Horrible experience in front of Knight Moves in Teele Square.

[pekmez]

EDIT: I am adding, the next day, that the owner of the shop has reached out to me, and offered an apology and to try to get to the bottom of what events unfolded outside the store that left me so upset. I will be speaking with him in the next few days and appreciate that they reached out.

Original vent / post:
West Somerville folks - I just had a terrible experience in Teele Square, bad enough that I would like to spread my rage at the proprietor of a local business, the Knight Moves Cafe on Broadway. Please stay far away from this business with kids. If you have any kids who walk to and from the west somerville school, please make sure they steer clear of the business as well.

The proprietor (edit: manager) of this business threatened to call the Somerville police and made my children cry, for the crime of disagreeing over what to get with a few bucks each at the conveience store, and the crime of waiting for me on the sidewalk rather than inside the dry cleaners on the same block, and then choosing to get into my unlocked car with the cold drinks they had bought at the convenience store, while my 5 min errand lasted 15 min because the folks at the dry cleaners were trying to repair a broken zipper for me on a coat I had cleaned out of my closet and intended to donate.

Seriously if you have any choice in ever doing business with them, and support the right of elementary school kids to have a little independence and learn from their disagreements on whether mom said they could get ice cream, I urge you steer clear.

I am FURIOUS at having been confronted for going to the dry cleaners and letting my kids go to the convenience store to enjoy their refreshing cold drinks. And I even like board games and was pleased when they came to town.

I am SURE that plenty of kids the age of mine walk home from WSNS through Teele Square every school day. Yes, even when it's hot out. But if your first grader has an argument with their big sibling in the vicinity of Teele you can expect the police to be called, next time.

Comments

[irilyth]

That sucks. :^(

However: It is widely believed these days that children left without adult supervision will be immediately abducted and sold as sex slaves, and that children left alone in a car will die within minutes. Both of those are obviously absurd, but the Knight Moves folks are not off on the fringes in their alarm at the sight of fragile children.

I think it'd be great for someone (perhaps many someones) to stop by and talk to them about the issue. I don't think it'd be so useful to simply boycott and shun them.

To reiterate: That sucks, and the fact that many, many people would cheer Knight Moves for trying to save your kids from death or worse, also sucks. :^(

[3rdragon]

Yeah, I read a study a year or two ago that not only do people assume that it's terrible for children to be left alone, the amount of perceived terrible increases based on moral judgements about the activities (and gender) of the person responsible for caring for the children in question.

http://collabra.org/articles/10.1525/collabra.33/
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/08/22/490847797/why-do-we-judge-parents-for-putting-kids-at-perceived-but-unreal-risk
(Warning -- that study is really depressing.)

[teko]

Just so I understand the situation:
- You went to pick stuff up at the dry cleaners, and gave your kids a few bucks to get drinks at the convenience store while you did so.
- While in the store, which took longer than expected, your kids squabbled a bit out in front of the store (next to Knight Moves) about what to get, then bought their drinks, waited outside for a little while, then got back into the car to wait.
- When you returned with your dry cleaning, the proprietor of Knight Moves accused you of abandoning your kids and complained about how loud they were, and threatened to call the police.

Does the owner of a place where you pay to play games have issues with... children?

[dcltdw]

Wow, that is really bizarre and not okay. Why are they even talking to your kids if your kids didn't go inside their store?

However, since I'd never heard of them until this post, me never going is not going to exert any pressure on them, unfortunately.

[sorcyress]

That's a bit odd, as every experience I've had with Knight Moves has been charming and polite --and my friends with children say the same.

You say your younger is in first grade. In my experience with first graders, it can be really stressful to not know where a parent is, especially if it's taking longer than expected, and tensions can run high. You don't say how old your older child is, but if I saw a six year old on the street without a clear adult (even with an older sibling, unless we're talking teenager), and especially if that six year old seemed distressed, I would try to intervene too. Yes, lots of kids are comfortable in the city by themselves, but if they're upset or freaking out, that doesn't read as comfortable or safe to me.

[firstfrost]

Not a parent myself, but I think there are lots of ways of intervening that might be okay. Saying "Hey, are you okay? Is one of your parents around somewhere? Do you want me to find them?" might be one of them. Doing nothing until a parent reappears and then threatening the family with the police seems less promising.

[pekmez]

Except that the distressed six year old in the company of his sister knew where I was the whole time and spent part of the time that they were apparently fretting about the crying 6 year old kid with me, and/or coming in and out of the dry cleaners multiple times.

The first time the kids went to the convenience store, they wound up bickering, and then he wound up crying dramatically on the sidewalk, complete with big sister who finds the histrionics very annoying, yelling at him to pull himself together and telling him he could NOT curl up into a little ball on the sidewalk to have a tantrum. All of this was because his sister told him they couldnt buy ice cream, and he got over it after I agreed with her that that was indeed what I had said. After I intervened, all was well, and we had more interactions to make sure both kids did get their drinks, to help them open their drinks when the bottle top wouldn't come off, to show off how tall they were to the dry cleaning staff. Somewhere in there I made the poor decision to present a zipper in need of repairing to the dry cleaner who proceeded to fiddle with it with pliers to try to make it work right again, right then and there. After deciding to cut my losses and leave him with the zipper regardless of whether I spend $25 on a coat i was planning to donate to charity anyway, I rejoined my kids who by that point decided to go read books in the car and leave the door open in case it got too hot.

The game store didn't witness nearly any of that, but they witnessed the kids crying/arguing, and half an hour later they witnessed the same kids getting into an unlocked car without an adult in sight. The crying hadnt triggered any intervention, but seeing the same kids they'd seen crying/arguing before getting into an unlocked car on a 90 degree day and leaving the door open for airflow" triggered someone coming out and telling them that they shouldn't be doing that and why didn't they have an adult anyway.

They intervened not when he was distressed, but when he sat down in the car with a book and no adult. They intervened further by giving me a piece of their mind too. In hindsight, I think they were freaking out about the kids deciding to get into a hot car, since we all know that hot cars can instantly vaporize a 6 or 7 year old before he can think to get up and go complain about being hot and try his luck again on pleading for ice cream. :P