Would you clear up your own child's vomit??

[GloriaMumble]

www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1268453.mostviewed.mum_told_to_clean_up_her_chi lds_vomit.php

Just me then? Gosh!

The only one who feels a bit about a cafe which does not consider itself completely accountable for the hygiene of its own premises?

I must ask my pal who is a H&S officer who she feels is legally obligated to clean up - interesting thread though!

steady on waffletrees these are young children we're talking about, not adults

Yes I would clean up my children's vomit, I clean up their mes they make in a restaurant as best I can anyway.

I wouldn't however clean up wee in a puddle in the rain!!!! My children have been known to wee in a field or 2 when caught short on a journey.

Blimey! my 4 year old pees in the gutter all the time. We usually manage to find a drain to do it over, though. Didn't realise it was at all offensive .

As for the vomit in the cafe story - unbelievable! I despair about attitudes like that woman's tbh.

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I never realised either that it was socially unacceptable for a child not to wait fifteen minutes till the next toilet! I struggle (but always succedd) myself sometimes

pmsl@ "pee on the floor like dogs" !

maybe the woman in the story has a fleet of domestics waiting on her hand, arse and foot. Hell, I bet they wipe her bum for her.

the mum is being unreasonable (and a princess) of course she should clean it!unhygienic for food prep staff to do so. maybe at home the hired help does that sort of stuff. sheesh

Cazcaz: fresh urine is sterile, not disgusting (unless the person has an infection), and a small widdle in a puddle in the pouring rain is hardly going to be even noticeable in a few minutes. It's also young toddlers who have only recently got out of nappies often can't wait 15 mins till the next toilet.
AN issue that's probably one for another thread is the lamentable lack of public toilets in most places though (parks and playgrounds are pretty appalling) - it's not at all surprising that people urinate in the bushes when there are no toilets for miles.

yes that is true - the lack of public loos is not good. Reminds me of millennium night when dp and I were up in town along with 2 million other people , all of us weeing in some corner or other!! we did try to calculate the number of gallons of wee which must have been deposited that night and it ran into the thousands and thousands.

I would clean it up, I wouldn't expect someone else to do it. I think it is a story about nothing.

Last summer ds wet himself in the bakers, I was mortified because it went everywhere. I didn't offer to clean it up as I just didn't think, ds was crying and I was laden down with shopping. I would have cleaned it up if they had asked.

madmaez, maybe you have misunderstood my posts, I have no objections to my children not waiting untill we find the nearest public toilets, and was only embarrassed for my ds when he was in full view of what was a very busy highstreet as he did have an infection. I was embarrassed but certainly not apologetic! I would never object to a child peeing outside as necessary! Sorry if I wasn't clear when I originally posted.

verylittlecarrot, totally agree with your point about it being the cafe's responsiblity to have clear cleaning up guidelines in place so staff and customers know what to do. Or at the very least, the staff should have made this clear to the mother before throwing her paper towels.

I was thinking about this after I last posted. I too wondered what happens after a parent cleans a vomited-on table in that cafe. Do the staff then expect to clean it again before the next customer? I hope so, but if so, I suppose any infection from the vomit could still be around to infect the staff, so citing that as a reason for not cleaning the vomit in the first place is illogical.

When my DS was just out of nappies he announced the urgent need for a poo when we were just outside Somerfield on the High Street. I had the potty with me (of course) but no public loos whatsoever on our High Street. So little lad did the deed on the potty on the pavement with me trying to shield him from horrified onlookers as best I could. The potty was pretty full by the time he'd done (its never just a poo is it? always comes with a wee as well). So now, what to do with the contents of the potty? It couldn't just be tipped down a drain and it couldn't be swiped up with a nappy sack and put in a dog poo bin - contents neither fully solid nor liquid iyswim - so I had no choice but to put the full potty in the boot of the Zafira and drive home. Let's just say I took the corners very carefully .

eekamoose! The joys of parenthood!

What about vomit at a school? I picked up my son from school after being told he had just been sick (it was the end of the day) and then had to pop back to the "scene of the crime" to get his book bag. I saw mess (duly covered with some powdery stuff and blocked off by a chair) and didn't even think to offer to clean it up. I was just worried about how I was going to get my sick, cold and shivering kid home without a car.

Did I do wrong? Should I have offered?

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I have had to clean up my child's vomit in a cafe at a children's adventure park in cornwall.

Fair enough, no problem with it except the staff saw it happen and didn't offer me so much as a paper towel to clean up with. They melted into thin air...

I had to go begging in the kitchen (covered in vom myself) for some paper towels and water, having used up a pack of babywipes in the meantime. I was a bit miffed that having spent £40 in the bloody cafe, I was totally on my own when it came to this totally unforeseen incident!

I did make loud comments about ''oh, it must have been somethig he ate'' though

Cazcaz, sorry i misread your posts and it was waffletrees who I really meant to address mine to.
ANyway, thought I would just share with you the fact that about half an hour after I posted on this thread, my DS did a wee all over me,grr (he is 3.6, recently potty trained...)

waffletrees you say 'children pissing anywhere but a toilet is disgusting' - that's a bit of a sweeping statement, isn't it?. Do you include three year olds in this?

Going back to the original topic about this woman in the cafe and about what level of service she should expect.

The chances are she paid at least treble or more the shop price for what she ate or drank in the 'child friendly' cafe. If she had wanted refreshment only she could have gone to a shop, purchased refreshments for a fraction of the cafe price, then sat on a park bench with her baby. Obviously then any vomit crisis would be her responsiblity.

But she paid over the shop price for her refreshments to go and sit in a child friendly cafe. So was paying for service, not just what she ate and drank.

I cannot say if the cafe management/staff was at fault or the woman. It looks like there was a breakdown in communication. But I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some sort of service from cafe staff when you eat out.

I would clear up my dd's vomit but I'd probably offer to rather than wait to be told. My dd has puked in many an odd place and we've always cleared it up ourselves rather than rely on other folk to do it . I think that the cafe would have someone nominated to deal in bodily fluid spillages since these do have to be treated as potentially lethal where I work. There's no call to say that a child in a cafe would not have a contagious disease.

Sorry, I think the mother should have cleaned up the sick after first attending to her child.

As others have said we don;t know the full story, the staff could have been initally rude which made the mother defensive and complain, or it could have been the mother who was initially rude which then made the staff not want to help her and cite H&S Rules.

I personally would see it as my job to clean up after my DD's, however in a child friendly cafe, I would expect some sort of help.

This has got to be an early April Fools!!!

Of course you woudl clear up if your child was sick.

That being said, my DD was sick in a softplay place and I asked for cleaning stuff to clean it up which I did, and she was then sick again and whilst I was cleaning up the 2nd lot she was sick so I said probably best I go....

my wee one hurled in local greasy spoon caff.they were really kind and understanding.of course i cleaned it.