I'm not a mum yet (due Aug 12 at which point I will no doubt gain some credibility on this topic) but my sister is.

For a while she insisted on dragging (literally) her 2yo and 6yo around Kmart etc. for hours on end and whinged when they "played up" and how she'd lost the plot and ended up screaming at them. My response was "well, if I was a kid and I was being dragged around the shops all day, I'd play up too." Derrrr. Shopping's not interesting for kids.

Yes, I understand, sometimes it's unavoidable but some people just don't seem to get the fact that kids are not going to be patient and interested unless you're shopping for them.

We've just had a similar situation with overseas visitors. The mother wondered why her daughter and my step-daughter (both 13) got sulky after she took them 1. Around St Pat's Cathedral for an hour 2. Then pressured into going to the flower show for another few hours. Again, derrrrrrr. What 13-year-olds are going to be excited about going to churches and flower shows??? I'm not saying we should let kids dictate what we do, but we can acknowledge that some things are not going to be interesting for them and reach compromises.