please tell me this is wierd......

[katylou25]

Or maybe its just me!!!

Was invited to the house of a woman and child i vaguely know through mums group etc yesterday so off I trotted. When I got there she only had a couple of toys out which I thought was odd Thnought plan was for kids to play while we drank tea in as relative peace as poss - is always my plan anyway!! Ds quickly got bored with said toys so I got out a couple of his that I had with me as were going to friends with no children after. Other mum Looked absolutely horrified and told me in no uncertain terms to put them away as they weren't suitalbe for children under 12 months and our babies were only 11 months!! WTF??? It was a book with unsuitable picutres apparently!!!! (not the kama sutra I hasten to add, but an animal one), and yes some cars which if you read the box said 12-36 months cos obviously that extra 3 weeks is going to make all the difference! Oh and she also obesessively wiped down every toy when either of the boys put it down EVERY single time.

Please tell me this behaviour is not normal or will begin to doubt my parenting skills - V bad mum dont care bout age on toys - obv safety/unsuitability withsatanding!! - and dont clean toys every 2 seconds =- if ever

oh yawn

weirdoooooh - her [crazy eyes emoticon]

If she knew she had OCD, surely she'd be saying "I'm not comfortable with those toys, can we just use these"? Rather than telling katylou off for getting out other toys?

yes if only we were all nicer

She may not have OCD. She may be one of those MNers who argue that the moment you take your eye off your baby Dreadful Things will happen to him/her.

maybe she doesn't have OCD .. maybe she's just over-protective

Wasn't there an argument about babies left in cars, that mentioned meteorites?

snurk

katylou, I had a friend a bit like this when I used to go with my first baby to NCT things. Everytime we pitched up at her house, she would announce that she had washed all the toys before we got there and all the toys were completely age appropriate. She never seemed to have nasty, crusty stuff like the rest of us.
I am pleased to say that now she is on to her third baby, she is a completely normal member of the human race and no longer does freaky stuff like this!!!

Her behaviour definitely sounds wierd and neurotic, pablo, whether she has OCD or not. I think people were only going a bit overboard to reassure katylou that this was definitely not an overreaction on her part.

My friend was like this with her twins, she sterilised everything, you werent allowed to flush the toilet at night. To be honest I think she had PND.

Another friend was age appropriate and read loads of child rearing boks, she was like a woman possessed. Once her child was mobile and could voice opinions, she became as manky as the rest of us.

As for the toys, surely by offering an 11mth old 12mths+ toys, you are stretching their mind and helping them develop!

Today DS has been mainly playing with the new cooker hood that is sat in the lounge and eating the dirt from the yucca plant!

my dd (9 months) has loads of toys suitable for her age, but shes never as interested in them as she is in plastic bags, mobile phones, keys, christmas trees, and bins, she very often plays with things totally unsuitable, but as long as shes in the same room as me, i feel its ok, i do occasionally give her toys a quick wipeover, but only when very manky and covered in food, and i def dont stop her playing with toys at toddler group, even the ones covered in dribble, heard somewhere that a few germs dont do any harm

Am wondering what she will do if she has another child. Will the 3 year old have to play apart from the 12 month old so as not to mix up the age appropriate toys?

they will, snowqueen. i know a mum like this and the older child wasn't allowed to play with any toys which would "endanger" the younger one. actually most of their toys looked as if they'd never been played with.

she is mad indeed
my dd is an expert with geomag and she only tuend 3 a few months ago
Under supervision only of course...
most everyday germs are good for babies immunity!

Yep, as crazy as a snake on stilts, she sounds.
I wouldn't ever go back there if it were me.

If this women has OCD why would she have other people and their children in her house ?

I think she propably thinks that this is normal and we're all the weirdos for allowing our children to play with toys not age approprate.

I don't know much about OCD but surely it would focus on one thing , such as the cleanliness of toys, not particularly questioning the subject matter of a book ? Unless that was an odd excuse for not introducing uncontrolled, and therefore unclean, things into her home. However if she goes to a mums group then she must risk exposing him to such things anyway. tbh it doesn't make rational sense whatever her issues and I think that was the point of the original post.

Talking of ages, I've given DS (7 months old) books that say they are for 12 months plus or even older. But I figure the age recommendation is because DS isn't old enough to understand them, and not because there is a health and safety aspect. Is this right? From DS's point of view, an older childs book tastes just as nice in his mouth as a baby's book.

as long as toys were not harmful to children I never cared about the age on them - DS had plenty of "suitable from 3 years" toys for his 2nd birthday, and actually, he had a couple before that! And I think especially with books etc, it is a recommended age as opposed to a suitable age, implying that the child may not yet have the understanding. I still think that's a load of rubbish though and parents can't control what their kids play with - besides which, playing with older toys is way more fun!

As for cleaning constantly, there have been a number of studies recently which have shown that children who live in sterile environments are more prone to have xma, asthma, and are more suceptable to colds/flu/stomach upsets than children whose parents are not obsessive cleaners, the reasons being that the children of the sterile parents are never exposed to germs and therefore their bodies do not build up imunity to them. So it is therefore a shock when children of said parents enter the real world in the form of nursery/preschool etc and then are constantly ill. The problem then is that the parents believe that it's because they have let their children go out into an unsterile environment that they have picked up all these nasty bugs and that this is just confiirmation that they have been doing the right thing all along.

So while I don't doubt that parents who are overly paranoid about cleanliness are so with the best intentions in the world, by being this way, they are inadvertantly doing their children more harm than good.

I was showing my mum the present for DD the other day, and she said something about it being suitable for her age.... and shock horror - she was right!!! DD will have to just look longingly at it in the box for the next 6 months until she turns three

Yet her room being covered in barbie shoes she has never mentioned...