Chicken wire or a shock fence ,
or time for a big boy bed he has to stay ahead of the Babby

CF, I'm telling you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG-GB84SL_w

Time to prove you're human....

wtf?

dJzG, maybe?

I always seem to get those wrong first time, grumble grumble

Yeah, I think so, but look how much I magnified it by. These things are getting stupid -all I wanted to do was play Euchre online ffs. It doesn't even keep the spammers out anyway. By the time I worked it out I was timed out AGAIN. I can do them better when I'm drunk tbh.

Clod, he sounds just like my son. Bedtime was ugly, for years. We tired almost everything short of locking his door.

If it's any consolation, it did eventually stop, and he now plays second base, watches Zoey 101, complains about the need to memorize multiplication tables, and sleeps all night in his own room.

This is basically what we do, except we installed a screen door on the girl's room. We put her in her toddler bed and leave the door cracked, but the screen door completely closed.

Sometimes, she gets back up, opens the door and fusses at the screen door, but we stay out of sight -- and she gets back in bed (she even shuts the door, as if the whole thing was just a staged protest).

...At naptimes, she does do the whole pass out on the floor thing sometimes. But that is happening less often. Because she is in charge of being in bed (and isn't "trapped"), she realizes that she actually prefers it.

He just wants to be memorable.

We kept our son in a crib until he was old enough to say "I want a bed like [my sister] without bars on it." Luckily, he had never figured out how to climb out of it. The sides were too tall, and there was nothing to step on.

Thor was out of his and over the gate very, very early. We tethered a hungry bear so it could just reach anything that crossed the gate.

We never really used a crib... just put them in bed with me/us. Layed down with them for a bit until they fell asleep...
Spencer slept in a crib with the side removed pushed up against my bed when Ippy was a baby.

Quit saying things about me... that don't end in -rrific.

Horrific?

Today? Try over a week. I've been coughing every few seconds, and my throat tickles. Strange thing is, it stops when I lay down.

Quit being so mean to Bri and I will!
Try basic glycerol. Unflavoured, uncoloured, unsugared - you get my drift. It coats your throat nicely.

If it really has been a week though, I'd get to the Doctor pronto. You shouldn't suffer anything more than 5 days imo. In not a hypochondriac either - using this criteria (apart from routine appointments and a pulled muscle) I think I've been once in the last ten years.

soporific.

:snore:

Have plans to see a DC United soccer game tonight with all the families of my daughter's soccer team. The girls are supposed to do a "tunnel" on the field or something like that for the professional players when they come out. Been looking forward to it for a month or so now.

But we are having severe thunderstorms (my office building's lights are flickering and the power is out at home) and a tornado was verified in the area half an hour ago. This severe weather is supposed to last most of the night.

Grr.

Get that wang out of your mouth and it might go away. :eek:

I had to leave the car mechanic without having the work done (state inspection overdue by 2 months, and a long-overdue fuel injection flush) because Minifob had a total and unendable meltdown in the waiting room (over the fact that I wouldn't let him pull the car batteries down off the display shelf and break his toes.) Since I expect the battery display will stay in place for the foreseeable future, this may honestly mean I have to take the car to a different mechanic with a less tempting waiting room to get this work done at all.

We went to one car mechanic *once* who had a display of miniature classic car models on shelves that were a child's height. Signs all over the shelves said "do not touch." This was in the customer waiting room. WTF?

I think I'm missing something Glatt.
It's not as if children would ever be in the waiting room alone, surely?

I agree it might have been more sensible to have them higher, but hey - maybe they look better at that height.

To fill a waiting room with cool toys that say "do not touch" on them is going to cause unneeded stress in customers who might have children.

Perhaps they don't want customers who have children, but are afraid to come right out and say it.

Either way, they lost us as customers.

Edit: It would be like putting a plate of delicious food in the waiting room on a table with a sign saying "do not eat this." Or maybe a stack of magazines on a table saying "do not read these."

glatt, when you go to the gun show, do you let your kids play with all the guns?



I mean, I would, but that' s why I don't have kids.

Firstly they aren't toys. They're models. I'd agree if it was actual toys, that would just be nasty. All it takes is explaining this to the child. So it's more like putting out wax fruit or fake books.

Secondly... if you can't control your child in a customer waiting room you're going to have a lot more stress in your life from other directions.

