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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Stranger touched baby’s face - AIBU?

573 replies

summerisler · 09/09/2021 16:09

In a cafe with my two small DC earlier today. DD just turned 1. As I was cutting up some food for her, an elderly man suddenly appeared at the side of her pram. He picked up a toy that I wasn’t aware she had dropped and then reached out and stroked and pinched her cheek. He reached out so fast that I had no time to react to stop him. I have a real dislike of people touching strangers babies. When DS was a baby I was stopped on a zebra crossing by a woman demanding to see him in his sling, and a woman in a cafe asked me if she could hold him. I said no and she very loudly badmouthed me to her friends at the next table - which I just thought was bonkers. Who lets a total stranger in a cafe just hold their child?

Back to today - I approached the man and told him that I was upset that he felt it appropriate to touch my baby’s face. For context, today was the first day we’ve been to an indoor cafe since I was in the early stages of pregnancy with DD. I was polite but made my upset known and he apologised.

Is this a generational thing? I would never touch a baby without asking the parent/cater for permission. Curious to know thoughts on this. I don’t think I was unreasonable telling this man he was in the wrong.

OP posts:
emuloc · 09/09/2021 20:06

How sad. I would not have gone up to him, to tell him off like that. The poor man must of felt dreadful.

Port1aCastis · 09/09/2021 20:14

To be fair OP got off lightly there because I'm sure a lot of older folk would have told her exactly where she could go with her rudeness

StoneofDestiny · 09/09/2021 20:15

Poor man. He must be feeling ghastly.

Geamhradh · 09/09/2021 20:28

@Moonwatcher1234

Op same thing happened to me in a cafe, I felt grossed out but he was elderly and I thought I would really upset him so said nothing. It can be hard to be old and too many people have little or no daily contact with others so something like this could be magnified in his mind and cause real distress when no harm was intended. I just smiled and surreptitiously wiped babies face. Covid and all that.
You felt grossed out? Best hope you never get old eh?
Ontheblink · 09/09/2021 20:29

That poor poor man. Really get a bloody grip, is your child never ever going to cone into contact with other humans?

Ontheblink · 09/09/2021 20:30

*Come

Fatya · 09/09/2021 20:33

I don't have kids and so it isnt a matter I've previously given much consideration to. Outside of pandemic times, I dont know, but in the middle of a pandemic its really stupid behaviour on the man's part.

Constellationstation · 09/09/2021 20:34

This makes me quite sad. No wonder people don’t want anything to do with other people’s children when people react like this.
Also, I would have quite happily let someone in a cafe hold my baby for as long as they wanted. I would have been happy for the break!

Crowtooyo · 09/09/2021 20:41

Oh i feel so sorry for this man. He'll probably feel like he can't ever approach babies again for fear of it being unwanted. Which is such a shame as although you weren't happy with it, surely you must have realised that most people would be fine with it. No wonder anxiety is on the rise. Children are being taught no interaction! What happened to it takes a village?

XingMing · 09/09/2021 20:45

A long time ago, when DS was about 10 months, we took him out to a very nice restaurant in France for Sunday lunch. He enjoyed all the titbit finger food the kitchen sent out in his high chair, then I took him outside for five minutes air and a change, and I came back in with him. There was a big table of elderly ladies and gentlemen finishing lunch together and they all ended up cooing to him and chatting to us. DS had rested before going out and was cheerful to everyone so several old ladies had a quick cuddle, and DS checked out all their jewellery for sparkles. Obviously no COVID then, but it was a happy moment for everyone concerned. I hope they all enjoyed it.

damnthisvirusandmarriage · 09/09/2021 20:47

It used to piss me off tbh. But I just let it go.

BreadInCaptivity · 09/09/2021 20:53

Something similar happened to me when my now late teen DS was a newborn.

I really appreciate the impact COVID-19 has had and in that sense I'm very sympathetic.

On the reverse (in my situation) I was told I'd made this elderly gentleman's day by not only letting him touch DS but hold him for a few minutes whilst we chatted.

He was lonely (wife had died and children though close emotionally had moved away and only saw him every other week or so in rotation).

Turns out he'd served in WWII in
Burma like my DGF.

We had a lovely chat and wished each other well and swapped names/details.

I rang him every week and popped round with DS every month whilst on maternity leave.

Sadly he died less than 9 months after we met but at the funeral his children said how much the contact we'd had, had improved his well-being and how grateful they were (and how much he'd talked about myself and DS when they called/visited).

So much so they gave my DS a really nice nice picture frame with a picture of them together. We still have it.

I throughly enjoyed the experience of talking to him and understanding, finally some of the things my GF had experienced but felt unable to talk about and showing pictures/letters/medals etc and him explaining the references to me.

Upshot is you never know what might result from a chance encounter.

