brats

[Orange]

anyone care to share some lines for dealing with bratty children? i only know a few:

now i know why some animals eat their young.

does anyone have any ritalin? (par monsieur nelson)

and so on... anyone got anything better?

[Todd]

Not mine, and I have never used it, but I liked it quite a bit when I saw it done, but it goes like this:
After the bratty kid has drawn the audiences attention, you pull out a dollar and go to over to a diffrent kid and "Hey kid here is a buck, if he (the other kid) talks again, beat him up."
You really need the attitude to pull this one off.

[scot]

"Who let in the drunk midget?" and if he's in a stroller "in the wheelchair."
(tag)"too bad AA's twelve steps aren't handycap accessable"-- scot nery

It's nice to do a sucker trick with one of these kids. Get the whole audience on a different level.

I just thought, you could try dealing with the childrens' mistakes the way the gov'ment does. Punish the parents. "I'm starting to understand why your parents beat you." "Don't laugh, their parents couldn't afford public school"



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scot nery
mailto:scot@juggle.comscot@juggle.com</A>
deadjugglers.com

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[Todd]

Nice ones Scott.

The biggest problem with ripping on kids is the fact that kids have the best armor of any heckler. They can take any comment you throw at them and say "Nu-uh"(that grunting kid no). And if you rip on them too hard you run the risk of turning the audience agains you. They are sort of like drunks in that they have very little shame, but if you crush they like you would crush a drunk, evryone gets mad for "picking on a kid who doesnt know any better."
Its a tough position to be in. I'm very carefull about the kids I crush.

[scot]

Like I said, the importantant part is putting the audience at a different perspective of any heckler. Make sure they know that this isn't an ordinary person. They are misbehaving. If the audience can understand that you are the one that is right and this other person is an obsticle, they will side with you. Do everything with love.

And one more thought I had is make sure that, unless you want it to be, this isn't a game. It isn't about you saying shut up and them heckling you over and over again. If you find a way to react to them in a way they are not used to, they won't know their part and will be confused. This will delay some crap.

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scot nery
mailto:scot@juggle.comscot@juggle.com</A>
deadjugglers.com

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[Bri]

Yeah

Kids are tough to deal with sometimes, especially the drunk ones. I prefer dealing with them as best as possible, and then trying to find their parental units after a while. The "Who belongs to this child" bit works well. Then try to auction them off.

[Airborne Dan]

Spank them.

[Rex Boyd]

Announce that for your next trick you are going to juggle a flaming child. No need to direct it at the brat. The audience will know who you mean.

Rex

[theballoonman]

whenever the lil no neck curtain crawlers get overly rambunctious(ie.neglected by their parents)
i merely remind the parents, that the rumours of me trading children to pirates for opium....
are merely that...rumours...
and by all means...please,leave your children unsupervised with the strange lookin foreigner....
(works great in holland)
pull my gawdamm finger...
mike
somewhere in amsterdam

[This message has been edited by theballoonman (edited 07-23-2001).]

[This message has been edited by theballoonman (edited 07-27-2001).]

[The Pretty Good]

I put a bunch of altoids in a prescription pill case. I keep it in my bag for when a kid gets all out of hand. I toss them the pill bottle and say take two of these.

[Daniel Forlano]

Gazzo – Stop passing my bits to other performers...

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stitches

[Caisiy]

being a living statue children tend to badger me and expect me to do nothing about it. I have had a plethera of monsterous little shits attack me in many ways, spitting, hitting, verbal abuse, poking.
Usually the evil eye works ( piss off or i will eat you!), after that i try the bugger flicking or bugger whipping. Even adults are scared of buggers, you can hold back a whole crowd with one freshly gewie finger.
If it comes to the point where the child(ren) are moving in too close i have to stop the show momentarily. i calmly descend and approach the offensive child(ren) smiling. Look them directly in the eye and say hallo (what's your name, my name is blahh blahh nicey nicey), shake their hand and explain to them that if they want to stay and watch the show thats great BUT for me to stay and have fun they need to back up so that other people can stay and have fun. Draw a line this is where you go, do not talk, and do not come any closer or i will leave and no one will have any fun. ThanX!
Talk to them as though they are human even if they have horns growing out of their forheads.
I have on a few occasions as i said had some absolutly evil children accouste me. When the going gets bad I stop the show, there is no way for me to continue until the situation is taken care of. The audience knows that it has to be done and they stay on my side. i look for their parents generally the parents force the child to appologize and then leave in shame. (ie. I had a small chld playing along quite nicely until somthing snaped in his demented little head and he spat on me, on my face in fact. I was shocked and as i got down he began to run. His mother grabbed him by the shirt colar and he did the cartoon run in the air. I walked over to him and asked him why he did that? I explained to him that i was trying to have fun here, fun with him and all these other people and that i do not understand why he did this. I said I would never walk up to any one on the street and spit on them, what he had done was totally out of line. His mother forced him to appologize. I told him that i accepted his appology and shook his hand and then left him to his mother)
If I am some where and do not speak the language and there are no parents which happens quite often as you know, I find an adult in the crowd to tell the children to leave. If they come back while i am working again the audience then admonishies them and sends them on their way.
So either way the best path for me has always been to treat them like an adult, tell the honest truth about how they are making you feel.
The truth hurts.
But don't do it with vengance, these children are evil that is what has brought you to this situation, they can come back with all sorts of things, spit balls, flaming bags of pooh, or even satin him self (sometimes their mother).