Uh, you do know we are talking about kids right?
My fist doesn’t fit, their mouth is too small :smack:
YES! For Christmas this year, I got a nasty cold and had to take a few days off work. After I had eaten the big Christmas meal, I saw one of the kids walk up to a tray of cookies and cough directly onto the cookies. He couldn’t have gotten more thorough coverage if he had been trying. The parents were right there and didn’t even bat an eye.
Last weekend, I attended a birthday party for a pair of 4-year-olds. After the meal, I saw one of the kids take a bite directly out of the rice krispie treat “volcano” on the table. Those kids were sick as well. Now, I have another cold, and had to take off work again.
I’ve come to the conclusion that visits with family members with children inevitably end with me having a terrible cold for the following week.
Also, how do dads cope with the nut-crunch when their kids crawl/leap into their laps? I’m an uncle of nine kids, and I’m convinced that they are on a mission to make sure I don’t produce any cousins for them. You can sit in my lap, but the knee-to-the-'nads thing, I could do without.
Next time, I’m going prepared. Does the cup go on the outside of the hazmat suit or the inside?
It’s not my opinion it’s objective fact. I HAVE created the next generation. So yes, clearly I am good enough.
Hey, I find it funny. 
Your repro bits are good enough to manage the job yes. Whether or not the rest of you is worthy of reproduction is not proven in the least bit by the ability to create offspring.
Oh and how would you judge whether or not someone is worthy? I suppose you have decided that you are not?
Genetically or in another way?
Yup. Both genetically and in that I would make a lousy mother. It was that informed decision thing I was talking about in another thread (or this one? Don’t remember). Too late now anyway.
The parent that pissed me off the most took less than ten seconds to do it. She allowed her three year old to run into my living room and begin pounding on my piano. I had just had it tuned.
I swooped down on him, lifted him up by his rib cage, gave him a great and mighty “No!” and deposited him on the sofa. The kid didn’t know what hit him. The mother looked horrified and mystified. I lowered my voice and explained to her that the piano is not a toy.
He was back on his feet in seconds going through stuff. I let him go until he got to something breakable. It took all of twenty seconds. Then I swooped him again and gave him the great and mighty "No. This routine continued four or five times in quick succession.
This mother, one of my husband’s colleagues, had not brought any toys for this two-three year old. She knew that we had no children. What did she expect him to do? What did she expect me to do? She didn’t stay long. My displeasure with her was apparent. She had no corrected him or stopped him even the first time.
Dear cousin -
Yes, I know your father was a humorless controlling ogre. I know that made your childhood a gray, miserable experience. I was there, remember? However, that DOES NOT mean that any form of feedback to your own marvelous offspring amounts to child abuse.
When we are at the dinner table and your lovely child sprays a soppy cough directly in my face every two minutes, obviously making a game of it, your correct action is not to sit there with a sappy adoring smile on your face and ignore it. When I take my dinner plate and move to a different spot, it’s not because the chair was lumpy.
Remember that big family-friendly restaurant we used to enjoy? You know, the inexpensive one with the tasty food? Remember how your little angels ran laps around the place yodelling at the top of their lungs? How they stole food off other tables until the staff had to stop them? Remember after the meal when I foolishly leaned back in my seat, presenting an easy target? How your athletic little pride and joy took a running jump onto my stomach, nearly causing me to jettison my so recently enjoyed chow? He’s so precocious. These are just a few of the plethora of reasons we won’t be going there for awhile. And out in the parking lot, when I physically restrained your lovely example of perfection from sprinting out into traffic, that was not child abuse either.
But don’t worry I’ll never touch the little snot again, as I won’t be back until you either figure out some basic parenting skills or the kids are grown. Remember when you got your first car, how we sat down together and went through the owner’s manual page by page? Well, there are piles of very similar manuals available in the Parenting section of our local bookstore. Please? Luv ya cuz, and gee I hope you survive.
Sincerely,
Cousin JaglavakSocial security and the rights/restrictions that accompany the propagation of the species causes mild friction, but I wouldn’t go so far as diaper rash. 
