Baby drinking coke from a bottle

[papergate]

Saw this earlier and was horrified!

Baby maybe just over a year old crying in pushchair.

Mum gets bottle of full fat coke out from under the pram, fills up babies bottle and hands it to the baby.

I honestly cried when I saw the baby guzzling down the cola like it was milk.

How can anyone think this is acceptable?

I saw the same thing when I was on holiday last year in Spain. Toddler drinking coke out of a baby bottle whilst sun burned and strapped into a buggy with no shade in 34 degree heat. Same toddler in the hotel restaurant later that night drinking more coke. I saw the family all week in our hotel, 4 young kids who had plates of chips for breakfast every morning and who were in the sun all day without any sun cream applied or any sort of hat or UV protection . Shocking parenting and I don’t care if that’s being judgy, those parents ought to be bloody ashamed of themselves.

What circumstances a mother is in makes it OK for her to neglect her dc

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's ok, just that OP's tears are an overreaction. Given the amount of horrors in this world, with children starving and being blown to bits daily, tears over a bottle of coke seem a bit... farcical.

Also, not knowing the back story makes it impossible to know the true situation. OP seems to have linked this one instance with a probable lifetime of abuse and neglect but we don't know that's the case at all.

It’s poor practise. Especially in a bottle. Maybe the mum didn’t know better but a 1 year old should not be drinking coke. Some things are snapshots in people’s lives but pouring coke into a bottle should never be a snapshot. We have an obesity crisis, 1 in 3 children leave primary school overweight and fizzy drinks are a big contributor. Baby teeth are removed on a regular basis in hospitals. Including my step-nephew’s and he was given coke in a bottle and has recently, at 10, been removed from his mother although for issues far worse than that but basically neglect. I believe giving a baby coke in a bottle is at best ignorance and at worst neglect. I wouldn’t cry but I would feel sorry for the child. Fwiw my dc6 has fizzy drinks on holiday or occasionally at a meal out so I’m not completely precious either.

@howwudufeel

Does it matter who the person was giving a baby lager? Whether it’s the mother or not they are still a twat.

It was coke, not lager.

It matters because the OP's argument is that the crying was a proportionate response because the child's parent is behaving wholly inappropriately here and so may well do so in other aspects of the child's life too. If it was not the parent, that makes the situation better for the child in that they're not as likely to experience this sort of behaviour all the time.

Do you know anything about this child?

My son was born with a rare condition that’s basically the opposite of diabetes. This causes dangerously low blood sugars. In the event of a hypo, he needs sugar and fast, and I’m not able to make up the prescription powder with an exact quantity of water and then pour out 48ml of it on a moving bus.

Before the sugar tax, Ribena or lucozade were the drinks of choice. These days neither they or any other drinks in most corner shops contain enough sugar. Coke does.

I’ve actually been that person giving my son coke in a bottle in public when his hands started jittering and he was going downhill. Which is bloody horrendous at the best of times, without the tutting old women next to us who should have minded their own business.

She may have been a terrible irresponsible human being, who knows? Certainly not you.

Regan I suppose the difference is between some posters that when confronted with this scene some will respond by saying they feel sorry for the mother because she must have a terrible life/been abused/have some good reason why she makes bad decisions whilst others will respond by feeling sympathy for the child who is being given a drink which is quite harmful to them. It appears that the division between these two responses is quite stark.

to be giving it (coke) in a bottle to a one year old is just pathetic

One of the definitions of "pathetic" is "arousing pity" so yes, you are spot on (although I'm not sure you were aware of this meaning....)

What circumstances a mother is in makes it OK for her to neglect her dc? This is a genuine question because I read this type of response a lot on mumsnet.

This is exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about

For me, neglecting my DS would be not giving him a sugary drink immediately when it’s clear that he needs it. Not everyone has the same lives as you, how is this hard to understand?

And for the record, my twins have very healthy diets, nothing with added sugar, nothing sugary unless they’re having a hypo, they’ve had chocolate once this Easter (they’re 2.5).

