AIBU - Kids in gym changing area / showers...

How do you know? All you know is that thus far people have been to polite/considerate/afraid of fishwife-stylee rants/whatever, to say anything to you. It sure as hell would bother me if I used a facility that had a "No xxxxxxxxxxx" rule and someone was consistently and deliberately breaking it. In fact people who think that rules for whatever reason do not apply to them are on of my absolute pet hates. Sorry - end of rant.

Have you tried raising the specific issue you face with your son to the centre's management, and seeing if some special arrangement could be put in place for you? For example, if there are facilities for disabled people, there would be enough room for you to change in private and not use the communal area.

Back to the 'if the family rooms are full what can you do' thing

is it totally out of order for me to suggest if you don't think your child can control it's bladder in communal showers, then you take them home unshowered and bathe them there instead?

or is that one to be filed under IYHKYWU? ?

I don't know 100%. I imagine as he's quite small for his age people probably assume he's still under 5. I do think the rules apply to us and I'm well aware that when the time comes that he looks 5 I'll have to stop taking him. We break the rules, but I don't intend to feel bad about it when other people allow their 4 year olds to run riot and make comments about people out loud or send their 10 year olds with no supervision. I totally accept that probably makes me as bad as them, but if breaking the rules is the only way I can continue to give my son the benefit he gets from swimming (the only pool close is exactly the same in layout).

They don't have disabled changing facilities that are not in either the ladies changing room or the mens. Same with the family sized cubicles (that we use), there are some in the ladies and some in the mens. There's no inbetween place, and according to the centre there doesn't need to be as the vast majority of disabled people will be brought to the centre by a same sex carer. Their only solution was to keep taking him into the ladies until someone had an issue with it.

WktcS - when we wuz little, mum would take us home in our wet bathing suits under our clothes, with a towel on the back seat to keep it dry! No way in hell she'd be bothered with showering and changing us all. But then, that was back in the dark ages.

aside: is IYHKYWU pronounced 'icky-woo'? ?

Jullz, legally I think they have to provide somewhere suitable for disabled people to use the facilities.

I cared for a male (adult) with disabilities for 11 years and took him swimming at least once a month for every one of those years. We often came up against a lack of facilities for me to assist him but there was always a way around it. Quite often we ended up in breast feeding rooms or first aid rooms which we were given the key to. Its not ideal but its a solution.....

If you're struggling at your local pool having no mixed sex changing rooms then its certainly worth a chat with the manager to see what they can do to help.

At the age of lacking bladder control that is exactly what I have done with my children. Dry, nappy, clothes and then bath at home before bed.

As I am obviously a manky mum I dry B off and then get him cleaned up at home.

But on the wee front I am just wondering how many people realise that the swim nappies that LOs wear are just filtration devices they do not contain any liquid at all but only retain solids. So if you have been in a pool with a small child then you WILL have been swimming in their urine...

but i will have also been swimming in chlorine. so it's not quite the same.

Pittabre - isn't that what chlorine is for?

Plus, isn't that one of the reasons people like to shower afterwards?

It kinda defeats the point if you're having a quick shower and get pissed on ?

Wise monkey i don't want to make an enemy of you but what about us paying customers that dont have children? Do we not have rights to get showered and dressed where we need too as well? I love kids but to be honest i have a strong feeling i will only really ever like my OWN children as i have a feeling i'll be less bothered about what children do when i'm their parent. I don't however see how that means that other people should have to put up with the things my hypothetical children will potentially do in the future. I would be horrified if my ten year old boy made comments about a naked stranger in the changing rooms, or if my two year old peed and it got another woman! I think the OP is completely right to want to complain about having to put up with it. Its not fair in the slightest to be imposed on and expected to deal with it.

Damn? Its my fact that most people that have no access to BT or small children almost cry over with the grossness of it. Sorry I had hoped there would be some dismay at the horror of urine?

I have 5 kids and the thought of them pissing over me or anyone else actually fills me with horror.

I cannot believe anyone could defend the actions described in the OP I full expected this to be 7 pages of agreement of how disgusting the parents behaved, not the childrens fault at all but the mothers should be ashamed, but probably aren't.

You're right. You would be standing in a stream of water from the shower with a small amount of urine. So the water would wash it away as you stand. You probably wouldn't even realise you were standing in it unless they person had a urine infection and it looked neon yellow[snigger]

but surely the urine would be even more dilute in however many litres a 25 metre swimming pool holds?

FWIW, the urine wouldn't worry me - it's sterile, and it's probably impossible to stop a toddler weeing in the shower (I've been known to do it myself at home sometimes).

The poo-fest however is a completely different matter. Utterly revolting.

It's gone from a leak in the shower running under the stream of water on the floor to a child pissing on someone. ?

I must find this amusing as Sophie liked to point out i did have a poo at the side of the road. A country side road, lovers lane type road on a long journey with no pit stops for toilet breaks. I thought rather have a sh1t there than brown my pants. I guess you would have made your frilly knickers dirty Sophie, different strokes n all that. Can't believe alot of you are getting so worked up over a small amount of wee leaking into a stream of water. It's not intentional, just accidental. And people seem to be ignoring or skirting around the issue that family changing rooms aren't always avalible if they're extra busy. So what is expected then? To wait in a long line with other parents, hearing your child scream blue murder because they're bored, getting tired of waiting. have waited and it's their feed or nap time. Children aren't second class and shouldn't be forced not to use adult changing rooms purely because on the odd occasion their mother doesn't have a hand to hold a portable potty, or reach for a bucket to catch their wee in mid flow. It's not being expected to get peed on. You just take the chance that you step in a small amount of bodily fluid diluted with a mass of water. Where are disabled people with bladder problems meant to shower? Most showers in changing rooms are designed in such a way that if someone pees it gets washed away fast.