Yes, having a child soaking in moist bacteria contributes to diaper rash. It doesn’t kill the little rug rats to sit in it long enough to get yourself some poop accoutrement (IOW you don’t need to do the 2 minute mile to get the butt paste) but you don’t want them to just stew in it. Plus, it’s just nasty to have to smell. Especially when it’s someone else’s kid (yeah, I don’t know why).
I don’t remember how old the OP kid was but I believe it was younger than the “needs to start potty training” age where you give the kid a few minutes to experience how unpleasant walking around in a bag of shit is so they can see how pleasant the potty can be.
Jaglavak - I feel sorry for those kids. School is going to be quite an awakening for them. I feel a little better about being a total bitch to my kids this morning. You know, the kind that doesn’t let them run screaming through the kitchen and basically act like hooligans or constantly interrupt their grandfather on the phone or act so loud that adults have to yell to be hear over them. They said I had ruined their lives - with the back of the hand applied to the forehead and near fainting. Want to send your cousins to my house? I could ruin their lives too…
Yes, the kid in the dirty diaper was only about 1, and even if he wasn’t, have some consideration for the noses of others!
I have two additions from dance class this morning.
Actually, this was a clue-ful mother who briefly left the kid for a while with clueless father and aunt or whatever. A boy who had to be at least five was standing in front of the door to the dance room, watching his sister through the window. After the fifth time someone needed to go in or out the door and the adults responsible for him called, “Chandler, you need to move,” his mother finally returned and physically hauled him away from the door, telling him in no uncertain terms he was in the way there and had to stay in his seat. So Yay, Mom!
Then, I was backing out of a parking space, and had just put it in gear to drive forward, when a mom and her two kids walked in front of my car. No problem - pedestrians have the right of way, you’ve got kids you’re trying to wrangle, etc. But then she stopped directly in front of my car to chat with one of the kids. Come on lady! Not only are you holding me up, but you have no way of knowing I’m not a distracted moron who might just start driving forward without notice - maybe not the ideal spot to linger with your two children!
Well I think I am, and we’ll see how it turns out in 25 years. I try not to be clueless like the people described in the OP, but I know people cluck cluck about a lot of stuff. My daughter won’t wear mittens, and cries when her hands get cold, and the Mothers in the vicinity cluck cluck.
Do you really think that a child can untune the piano? (Doesn’t know about tuning pianos)
Usually I thank the gods for a piano, because it means the baby won’t be breaking other stuff for a few minutes. Usually people I visit are ok with her playing the piano too. I want her to learn the piano so I like it when she sits at the stool and bangs on the keys. We have a little toy piano that isn’t tuned very well but her sense of the musicality is improving over time.
I hope this means that you ask permission first before you let your darling bang on someone else’s piano. (I would say no if you asked me.)
I also hope that you bring amusements for the baby, instead of expecting your hosts to provide them in the form of expensive instruments and breakable things.
If you want her to learn to play the piano, the usual method is to wait until she’s old enough and then buy her some lessons. Let her improve her musicality on the piano at YOUR house.
I was a young piano player once too, and though I often itched to play at other people’s houses, I knew enough to ask first (if an opportunity presented itself) and to accept it if the answer was no.
Are you for real?
Yeah, my friends are not uptight about it.
Scarlett67 Yes, I bring toys for her to play with. I have a piano at my parents house, I would let little kids play on it.
Oh yeah, yes I ask.
Interesting spin you put on that, that someone who doesn’t want someone else’s kids banging on their piano (with or without asking) are uptight about it. I don’t agree with you in the slightest - someone coming into my house, and letting their kid touch my expensive stuff, much less bang on it, is going to get a response like the mother in Zoe’s story. In fact, my response to that kind of stuff is pre-emptive - young children are not welcome in my house.
Pianos are not toys. Banging on the keys is not “playing the piano” and yes, it can damage or “untune” the piano.
Perhaps your friends aren’t uptight but they probably aren’t trained pianists either. It’s hard to convey just how unacceptable this is to pianists except to maybe equate it with a cello or another fragile instrument - you wouldn’t let your kids play with those. Asking first is good. Lessons would be good too.