to think that people could at least be polite to my DS

[FunnysInLaJardin]

on holiday recently with 2yo DS2. He is a chatty little fellow and I was amazed by the number of people who just ignored him when he wandered over for a chat. Whenever a child speaks to me I will always respond, even if we don't speak the same language.

Makes me rather irritated that when he is being friendly he gets ignored. I suppose some people just don't like children.

Ah, come on. The least you could do is to teach me some new swear words or tell me that Santa isn't real or tell me the facts of life or something.

I'm totally doing that the next time my next door neighbour shoves her daughter out into the shared yard to bug me when I'm hanging out laundry, by the way. I know it's not nice but she does it every time and I didn't even get a break when I was 9 months pregnant. I am that poor child's unofficial laundry babysitter and I'm running out of tolerant smiles.

Ta Worra

opener My dad used to live behind a nursery school and at 10am in the morning, the kids would be let out to play. My step brother and I were ALWAYS woken up by screaming kids in the holidays. We used to go outside and sit by the wall then repeat all kinds of HORRENDOUS swear words for the kids.

It was like watching your kid graduate when we heard some of them repeating us

YABU, a bit. My two dd's are both extremely sociable, to the point where even I want to tell them to shut up and go away sometimes. But when they try and chat to other people I always try and gage whether they are happy to talk to them or not, and even if they are I make sure they don't stick to one person for too long.

Some people are rude and some are genuinely not sure how to be around strange children anymore, especially men - I know a few men who have admitted they worry about interacting with strange children/joining in at softplay etc for fear of being accused of wrong doings or people being suspicious of them.

I remember once, a man stopped me and asked if I would check his step daughters leg, she had fallen over and hurt it, but he darent check it as it would mean pulling her jeans down and he was worried someone might think crying child having jeans removed by man = abuse.

Its very sad.

ah yes, having read the 'woman attacks toddler' thread I can see why folk may hesitate to interact with random children.

Incidentally not all folk abroad love kids. The man who prompted this thread was French.

Some people are just plain grumpy & don't remember being children themselves or some may fear the reaction they get from the parents.

Talking to kids can be fun but sometimes it can be bloody boring. Being pretty much nonstop in the company of my two cousins for a bit this summer-there were times I had to say: "Right! Now we are just going to say INTERESTING things or nothing at all." We came up with some real crackers. And some very nice ones like "would you want to control the weather?" (from nine year old) :)
One is very cute though. She made me make up lots of maths problems and at the beginning she had no idea how to do it, and at the end she was quicker than me, and they were quite complicated! And last year she couldn't read a word, didn't know her alphabet- and this year she read words like "revolution" and "introduction" straight off with no hesitation. Hmm. I love kids You don't have to let them lead. I always hated it as a kid when adults always played it safe and always went along with what I said, "that's nice! that's interesting...hmm, yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it." I felt like I was being kept out of a whole other world. My parents were very good at not doing that.
My mum has no idea how to talk with young children! She is flummoxed. Sometimes you don't even need to talk. Usually it works quite well if you throw them on the sofa and bounce around with them. Nothing like a huge grin emerging from the sofa cushions! And then sleepiness on your lap when everyone's out of puff.

If he's French then his default position is grumpy

TBH it doesn't matter if your DC has only go a few words. Often that's worse. I always end up forced to play an endless game of peep-o with those types!

One of my GC loves to say hello to people. We were at a softplay a while ago - you know, somewhere where people with children go. There were even a couple of children she knew from nursery. Everyone, bar one adult, ignored her 'Hellos'. .

Why are people like that?

Rudeness is a social construct and I don't adhere to the same system.

Please tell me you don't work in a field that involves any need to socialise and influence others? Picking and choosing which social constructs you want to adhere to probably involves a vast amount of intellectual and personal insight, but will invariably piss most people right off.

We live on a small crowded island. Social constructs can be really useful in helping us all get along.

I will say hello to toddlers then immediately break eye contact. That is because I am normally playing with one or more of my own kids, and I don't get enough quality time with them as it is. I have spoken to toddlers before and then they linger, want whatever toys your kids have, want to join in with what you are doing with your kids, start snatching sometimes. If you are nice you get lumbered. The carers are just glad someone else is occupying their kid so they can deal with their other kids or chat or play on their phone. I just tell them to go and play with whoever is looking after them if they don't go away.

