Buyers - control your children

moneyistooshorttomention

Must admit I've seen beautifully-behaved little tots of around 2-3 years old (judging by the size of them) being somewhere quite calm and self-possessed and just watching everything around them with interest or calmly feeding themselves and thought how cute they looked.

On the other hand, I've only yesterday witnessed two in that agegroup in a caf! yelling at intervals and one parent just looking martyred and doing nothing and the other pretending she was oblivious to the ruckus they were creating and doing nothing.

Dan-Dan

If i put the boot in on DLTAG89 as well ,will i get a load of free `thanks` ?

Cheers!

J_i_m

Dan-Dan wrote: »

If i put the boot in on DLTAG89 as well ,will i get a load of free `thanks` ?

Cheers!

Indeed, you'd get the full bandwagon of thanks. It's quite striking how many posters are concluding that they are poor parents and ignoring the part saying the kids are sat in the corner whilst the other half views the house.

Seems to me, they found a reasonable solution without the help of know-it-all forumers.

Dan-Dan

At the end of the day, i can feel the pain of no grannies to help, or anyone else really, we left ours with the neighbours! , and on one 4th viewing i carried the 2 year old everywhere , my kids wouldn’t go rooting through cupboards mind you etc , i just feel 4785 people have made the point and it’s a bit tiresome to read so much self righteousness

N1AK

DLTAG89 wrote: »

I'm the other side of the story.

I thought this thread could have been about me :rotfl:

I have now taken to the tatic of sitting the boys in a corner and letting DH have a look around and then swapping over.

Don't worry about it. For all the behaviour nazis suggesting the kids should be banned, left outside or shot on here most people will accept a little 'mayhem' when families with young kids are viewing.

Obviously there is a difference between moving the odd thing about and actually ruining furnishings; however if/when we decide to sell then I hope our agent is accommodating to families like yours. We want them to like the house and want to live there, I'm not sure how telling them off is going to make them want to buy, which is the whole point.

Obviously it would be good if the agent could warn owners if families are viewing. We don't have kids so we'd want to move a few things to both protect them from the kids and protect the kids from them!

N1AK

Guest101 wrote: »

I think you have a discipline issue, i think you should resolve it.

I think you have an issue with social interaction; but I imagine you wanted my opinion on that as much as he wanted yours

phoebe1989seb

J_i_m wrote: »

With this in mind, if I were selling a house then I'd do my best to tidy away anything valuable or sentimental to me to reduce the risk of it attracting in warranted attention. As I'm realistic enough to appreciate that children will be children, curiosity will get the better of them and sometimes even the most effective parent might not be able to retain control especially if they have a brood of several in tow.

So whilst I think it's entirely reasonable to expect a visitor to behave themselves appropriately in your home and I would for sure be very upset if something of mine was spoilt by someone else's inconsiderateness (or nosiness) I do believe that there has to be a degree of realism on both sides of the equation.

If we were to 'tidy away anything valuable or sentimental' when selling, we'd have a very empty house, LOL

I think that's similar to the belief some parents have that when their kids are small they should move breakable/fragile/precious items out of harm's reach - something we never did, believing it to be ridiculous and unnecessary.

IIRC DS never broke anything as a child and was instead brought up to respect items that were important to us, whether of sentimental or monetary value. That way, when visiting the houses of others (friends, family or whatever) he treated their homes with the same respect.

Our cats OTOH have broken some very nice - and one quite valuable - items over the years.......good job we don't have to take them on house viewings, LOL!

I distinctly remember my mum telling me about my (ten years my senior) cousins, who on visiting my parents' home, made a beeline for the jewellery box where they proceeded to pull my mum's costume jewellery apart out of sheer devilment :mad:

I was determined DS wasn't going to be such a little swine!

Errata

Some parents are capable of teaching children to leave things alone that don't belong to them, for others that's beyond their ability.

mumps

phoebe1989seb wrote: »

I think that's similar to the belief some parents have that when their kids are small they should move breakable/fragile/precious items out of harm's reach - something we never did, believing it to be ridiculous and unnecessary.

IIRC DS never broke anything as a child and was instead brought up to respect items that were important to us, whether of sentimental or monetary value. That way, when visiting the houses of others (friends, family or whatever) he treated their homes with the same respect.

I felt exactly like you with child 1, child 2 was a different matter, child 3 came along and I realised child 2 was just a blip and then I had child 4. Children are all different and sometimes when we think we have managed to do something it is really down to their personality. I found pregnancy and child birth very similar, no two were the same.

I was lucky to have gran on hand to babysit when house hunting but when we did take them to a viewing they did behave, this was probably because they were quite interested in seeing the houses and partly because we viewed some nice family houses and they were made welcome. On one occasion we viewed a house with a lovely swing, slide etc in the garden and the vendor's children who were a bit older took ours out to play. They didn't want to leave that one. They always liked seeing other people's pets which vendor's were normally happy to show them.