To think helping yourself out of someone else fridge is just RUDE..........even if you are 13!

[funnyface31]

Minding friends child who opened my fridge and took out a chocolate bar without asking.

I'm to say the least. Do children actually do this? I would be devastated if mine did this someone else home .

I don't think I am the only person on MN who would sit open mouthed, too surprised to say anything whilst waiting to see if the other parent would do their job. I mean, you do, don't you?

Hmm, yes I think I would too.

The first time.

The second time... (if there was a second time) I would only have out carefully rationed out numbers of things and everything else would be AWAY.

I have a friend's child who LOVES my DS's ear defenders, thinks they're brilliant to play with. (Maybe he loves drowning the sounds of us telling him not to do something out?!)

I am worried that he'll break them though, so have removed them from the playing area. She wouldn't think to stop him from playing with them, because she would let him play with them at home if he had them. (We just have a slightly different dividing line. On other things she's very good.)

(bitten me in the backside though, can't find the blardy things now... )

I think its rude.
My DNs do it. But i dont feel able to say anything if my DSis is there. All too embarrassing.
My toddler tries to help herself to anything she can get her hands on. My helicopter approach to parenting deals with it.

To summarise, most people think it is fecking rude for anybody to help themselves to anything from somebody else's cupboards. You do not know other people circumstances, so no idea whether that packet of biscuits or pound of grapes are the only ones they can afford that week. So the cultural norm in the UK is set to "don't take anything until you are sure that it is entirely OK".

If anybody chooses to give their own and others' children open access to the food stores, then it is up to them to specify that. In the absence of a cultural norm to allowing random removals from food stores, then every child should be taught as a default that you just don't bloody well help yourself until you are CERTAIN it is allowed in that house.

Not to teach them this is to rear socially inept people.

Is it only my heart that aches a little for the little chap who was searching in the larder for the lovely cakes he saw at school?

Wondering what his imagery must have been about his friend's home where the cakes reside.

With Mrs D on this one.

I would be seething and maybe in the future avoid them like the plague but it is quite rude really to tell off other people's kids if the parent is present. Unless the behaviour is really really bad/dangerous.

Anyway, having read the thread, I would've let the kid away with one box of raisins/chocolate bar/a few grapes and then said 'ok kiddo, that's enough now, I need some left for lunchboxes'.
And I wouldn't let mine do that at someone else's house.

It would be plain stupid not to tell a child to stop eating your food MrsDevere just because you feel you shouldn't have to parent them...why allow them to scoff things when their parent isn't stopping them!? It's weird! How much effort is it to move the bowl and say "Oh one's enough." if their parent is too rude to do it. It's hardly "rearranging your house".

that is rude my oldest is 5 and would never do this

I still ask my mum(when visiting) before I go raiding her cheese supply, and I'm 37.

it's not my fridge, so it's only polite.