I am actually much more patient with adults but am rethinking this since I chatted with a man with some kind of learning disability and he reached across and kissed me full on the lips and said he really cared about me. In the end I had to run away from him, which wasn't easy as he was following me round the aisles and I was upstairs in a shop with a buggy. It was like something out of Benny Hill!!

See NannyOgg thats just what I mean. Why do people with children who are in a childrens environment ignore small DC like that. If they then find the child hangs about when they don't want them to just say 'I think your mummy wants you' They usually go away after that.

I just think some people on holiday want to relax and not be interrupted. They probably know from experience that with toddlers and small children, they don't recognise the boundaries and might think that a friendly hello back means you're going to spend the rest of the afternoon playing with them! Sometimes it's easier to just not encourage!

Btw I do like children, it's just that juggling a busy work life and my own children means when I'm on holiday , the last thing I want to do is chat to other people's kids. If it could be guaranteed to be a quick smile, hello and move on, I might reconsider: but I've been caught out too many times before

Funnys it really does depend on context. The example was given up thread about a dr's waiting room. I wouldn't let my children wander around trying to engage with people under those circumstances as the person might be feeling very unwell or just had some bad news. I struggled to conceive with DS1 and I am not sure that when I was in a waiting room waiting for info on whether or not my hormones were too screwed to conceive I would really have wanted to engage with someone else child.

In places like soft play I would say hello but having ended up as de facto carer for other people's children in the past I would disengage fairly quickly.

I am too afraid to to soeak to kids these days Incase I am called a child abuser or something else untrue.

Funny, because as the post below says, perhaps they are spending limited quality time with their own children, and don't want to spend it with yours.

Ok, you would remove your child after a while. But some people don't! We once had the "pleasure" of a neighbours 5 year old and 7 year old for literally 2 hours as we were in the garden with our own children. Presumably their parents were inside thinking how lovely it was their children had friends to play with. We on the other hand had endless requests for drinks, snacks etc. In the end, we had to just send them back, but were amazed that not ONCE did the parents come over and ask if we minded babysitting.

DS is 6, so not a toddler, but he will happily chat to anyone and everyone and tell them his life story (and I do mean that - he will actually go into the details of how he was conceived and what he calls his two mummies ). I recognise that most people do not want to be disturbed so I discourage him.

Of course it's lovely when people chat to him, but I wouldn't think anyone was rude if they didn't acknowledge his chattering - he needs to learn that if someone doesn't smile or make eye contact back, then you should leave them well alone.

For me,a really scary scenario seen here all the time, is two mothers side by side,pushing swings,with same age children all staring into the middle distance...not a smile,hello.

World of difference between someone helping a child up / down or interacting with a child by talking and laughing and someone actually picking that child up to spin it around with no indication of whether the child might think it's fun or not. This thread and the other are based on two different sets of assumptions IMO.

I would probably ignore your child too. What kind of 'chat' am I supposed to have with a 2-year old?

Honestly I just don't have much of an idea how to interact with a child of that age, it's not easy for non-parents to interpret toddler's speech, and I'm really not much interested in them anyway.

I don't let my dogs wander up to random people because not everyone is interested or would appreciate it, or finds my boys as gorgeous and appealing as I do (though lots of people do :))

Agree with Foshizzle there.

Also maybe we are working on the assumption that all parents are like ourselves and it turns out they aren't. . I would never allow DD to monopolise anybody's time or be an irritation. I know full well that depending on my mood if a child approached me my reaction would be "hello" big smile then off you trot.
There's a massive difference between entertaining a strange child, holding a lengthy conversation and blanking the poor little bugger. It's a shame that people would do the latter to avoid the former just because there are parents who dont have the awareness to know when to remove their child.

I don't understand this assumption that you need to "chat" or "entertain".

Why not just give a smile "hello, nice Teddy" and then on your way?

You don't have to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation with toddlers, but does it really hurt to say 'hello' back? If an adult greeted you, would you really ignore? Or respond with a 'hello' or 'good morning'?

I agree it is then down to the parents to stop the child becoming annoying. My DGC can also be a bit persistant in wanting another child to play. So we will intervene. And if it is someone else's child, then as the OP said, it's easy to steer them back to their own parents.

But common courtesy folks - it makes the world go around!