Indeed.

I'm not intending to make a thirst quenching cordial drink from it. ? Why worry how dilute it is if it's not going in be on the skin long enough to worry.

Like i said before, Poo sticks, thus i don't do poo in the shower.. Sophie pls take note ;-)

shower at home? which is what i'd have to do if all the 'adult' showers were full up.

as i would do if i had an illness or similar that made me incontinent too

I'll never know whether if I'd taken more care as a child/teenager to shower carefully after swimming whether I'd have avoided developing a chronic intolerance to chlorine, which means I can't swim in almost any public pool in the UK now.

The levels of chlorine in the UK are now so high - for economy so they don't have to clean the pool as much - that many people have quite serious skin, respiratory and eye issues with swimming. I wouldn't recommend anyone skip showering after swimming for this reason and I certainly won't leave my son covered in chlorine so I can avoid the risk of a small wee in the showers.

Incidentally, the levels here are much higher than say in Germany who have tight legal limits on chlorine concentrations. I don't understand why we don't have similar controls over what is effectively an incredibly toxic substance.

At home is ideal yes. Much nicer all round i agree. No harm of offending anyone that way.

Just thinking about it from a personal angle. We all have to shower as soon as we can if we take a dunk in chlorine because of Eczema. So unless we are close to home we would have to shower at the gym.

but noone's saying not to shower at all. just in the (rather extreme) example that all the showers are full and you face a 'half hour wait' then surely it's better just to get off home?

if the child is so sensitive to chlorine, wouldn't that manifest itself in the hour or so in the pool, not just delaying a shower by half an hour or so? obviously i'm no dermatologist...

WM I don't buy the waiting in line argument and "what if your child is wailing because its nap time/food time and you've been in line 30 mins"

Well surely by that arguement, if you had got in the pool straight away you would only have 30 mins/less in there because it would still be nap time/food time. No one in their right mind would take a child swimming to coincide when they're due to sleep/eat!

Children aren't second class citizens at all, but I would and have queue for the relevant facilities - they have to learn how to wait their turn sometime!

R isn't sensitive at all - yet. My point is that by washing promptly you can reduce exposure and those extra "half hours", which is fairly optimistic for us given how far we are from our pool, add up over a life time. And I know that before I became almost completely intolerant (I have a fairly minor reaction to the very small (relative) levels used in ozone pools) that my skin flared up if I didn't shower immediately and didn't when I did shower immediately.

It's also not just about washing the chlorine off - like other people who have eczema or skin problems I need to slather myself in cream and ointment when I have a bath or my skin dries out, I couldn't do it on top of chlorinated skin.

i will bow to your scientific knowledge as i'm reasonably confident it's superior to mine...it would be difficult not to be. ? and chlorine does irritate my skin too, but i guess it's pretty easy for me to get home to shower as i don't have a child and its assorted paraphernalia to cart back either ?

anyway, as i said earlier the wee wouldn't have grossed me out as much...but i was trying to argue that if you do have a child that is liable to wee in communal showers there are other options than just the 'well kids aren't second class citizens they have the right to use the facilities despite other peoples objections' point of view this debate seemed to be descending into.

This thread has turned utterly bizarre. Is there a big Hitched spliff doing the rounds or something?

I've never been in a gym which has separate "family" showers. A couple of family changing cubicles for once you're showered and out getting changed, the rest of the changing room being open plan, but that's it.

But are people REALLY saying that if there were free adult showers, but there was a queue for the family shower, they'd expect people with children to wait in that rather than hopping in and out for a quick normal shower? I find that utterly strange I'm afraid and also have to say that if I were in that situ with my children, there's no way I'd stand with 2 little children freezing and shivering in towels for half an hour just in case of the theoretical risk one of my children might take a wazz in the shower. Anyway, how do you know the adult in the next shower cubicle whenever you go to the gym hasn't just taken a leak? I remember watching big brother a few years back and it seemed from arguments on that quite a few of the mingers on that p1ssed in the showers.

Roobarb, I said that IF your child can't be relied on not to wee in the shoe=wer and IF s/he is over the age at which opposite sex children are allowed in the men's/ladies' change rooms, then yes, you should wait for the family one to become available or go home and shower there.

The eczema thing is special pleading afaic.

The only time I've seen children in a (private) gym was esporta on finchley road, and always thought it was a bit odd to spend £120 a month for your childs gym membership. You'd see families of 5 in there! the expense.

That said, whilst I can't imagine being worried about peodophiles (you know what they say, 8s too late) it does strike me, that if you are a peodo, which many people are, the changing rooms of the council swimming pools would be an extremeley satisfying place to hang out.

well as i've never ever in my entire life been in a swimming baths so busy there's a half hour queue for any shower, i'd say it was a bit of a lame argement anyway ?