to wish that the mother of this child would sit down and do something less noisy and dangerous?

[Iris65]

P is lucky enough to have a performance parent for a mother. They are currently running up and down in the cafe chasing each other, screaming and tickling when caught while she narrates everything at a shout. P also has a dairy sensitivity, gluten sensitivity, peanut allergy, and is vegan. This caused some difficulty when choosing a snack but we are all now fully informed about the hazards and the ethics of choosing a snack in a well known coffee house chain.
P is also gender neutral which we heard all about when a passing elderly women commented on 'her lovely curly hair.' The elderly woman needed a sit down and a cup of tea afterwards while being patted on the arm by sympathetic bystanders.
My heart goes out to whichever poor soul will meet P and Mummy when they go back to school. If they are not homeschooled that is and we can only hope that is the case because there is no doubt they will need one to one attention.
Purple haired parent just glared at me from under her bandana after I glanced up when exploring, running child bumped into my table. Was she 'triggered' by my patriarchal expectations of drinking my coffe undisturbed or was their yin ynaged by my negativity?

She's quoted as saying she also gave the baby breast milk here, but yes, there have been a couple cases with vegans. Not that it's more likely to happen with vegans though, just that the media love a weird crazy vegan story. ANd ime more likely to breastfeeding

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2036671/Vegan-couple-serve-life-sentences-starving-baby-death-extreme-diet.html

What if they can't breastfeed? Is there a vegan-friendly formula? There must be!

There are definitely soy based formulas. Nutrimigen? I think my niece was on it for a while as she was dairy intolerant.

www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-I-give-my-baby-soya-based-infant-formula.aspx?CategoryID=62&SubCategoryID=63

Well if bringing children up as gender neutral is as Barbarian describes it I was doing it years ago - eldest is 37.

I was however, under the impression that it was far more radical than that. Surely it's not just a case of giving them choices about their toys and expectations, not doing the whole big boys don't cry and not putting little girls in pink and so on. I thought it meant the whole concept of the sex and gender of the child is disregarded.

Actually would the child have to be referred to as 'it' rather than he or she, as a pp suggested? How would you get round that?

Can imagine at the doctor for instance: 'yes - little, insert gender neutral name here - has been very unwell for a few days, its temperature was very high last so I thought I'd bring it along to see you'.

Doesn't really work does it?

I quite like Prestatyn - sounds exotic

The pronouns for gender neutral/fluid are them, they and their. I find it clumsy but if an adult asks me to I will use them as a courtesy.

No one else is fascinated by her child, vegan or gender neutral as they may be! Most kids are just annoying.

Iris65 They, them and their are all plural. How does that work if you're talking about one child?

pigsDOfly - linguistic evolution. It's also how we manage without 'thee and thou'.

Not in Yorkshire, we don't.

I think you'd probably prefer that to having been in the cafe with me earlier where I escorted a screaming two year old [mine] out of the building under my arm after he failed to stand in the ducking queue nicely and was lying on the floor demanding cake. We'd already had a melt down in the supermarket when I'd refused to buy him things just because he asked, whinged, screamed and shouted at me and I was totally fucked off with not being listened to, I warned him...*

I am Pregzilla. Hear me roar!

*then I had to go and pretend to buy petrol so I could get something to eat as I was starving

Yes, I do know that WinnieTheMe I was being disingenuous.

I find all this labeling of people and their behaviour gets a bit ridiculous if I'm honest. Especially as the labels seem to mean different things to different people.

I never found it necessary to put labels on the way I brought up my DCs but nowadays everything has to given a label, almost as if that somehow validates it.

If my DCs wanted to play with certain toys they did, if they wanted to wear certain clothes they did, if they wanted to display certain behaviours and emotions they did. There was no difference in my approach between the DC of either sex. Somehow, I managed to do it without the need to tell people I was bringing my children up gender neutral, whatever that means. I was just bringing up my DCs as equals.

I had one of these when my son was in NICU for 6 weeks. I had a crossover of 4 weeks with a mum with a baby in the next incubator who used to talk, talk, talk to her baby incessantly, explaining why she was in there and what activities she had planned for her when she got home, when she started walking, when she could sing etc. all the while looking around to wink at the nurses, grin at me and other parents just to make sure we were all listening. Drove me fucking insane!

I have purple hair and wear bandanas. I don't run around in coffee shops though! I'm totally normal I just dress a bit...um...charity shop bargain rail?

So if you see a bandana purple haired mother, with a child with golden curls it might be me!

@PigsDOfly
The reason they, them, their appears clumsy is exactly because it is being used as singular pronoun when it is meant for the plural.

And yes, this event did occur and the people involved were as described. To coin a phrase 'You couldn't make it up!'

"They" as a singular has been in use since the 14th century. Almost everyone uses it on a daily basis.

If people don't want to use it to refer to an individual because they don't believe someone can be agender or non-binary, that's up to them (although imo it's just rude not to refer to someone by their pronouns of choice) but not doing so and using the excuse that it's grammatically incorrect drives me bananas.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

As my post states I use the person's preferred pronouns however it is often more difficult to remember to say 'Their' rather than 'Her' or 'His'. It may well have been in use since the 14th century, but that does not mean that it is is common use, as the existence of the phrase 'I beseek you meekly' (please) shows.
@CuppaSarah As a MNer I am sure that you are as courteous, considerate and well behaved as the rest of us

Using the plural for individuals may have been around for a very long time, but it has also been taught to many, me included, that they, them etc is used only for referring to the plural.

To my ear it sounds odd and clumsy to refer to any individual as them because I was taught it was not the correct form.

If someone told me they didn't want to be referred to by him or her though, I would do my best to oblige.