Moonwatcher1234 · 09/09/2021 20:56

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk guidelines.

Scarby9 · 09/09/2021 20:57

I suppose it must be generational.

As a teenager and uni student it was a standing joke that I always ended up holding a baby or playing with a couple of toddlers wherever we went. In shops and cafes, on buses, in the park, on the beach -just out and about.

I once had a 2 and 4 year old I had never met before sitting with me, snuggled into a double seat, without their mum who was a few rows back, all the way from York to London on the train. We read stories, told stories, sang (quietly), coloured, walked to the next carriage and back. The mum read a magazine, drank coffee, slept and was very grateful.
I obviously wouldn't do it now, and my safeguarding alarm bells would go off instantly, but in many ways it is a shame. As the saying goes, 'It takes a village to raise a child' and I do worry for children who never interact with adults outside their close family and are sometimes brought up in fear of 'outsiders'.

namechangeforthispost123 · 09/09/2021 21:01

That poor man, no doubt, to him he was just being kind and you storm over to him to get an apology. I bet he felt awful and so embarrassed!

For what it's worth I'm mid thirties with two very young children and I would have appreciated him picking up the toy and making a fuss.

You sound ridiculous,

ohthatbloodycat · 09/09/2021 21:03

OP, you're just awful. Sorry.

winterchills · 09/09/2021 21:04

@ohthatbloodycat - I completely agree!

Poor guy he must have been so embarrassed

IvorAlotOfHeadaches · 09/09/2021 21:16

FFS

Katela18 · 09/09/2021 21:21

YABU.

He's a old man who possibly doesn't see anyone else other than those he sees when he goes out. It was a gentle gesture and really unlikely to have brought any harm to your baby. I saw this as a prem mum who is really quite conscious of cleanliness around my baby. Something this small wouldn't cause me to be upset and certainly wouldn't make me want to mention it

Flowersandjellybeans · 09/09/2021 21:29

God these threads are so depressing, what a sad anxious place the world has become.

Saoirse82 · 09/09/2021 21:31

Sorry OP but I think you were being ridiculous. What a sad world we live in, poor man, he must have felt dreadful!

Pebbledashery · 09/09/2021 21:35

If I was in a busy cafe or restaurant and someone wanted to hold or cuddle my child,. I'd not be precious about it, as long as you're not a bloody weirdo then it doesn't bother me! Gives me a few minutes of peace! DD often gets a lot of attention by elderly people in the supermarket and she bloody loves it. You suck the joy out of anything remotely humane in this world. I dread to think how you made that poor man feel.

PineappleMojito · 09/09/2021 21:36

I personally wouldn’t touch other people’s babies at the moment. But I’m thinking of how my 92 year old nan would be and she might just forget that we don’t live in that world any more, she doesn’t get out much. I’d be so pissed off if someone treated her like that for an innocent gesture and especially if she’d helped by picking up a toy! I do understand having lots of friends with little ones that not everyone likes strangers to touch them and I also get the point about boundaries, but surely some small allowances can be made for elderly people who come from a completely different generation with different attitudes and likely have had a really hard, isolating time this past year or so.

Pebbledashery · 09/09/2021 21:37

@BreadInCaptivity

Something similar happened to me when my now late teen DS was a newborn.

I really appreciate the impact COVID-19 has had and in that sense I'm very sympathetic.

On the reverse (in my situation) I was told I'd made this elderly gentleman's day by not only letting him touch DS but hold him for a few minutes whilst we chatted.

He was lonely (wife had died and children though close emotionally had moved away and only saw him every other week or so in rotation).

Turns out he'd served in WWII in
Burma like my DGF.

We had a lovely chat and wished each other well and swapped names/details.

I rang him every week and popped round with DS every month whilst on maternity leave.

Sadly he died less than 9 months after we met but at the funeral his children said how much the contact we'd had, had improved his well-being and how grateful they were (and how much he'd talked about myself and DS when they called/visited).

So much so they gave my DS a really nice nice picture frame with a picture of them together. We still have it.

I throughly enjoyed the experience of talking to him and understanding, finally some of the things my GF had experienced but felt unable to talk about and showing pictures/letters/medals etc and him explaining the references to me.

Upshot is you never know what might result from a chance encounter.

What a lovely human you are ♥️
anonymousobserver · 09/09/2021 21:38

Confronting the poor old sod and telling him you were displeased was definitely bullying behaviour on your part, OP. You had all the power in that situation and it sounds like you enjoyed using it.

It’s my experience that a lot of 20/30 somethings are like this today. I think it comes from being made to feel so powerful - for the most part, they have grown up believing that they matter most in the world, and as a consequence, they don’t consider how other people feel.

I could never bring myself to hurt someone who had done something kind like this - I just wouldn’t be able to bring myself to do it. For God’s sake, he even apologised to you. How humiliating for him.