The other night, me and my OH got last minute tickets to see Shrek the Musical. Now we knew it was half term and there would be millions of kids there but we had seats right up in the gods and it didn't look too busy on the seating plan so we picked seats that were miles away from anyone.
I don't know if anyone knows the Bradford Alhambra but the upper circle is seriously steep and not for the faint hearted (but for £20 a ticket I wasn't complaining
) I was shocked to see a couple of rows in front of us 2 families with small children no older than 3 years old (the rows in front were the next tier up so looking at £25 a ticket plus fees so around £100 per family).
The kids fidgeted the whole time, kept climbing along the route of seats, on and off dad's knee on to mums, and at one point one of them actually fell from one row to the one in front (very lucky someone broke her fall as its so steep she could have gone a lot further) Then less than 10 mins into the second half the kids were being passed around again as they were so tired they couldn't keep their eyes open. At least one of them fell asleep.
Why would you take such young children to a show like this on an evening? Way past their bedtime (there had been matinee performances all week). It's a waste of money as they didn't watch it and the parents can't have seen much either.
I don't know if it's just that I have worked with kids so understand child development, but some parents really don't grasp what is and isn't appropriate for kids of a certain age. There are lots of theatre shows aimed at such small kids that aren't on as long, run during the day, etc so why not take them to that instead?
stop it