The school I went to when I was five would always bring out a cake when anyone had a birthday. We'd sing and blow out the candles, but we never got to eat the cake because it was made of cement.

I once had to drive Mrs. Dallas to the emergency room. (Nothing serious as it turned out.) Our daughter was about 1 at the time so we just brought her along.

They had some little play tables for the benefit of kids.

Immediately next to uncovered electrical outlets. :3_eyes:
This is a tough distinction to get across to a kid, depending on their age. Especially if it's the only thing interesting in the room.

But sometimes you can't. The odd thing is you can tell your kids to do stuff and sometimes they just won't. It's certainly true that some parents refuse to even try to control their kids and think it's just darling and oh so clever when they try to disassemble the cash register. But even the most well-behaved spawn of the best parent will have a limit to the time they can sit and behave, and once that limit's reached you're in for a rough time.

I've gotta go with Glatt on this one. For young kids, that has to be an awful lot of temptation. To them, all cars small enough to play with must be toys.

Isn't it then up to the parent/carer to come up with something to occupy the child rather than expect others to put up with irritating behaviour? Why should others have to suffer the burden of the choices you make?

I have to agree with Sundae here when she says that if you can't control your child when they're young, you're in for a hell of a time later in life.

Exactly right, Steve. We called it "used up all their 'good'".

Surely anyone that's going to somewhere with a 'waiting room' with a small child is going to go prepared? I just don't get that you expect the waiting room to provide the entertainment. I'm not saying you should expect your child to sit there quietly and do nothing, but as a parent you have a responsibility to your child to ensure they're stimulated by the right sorts of things. Doesn't every parent have a small bag of toys and or books etc that they keep in the car or by the door to take for occasions like this? Actually scrap that. I know they don't. That's why we're having this discussion.

Seriously?

Those that havent had/got small kids, I can semi understand, but those of you that have had small children, I am really shocked.

I am totally with glatt, you cant those kinds of things within reach of children and expect them not to touch them.

It IS nasty, kids dont know that the shiny little models arent the same as their matchbox toys.

Children have bad days, just like anybody else, some days they will be perfect obedient angels (although, I am yet to see this) and others they will be hell on legs and purposely defy you every second of the day.

Yes I have toys for this occasion, but what child isnt going to want to play with the new and shiny toys that they havent seen before, rather than the bag their parents have?

I try and keep the boys on a short leash, but it doesnt always happen without a fight.

What Ducks said

....and then some.

never mind the kids, the blooming adults will pick them up and fuss with them. maybe not in the UK and Aus, but here, for sure.

If you don't want it touched but want to display it for the public, put it in a goddamn glass case.

Toddlers can't distinguish between models and toys, and safe and dangerous, and they can rarely resist temptation. They're curious and learning, and their primary way to interact with the world is through touch and experimatation. yes, if you are a good parent it is usually possible to prevent your child from playing with things they shouldn't, but not always, and furthermore it's hard work. Where's the customer service aspect of providing a waiting room that is stressful to the customer?

I didn't mean to start anything here.

For the record, the kids didn't touch them, and we did have a couple of distractions in my wife's purse that paled significantly by comparison.

But it was freaking torture for the kids to not touch all those shiny beautiful toys that were right there, taunting them. While we waited and waited.

Well you shoulda! :lol:

You're right, I should have drowned them at birth when it became obvious that they weren't perfect, and I wasn't either.

steve - TFF!

Don't be silly! You just need to beat them some more...

You have to understand the age of child we're talking about here... From 5 and up, I agree, they should be more than able to just sit on their hands and behave. They won't enjoy it, but they should be able to do it, with the occasional reminding.

But seriously, my two-year-old couldn't even handle a picture of a car on a big heavy block. That was what he wanted, you know--the picture of the car on the car battery. If there had been actual model cars set out within his reach, with or without a 'Do Not Touch' sign, we would just have turned around and left instantly. I wouldn't even have to wait for the temper tantrum on that one.

EVeryone who doesn't want Sundae Girl to babysit their kids raise their hand.

@Clodfobble: HOw about a picture of a really cool race car on a can of charcoal lighter fluid? (Kingsford, I believe) I posted about this before somewhere, but WTF? why not put Elmo on the friggin thing?