You cannot make judgements of neglect based on something like this with no context.

Sinkgirl why would you go out and about without a drink prepared for your dc? I have had to look after a couple of dc with diabetes and I can’t comprehend this.

@howwudufeel

I disagree. I'd imagine all the posters feel sorry for the infant in question but only some of them think that weeping and then coming to a public forum in order to berate the parenting of a total stranger is a helpful and proportionate response.

Absolute bollocks sinkgirl I would bet anything that this child doesn’t have the same condition your dc has.

This kind of thing happens all the time and is why children are regularly having 10+ teeth extracted at 2/3/4/5+

Parents surely know this kind of thing is bad but anything for a quiet life eh?

Regan this is a public forum where we discuss parenting. Please don’t ever demean a parent who wants to do this. She is perfectly entitled to raise whatever subject she pleases and it is not up to you or anybody else to mock her simply because you disagree with her.

Why? Because once mixed it has to be refrigerated and can only be kept for 24 hours. If it needs to be used in full, a sachet lasts 8 hours. We don’t get enough on prescription to have them mixed all the time and throw them away. Do you not think I might have thought about doing that if it were possible in the 2.5 years he’s been alive? FFS.

He does not have diabetes. He had hyperinsulinism and now has Ketotic hypoglycaemia. It is not the same thing. And given how rarely properly managed diabetes should result in a hypo, I would be stunned if anyone with diabetes carries around a premixed dose of SOS every time they leave the house.

He couldn’t tolerate glucogel (it causes vomiting) or cope with dextrose tablets - sugary drinks in an emergency are our best option.

Absolute bollocks sinkgirl I would bet anything that this child doesn’t have the same condition your dc has

Probably not but how do you know this? This could easily have been me she saw on a bus doing this, and my son does have it.

@howwudufeel

It's a parenting forum to offer help, advice and support to parent's, not to publicly criticise random strangers who we think are parents.

It’s improbable because your child’s condition is rare.

I really don’t understand your attitude. You seem to have a load of reasons why you don’t carry the medication he needs. What if you are out and about and can’t get access to Coco Cola?

*parents

Also, do you fail to see the irony of your last post?

I feel really saddened when I see appallingly parenting out and about. Yes, I know people are being blown up in Syria but I don't witness that on a bus. Are we only allowed to feel sad about things involving actual death?

My work involves social history and I see things in the records that would make any ordinary person feel sad. The thought of helpless children not being given what they need is heartbreaking. I don't cry, but that's just a sliding scale of the same emotion isn't it?

I'd rather be the type of person who empathises with a wee kid than who invents logical gymnastics to make it somehow a silly thing to do.

Regan that’s ridiculous and it’s poor that you think you can tell people what they should be discussing.

Crosspost. I meant your 09:01 post

YouBumber - U OK hun? You seem very angry across a lot of threads. Perhaps you need to avoid Mumsnet for a little while if it makes you so very angry and insulting. You sound very stressed.

@howwudufeel

I've not said that she can't discuss it or even that she shouldn't. What I have said is that I don't feel it was helpful for her to do so, then disagreed with your opinion that it's the primary function of this site to publicly berate random strangers we see.

All this was in response to your post that asked in what circumstances people think it's OK to neglect a child. I felt that no one was saying that but some people felt that weeping about it was overkill.

You seem to be misunderstanding a few posts.

I was on a bus once and as we drove over the bridge over the train station a girl said to her mum, 'look mum, the trains are all asleep under their cosy duvet', which immediately struck me as a perfect description of what the station roof looks like.

The mum said 'well Sarah if you're just going to talk absolute rubbish then I'd prefer it if you said nothing at all'

I was a kid myself, that was over thirty years ago and I've never forgotten it. I still feel sorry for that girl and for other kids I've seen with crap parents (admittedly Sarah was clean and well fed, I just thought her mum had a crashing lack of personality).

Honestly there are no excuses
She could have bought a bottle of water quite easily if she had nothing else

Shitty shitty parenting for any reason