaps we need to have a good look at western culture, and ask ourselves, civilized or not, does it work? We seem to have forgotten something important along the way. Perhaps sacrificing some time, effort, table napkins and clean supermarket aisles will be worth the result.