Kids in changing room at gym

[Snowypony]

Yesterday I was running late for my aqua gym class

i already had my swimming costume on under my clothes

i I ran in the changing rooms and there was a boy in there who was taller than me

i didn’t have time to question the Mum - he had clearly started puberty. He watched me get changed which left me very uncomfortable

i I got in the pool and my friend saw I was a bit upset and asked why. I explained and said the boy was about 12. There are no changing rooms at my gym - it’s just benches so you have to get naked when changing

my friend went over and spoke to the Mun who got really angry and said he’s entitled to be in there he’s only 11

when I got out they’re left but I still went and complained to the gym staff.

I don’t have a ds only dd so I’ve never had this issue. But is it reasonable to expect an 11 year old to use their own sex changing room?

I do think the toilet issue is blurring the topic slightly. A severely disabled male child or adolescent using a closed toilet cubicle in a female bathroom, with their female carer, is different to some mother’s of boys carrying on like it’s violating their son’s human rights if they have to wear a swim parka home or change their swim shorts under a towel.

So your child is still young enough to use the female toilet so what's actually your problem here?

Yes you will need to plan ahead that's sadly a hard part if being disabled and caring for someone who is.

The female space is not the solution to inadequate safe male spaces.

As usual 2 people completely derailing a thread. The op was asking if it was inappropriate that an able bodied 11 year old should be allowed to look at naked women in a changing room. The answer is no. This is completely different to a disabled child needing the toilet.

Of course, but let's face it, people are still trying to justify why males need access to female spaces for some reason or other - males do not belong in female spaces.

The derailing has been going on for quite a while now.
I get that disabled facilities are often an afterthought.
I don't get how people are trying to use that as an argument for allowing males in female spaces.

Doesn't your gym have any rules?

Ours requires boys to use the male changing rooms from their 10th birthday onwards unless they have a physical disability that means they cannot get themselves changed. Then alternative provision can be pre-booked.

@Meadowfinch OP has clearly said that the gym says same sex changing room once a child is 8.

The thread wasn’t premised on disabled access but NT male older children and tweens repeatedly using women’s changing rooms which is quite common as many attest - surely these are quite different things?

As stated, quite a few times, this mum was ignoring the rules.

@MaterialGirlAllDay

My point is I don’t foresee our position changing - there will still be times when we are faced with inadequate, absent or closed facilities in future.

He on the face of it looks ‘normal’, so anyone seeing us would presume I was entitled with a little prince…. When actually in that situation I would feel desperate, embarrassed and uncomfortable.

But how exactly would OP, or anyone, know a child’s health history by looking at him @TheaBrandt? You wouldn’t know with my child unless he interacted directly with you and you had experience.

Yes there will be selfish and entitled people letting their son use a female change for convenience, or due to safety fears, when their son could use the male change.

But how do you tell the difference between that and someone who has been forced into using a female change due to inadequate disabled or family provision, and who has to get their son changed due to sensory issues for example, whereby if she didn’t he would have overwhelming distress and be deregulated for a week.

But why even then is the default to use the women’s and not the men’s facilities?

i plan in advance with DS so only go to places with adequate facilities. But if for whatever reason the disabled facilities weren’t accessible I would take him into the male area. Me being in the male area (I would do a polite ask first obviously!) would be much less likely to cause distress to others than a 14 year old male in the female area.

neither is ideal but it’s important to enforce the importance of safe spaces for females

@bradpittsbathwater

It’s not derailing, it’s saying it isn’t always a black and white issue, or the case that someone is behaving in a deliberately entitled and dismissive manner.

And how is it different? There is one poster repeating women’s spaces are for women and you and others have agreed…. But now apparently a there are degrees of women’s spaces… if a disabled child in a women’s toilet is fine but not in a women’s change.

So what you are saying is that it is the potential nudity involved that is the problem not the designation of the space.

If there are cubicles - as often is the case even in single sex space and/or my son has his eyes closed and is facing the wall there is no nudity - I do not want him looking at women’s bits anymore than I want anyone looking at him naked.

Because I am a female and my son is a child and we would both be vulnerable in a male space.

There is a sense that we would be protected in a women’s space and I have always been supported as a mother in women’s spaces.

I imagine others might feel the same.

I do agree with you that at 14 it’s probably impossible to get an accommodation… I’m more talking about the 8-11 age group where they are preteen and still in primary education.

I really don’t know what I would do in the instance with an older child… definitely wouldn’t go into men’s though. Not to demonise them, but there is always at least one pervy or leering man at swimmers, never known the same for women.

But do you not realise the problem there? You’re happy to force others to get changed in front of males - in a female space - but you don’t want to get changed in front of males?

your giving very mixed messages there and risk teaching your child his needs override the needs of females.

@Sirzy

My issue is MEN, grown adult, hairy, testosterone fuelled, sexually active and completely unsupervised MEN.

A prepubescent boy with disabilities and developmental delay who has his eyes closed, facing away from me under supervision by his mother is a different issue.

That’s my point.

But it’s not different to the 12 year old girl who is made to feel uncomfortable that’s my point.

@sirzy I don’t know what to tell you, at our swim club there is a mixed changing room for boys and girls of primary age.

It appears a lot of the issue and confusion is different rules and provision rather than everything being set the same across different facilities.

And in this situation unfortunately you will need to be the one to accept the discomfort in the male bathroom. It sucks but you cannot decide your comfort overrides the comfort of the women and girls in their space. I’ve had to go into a male area before to help my son who became unwell all of a sudden in the male area (I was hovering close by anyway). I can’t imagine ever thinking my comfort was more important in this situation.

@4timesthefun

But wouldn’t this cause the same problem??

And isn’t an adult of opposite sex in a designated changing room more of a problem than a child?

By the way I am really not advocating for boys in women’s spaces or girls in men’s spaces.

But just pointing out that this scenario isn’t always a black and white issue.

But following your reasoning women’s changing should actually be open season to all in case there is a hidden disability?

Absolutely not, just saying that people shouldn’t be so quick to judge and should actually try and address the bigger issue.

And also be more realistic in an age when the majority of council facilities are mixed change, that pretty soon the private pools will follow suit.

For example, the other day we were in a park and a ‘big kid’ was larking around playing balance beam on a sea saw, when he got to the end, the opposite end flew up and whacked one of my DC in the arm, lucky it wasn’t their jaw!

I immediately got on my high horse and said loudly, ‘that big kid shouldn’t be in here’, my DH immediately shot me a look and came over to say he’d noticed he was disabled… which I then noticed too after I watched him for a bit.

As such we made an accommodation for this child who, was about 14, being in a younger child’s playground because he was disabled and had the capacity of a younger child.

What I’m saying is don’t be so quick to judge and be argumentative. If you find a boy older than 8 in a women’s change, find out if it is genuinely a person being difficult or if it is a disabled person in a difficult situation.