Cynthetiq

From my personal experiences with friends with kids, yes it's a potential shitstorm because they think that their angels are just angels. They look at the dirty diaper and think that smelly piece of shit just laid into it by their child is a wonderful miracle of life.

Unfortunately I live in a REAL world where people take umbrage and offense to demands and things like, "Please don't bring your :insert being here:" from dogs to children, pain in the ass cousins to girlfriends. People seem to think that they get a pass on a request, sure maybe once, but to keep going on no thank you.

The friends that can handle the request, there's no diffuculty. I know that I have some friends that cannot take such requests so eloquently or respectfully. I'm just earmarking them now because my personal experience has shown me similar traits and behaviors. I'll give them the opportunity to prove me wrong, but once they show that my experiences are right, well we know what is going to happen.

EDIT: re read the article and you'll also see that many parents just disregard the hosts/hostess request. Does that fall under bad parenting? bad friend? When the child musses something up then it becomes bad parenting?

My house isn't child friendly. I don't think that it ever will be. I REQUEST to not have childproof medicine bottles. I have delicate art and objects throught the house.

Should I have to interact with my friend as they continually request the child "Please don't touch that," when if I had respectfully requested that they don't bring the children that they disregarded my request because they couldn't find a baby sitter, felt that it was okay to impose as I wouldn't mind?

I have a very good friend that has 2 kids and we've not seen them without the kids since the kids were born. They know our limits for kids, and instruct us on all kid parties that we attend when the high water mark of kids is going to be so that we can arrive at that point and it's just down hill from there, usally around cake cutting time.

Why am I so sensitive to it? I don't like screaming kids around me, period. Kids tend to scream, regardless of what parents do or say. But in order to see this set of friends, I have to suck it up for the moment until the kids are older. We understand it, and their parents understand it, and don't impose them upon us.

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