Colleague's child at meetings

[poisoningpidgeysinthepark]

I work in a small and relatively informal company.

My boss brings her three-year old child to our meetings about twice a week. The child is not exactly quiet or well behaved, so most of the meetings are spent either running around trying to contain the inevitable destruction of the office or being unable to speak/listen because of the noise.

As I am the next person down, my colleagues keep moaning to me that 'someone should do something about the situation'. They are already voting with their feet and making up excuses not to attend meetings when they know the child will be there. I think they're right - it is affecting our ability to do our job, and it's not exactly professional on my boss's part.

I don't know how to broach it though. My boss doesn't seem completely oblivious about the disruption (gets up and tries to contain the child, makes futile attempts to shush), but she is obviously used to her child's antics and doesn't mind herself, and everyone is too polite to complain to her face to face.

WIBU to ask my boss to find some kind of solution? How? I'm a bit of a coward my boss is scary and I'm struggling with this.

PS I want to spend more time with my mum and best mate but I wouldn't bring them to work!!!!

Best post!

Would the firm's liability insurance cover it if say the child ran into someone while they were carrying a hot cup of coffee and spilt it on them?

someone told me once that her Scandinavian boss breastfed her toddler at meetings - the worst thing was the child was old enough to pull up her mother's top.

What sort of work do you do? There are some jobs where this might be more acceptable than others.

I worked with someone like this too, it was a nightmare as she seemed unable to grasp how much having her child being noisy and running around in meetings really irritated everyone else.

The only thing that stopped it was when her manager had a word and told her it had to stop.

Why should some of the staff have to pay for childcare while other staff bring their children to work?
Is everyone in the office allowed to bring their children to work?

If women want to close the pay gap and start to challenge the restrictions that stop many women returning to work either at all or quickly we need to start supporting each other in alternative arrangements, such as bringing (well behaved) children to meetings, especially in our own businesses FFS

Ha, what?

No, just no.

Behaving so unprofessionally will do nothing for advancing women in business.

Noisy kids have no place in business meetings.

That said, I wouldn't ban anyone from bringing a child in if absolutely necessary. I have fond memories of sitting quietly at the back of my dad's classroom when childcare failed.

Why would she do that? It doesn't make sense! She's not spending time with her daughter in any meaningful way if she's chasing her around the office

Performance parenting?

I said that I take my own 3 year old into work with me, and if my staff didn't like it, it would be too bad. However we are a small family run business and our staff enjoy my child being around every now and then.

Sure they do tonedeaf. Nothing to do with the fact that complaining would be completely pointless as if they don't like it, it's 'too bad'. What a lovely boss you must be, to have such utter disdain for your employees.

And those saying the boss should be able to bring her child into the office, (cos feminism) you really think she'd allow all the other women there to bring their kids in too, in order to support women in the workplace? I highly doubt it.

Here in Mexico it used to be quite common for people to bring their children into work, but children that were generally well behaved. I tried it with my dd but she wouldn't be quiet enough.

Flyinggiraffebox - I think I am in a far better position to judge the situation than you, but don't let that stop you casting aspersions. You can rest assured your vastly incorrect and misguided opinion has absolutely no bearing on my life or my business. Too bad, eh.

Yeah Tone deaf you sound like you would be open to suggestions

I would offer to rearrange the meetings because the current times are obviously not convenient for her. Makes the point without having to say it outright!

I think I'd wait until a particularly disruptive part of the meeting has calmed, then make the suggestion that we rotate taking Darling Boss Child out for some fresh air from now on, so that she can play and others can concentrate. Make it really business like:

Okay, I volunteer first. Let's make a rota, and assign the next person in line to take minutes so that the person on Child Duty does not miss out on the critical items raised in this meeting.

Make it all pleasant but firm. Not a complaint. I'd probably say 'Poor Boss Child. NO wonder she is kicking off. It must be really difficult for her to play with all of us trying to talk around her'

Stupid woman. That's how NOT to boss.

That sounds frustrating! I think it needs addressing, I'm always sympathetic to the odd time when childcare has fallen through and parents have taken their child in as a one off - but this seems a really odd situation all round!

Completely agree with DailyMailReadersAreThick and I am aghast at the suggestion that women should 'support each other' by bringing children to work.
My husband and I own our own business and I would NEVER bring a child into work - it's completely unprofessional. One of us stays at home.
What so women want? To be taken seriously and treated equally - in which case, you need to separate children and work. Or to be treated as a special case - in which case, yo can't complain about not being treated equally oif you always have a toddler in tow.
And don't start me on bloody mumpreneurs ....

I used to work in a hospice and one senior member of staff used to bring her dog to work under the pretence of it being a trained therapeutic pet (It wasnt). Everyone was awfully reasonable about it until one day there was a meeting and one of the execs was there. The dog also camw to the meeting with owner and spent the entire time loudly snuffling and obviously licking his balls. Owner was oblivious whilst everyone else cringed - it still makes me laugh to thus day!

Don't be the one to say anything.

Jessicaeccles - seeing as you don't have the enviable delight of working for me, its thankfully not really any of your concern. HTH

"my boss just likes having her child around and doesn't want work to get in the way of their time together"

I feel exactly the same way. This is why I am a SAHM!