I admit I had a lot of ideas about kids like SG's when I was in my 20s, now I see that although Inch rarely has meltdowns, they do come and from his perspective they are perfectly reasonable.

You wait an hour, that's 1/262,800th of your life. Your 2 year old waits an hour, that's 1/17,520th of their life. Or something like that.

No, wait. That's my argument for not giving someone who is only 30 pounds and adult sized portion of ice cream.

I think I'm beginning to see the problem. We weren't even allowed out of our cages until we were 6.

My daughter kept getting stung by ants. Then I noticed a picture from her coloring book -- of Ernie from Sesame Street, playing with ANTS and letting them crawl all over his arms, and smiling down at them. WTF?!

She's curious about nature, so we have to reinforce that ants are bad and will sting you. But, why am I having to compete with her initial impression, that ants are friendly, happy bugs that Ernie plays with?!

Oh and btw, congratulations to SG for writing probably one of the stupidest thing I've ever read.

Which one? I thought I held that distinction - guess I'll have to try harder.

Meh, I wasn't thinking of toddlers, I was thinking of children.
I still believe that they should be able to be instructed what to do by their parents and comply with it, but I bow to the weight of collective experience.

That would explain what I see every time I go to the supermarket I suppose.

Oh, that is the goal, to be sure. You tell them what to do even when you know they won't do it, because at some point they'll decide they don't like the step that comes next, and actually start listening. But in the meantime, all you really have is your superior size. Minifob thinks I won at the mechanic, because I picked him up and took him away. Eventually he'll behave in the face of that threat. But he must never realize that he successfully prevented me from getting what I wanted too (getting the car maintenance done,) or you'll have mutiny on your hands.

I have been getting a lot of mileage out of "We can do it the easy way or the hard way, it's your choice." For now he sees that he has a choice about how "it" will be done, rather than whether "it" will be done. And as long as I have the size advantage and am willing to rough him up a bit I'm not worried about him calling my bluff.

@Flint, get the BBC planet earth series dvds, they really satisfy the need to teach kids about nature and animals in a non disney way. eg no, polar bears and leopard seals are not cuddly and cute. Warning: BBC is not afraid of gore so you should vett the films 1st.

Lemme see here - as my kids got older and understood a little more of life, I had a favorite saying.

This family is not a democracy, it's a dictatorship and I'm the dick!

I can see how parents might find it inconvenient having toylike cars that kids can't play with in the waiting room. But...it's a garage right? I don't know what it's like there, but garages really, really don't take kids into account. They're just not kid places to be. They're barely female places to be. Pretty much everywhere is designed with adult males in mind. In Sundae's defence, I would never anticipate waiting rooms in garages to be anything other than kid neutral, if not downright kid unfriendly.

Really? There's a big plastic playhouse, a TV, AND a woman's restroom where I get my Jeep fixed...

Here you're lucky to get a coffee vending machine, a few chairs and a tatty copy of Auto Trader. And that's in the big chains! In the independents you just go into the workshop and holler.

Our son just looooved Mary Poppins. (We ought to watch it again, it's been a while.) And he got a "thing" about umbrellas. We couldn't walk past an umbrella display without him freaking out. We found some small ones at a dollar store, so after that he had his own it it wasn't quite so much of a problem. (We were a bit worried he'd decide to jump off the stairs or something)

Business Op for you SG -set up a a family friendly garage. Although IIRC, places like Halfords were generally OK -safe and clean. ish

I've just spent my friday evening at the Kirkstall Labour branch social. Which is fine and good and it's nice to meet up with fellow party members outside of our myopic little branch....but Ed Milliband (secretary of state) was there and did a q&a session and it pissed me off. Christ, sometimes, I wouldn't vote for us.

That happened to me yesterday actually. It wasn't a social, but a press conference.
:greenface
I'm still actually pretty pissed and made another move in a more positive direction, and quite frankly, the one that has been supported during press meetings, but voted against in private.

Don't get discouraged, Dana. It's hard to get more than three people to agree where to go for dinner, much less how to run a community. That's why compromise will always be part of politics.

We can tell from your postings that you are trying to make a difference in your bit of the world. That's more than most can say. Just keep slugging.

i have applied for my 15th rental property and with about 20 people at each open inspection, i dont like my odds.

Nah, I know what I'm good at. I'm going to pimp myself out as a babysitter.