to want 8 year boys to get changed in the MALE changing room?

[ParisFrog]

I got to a small gym. Several times a woman has brought 3 lads (aged 8 - 10) into the women's changing room for them to get changed. AIBU for this to really annoy me?

The boys have just finished karate - surely they are old enough to get changed by themselves in the men's? She doesn't physically change their clothes for them - just sits there whilst they get changed (and also climb over the lockers and generally wander around the room)

FYI - The changing rooms are small with no cubicles. I can't get there earlier (I work) or later (I'll miss my training) to get changed.

She isn't the only women to do this - another brings in her 2 younger boys (about 5 I guess) just for them to put their shoes on!

Am thinking of complaining to the reception - would you?

If there had just been a karate class, surely there would be other 8 yr old boys go in?

Flip it around the other way:
What about daughters going into Men's changing rooms with their fathers? My DD won't go into the men's now at all. Point blank refuses. At 5. But are these shadowy paedophiles, which are everywhere only lurking in the mens?

I let my daughter and her two friends go into our private members 'club's' changing room to get changed after swimming for the first time the other day. They are 5! Now the club is small and very family orientated but still, i genuinely didn't think anything of it. THey struggled with the buttons on one of their dresses, but a 'lady' helped them as 'the buttons were tricky'. I thought i was fostering independence.....

ITs true everyone is a killer pervert, and they become killer perverts from dressing in women's (or men's) changing rooms when they are too old to see naked adults without being traumatised.

I think that everyone should dress/undress in single cubicles with CCTV cameras on them to make sure there are no inappropriate glances at their own bits in case they start raping themselves...

Thing is anyway you can't completely keep them safe anywhere.

We don;t swim as a family now, but a few eyars back did and took ds1 who was then about 8 (was thread on MN at time). With 2 asd children then we changed in the disabled family room, there was nobody needing wheelchair access (closed swimming group) so seemed OK.

DS1 left to use the loo, usually watched like a hawk by me but can't remember why I didn't that time- the new baby I guess. Went to toilets, a group of kids found him and screamed at him for suing disbaled facillities when he obviously wasn't (grrr) and smashed his head against the cistern.

Luckily he was OK barr a big bruise. The pool found the children but the aprents lied to cover for them and pool said as no CCTV nothing they could do.

SO being teh reason why I get edgy about changing.

Yes, custardcake, the behaviour of older kids is as much of a worry when you can't supervise. In the Serious Talk we had with 8 yr old DS1 before he started using changing rooms by himself, we spent as much time telling him what to do in various Boys Mucking About scenarios as we did telling him what to do with Uncomfortable Adult Situations. Both hold potential dangers abd as parents we automatically fear the worst so that we can protect them as much as we can, without supressing independence. I feel reassured, like you, that the pool we use is smallish, everyone sort of knows everyone else, and the manager runs a tight ship. And I'm glad that so many if the big leisure centres now have rows and rows of communal cubicles.

i agree the only place children should experience the wolrd is where ugly low waged people are excluded

Yes Missing coz that makes sense doesn't it?

Of course it's about that (are you sure? only facillities we can use are council led and I am very minging) and not for example the LOGIC that when teaching your child independence you start with amsller easier to navigate areas first.

Why keep ds2 in the village when I could drive him into the city and let him loose there? Why give him his first taste of a shop alone on a small campsite when I could ask him to go to Asda for me?

Bizarre.

Some council pools and sports centres are very small, built in the days before huge leisure centres. I think we all know that, Missing included. No need to bicker, now, ladies.