breath, my friend - don’t engage with this…person.
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Totally agree with this
…
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thanks. Possibly, I should have had breakfast before typing. ; ) However, this is such a great spot with great people, we need to protect it, and each other.
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My Pop is also a vet - WWII, flew a bomber over the Alps while being shot at - 79 missions. His job was to blow up a bridge that was the supply line for the Germans in Italy. Returned safe in body, and married the girl he’d met at an Officer’s Club shortly before being shipped out. He is now 94 and still caring for my mom who had a destructive stroke in '86. I’m very grateful he’s still in our lives.
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Wow! Thanks for the kindness you guys! I’m touched! Love hearing the stories of our dads too. Condolences on yours Maggie. Mine died of diabetes complications on Sept. 10, 2001. The day before 9-11. In a way, it was a good thing he didn’t see that or know about it. What a rough time thou! We were grounded here five days before we could get back to California.
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@konacoconutz, that sounds like an awful situation. @Maggieroni, yes, condolences to you. When I was a kid I thought nothing of my parents losing their parents - I thought that once you grew up, that’s just what happened. Now I’m 54 and can’t imagine not having my folks around. We’re never ready!
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Nothing…nothing, nothing can prepare you for the loss of a parent.
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have you ever spent time with a 1 year old?
They scream, throw tantrums as well as most of the food intended for their mouths!
They fill nappies at an alarming speed and what they fill them with can leak out at an equally alarming speed and it can stain like tar.
Unforgivable you have compared your upbringing when all someone has asked is a straightforward question.
This is what this forum is about, not throwing personal and hurtful insults.
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Hence the reason I’ve put this in the Summary (the first blurb you see) of my listing, it’s also in the Rules, but the Rules aren’t as obvious at the Summary.
“We welcome singles, couples, groups and families with children aged 6yrs and above.”
We accept and have hosted infants and children of all ages. Only one threw tantrums. He was a two year old. The one year old we had was one of our best guests ever. He adored dogs and spent the entire time he was here petting and kissing our dogs. We would be very happy to have him back.
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I do not accept children due to the following that parents have messaged to me:
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Oh she goes to bed at 7pm… as long as everyone is super quiet in the house she’ll be fine on her own upstairs and it’ll be nice for me to spend time away from her. (um NO, liability anyone??? )
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Oh sorry about the blood in the bathroom… she gets bloody noses. (A 7 year old… who then continued to bleed all over my house. Blood Borne pathogens anyone??)
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When I rented your house as a single person I was planning on having my grandchildren over and entertaining but after one afternoon of them being here they broke a glass and I just don’t think your house is appropriate for children. (NO, I don’t have kids… I’m 50 years old… I don’t want ground up cheerios in the carpet or crayons on my walls… and since when was my house open for you to entertain?)
so no to children. Not worth the hassle
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This is a forum that is designed to help one another. This dialog is not helpful and not wanted…obviously. We are respectful of each other and support one another.
I find it difficult to understand so much negativity in this thread. We charge for children but not infants/toddlers if the parents are bringing their own travel bed for the little one. All guests are given a very detailed check-out list and have been really splendid at cleaning up. Our insurance company guided us in creating a very detailed description of the “rules”- ie. children under direct supervision by a parent at all times- etc. Our guests with children have been very responsible.
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For our reference would you be so kind as to post your rules?
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Our guests with children have also been responsible - and I gladly accept children - however, when you’re sharing a home, having little ones do drain energy and quiet from the home - so we do charge for them. And, they add a lot of trash AND wear and tear - sticky fingerprints, stains on bedding, etc.
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Once I sold a tiller to a co-worker. I had it in the garage with my Miata and she brought her 3 kids with her. Because we were friendly with each other we stood and chatted. Meanwhile her kids were all over the car and when they left I literally had to wash the car again to get all the prints and smears off. It was so odd to see how unrestrained her own children were considering what a disciplinarian she was in the classroom.
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Frankly, we’ve been considering whether or not we could get away with charging extra for children. We’ve decided we can’t do that but here’s why we would like to:
Extra liability. Children are accident prone, your chances of a guest getting injured on your property shoot way up when you have children on the premises that’s why it costs so much to insure places like schools and daycares.
Extra mess: they have no boundaries, no social skills and no idea why food has to stay on a plate or out of their bed or off the floor and you do find evidence of this when children have been in residence.
Childproofing. Once you’ve lived as an adult for a while, this is nearly impossible. We have mini-blinds with those long cords - children have died strangling themselves on those and not once or twice either, we have glass shelving, glass tables, glass in the bathroom, low hanging art, vintage dishes, and not one outlet or cupboard is childproofed.
Getting ready to host a child requires a full-on redecorating job and then the place doesn’t look as it did when they booked it and they wonder why.
Bedtime accidents. Children wet the bed sometimes, that’s a fact of life and we don’t blame them for it but we’re not set up for it either. We don’t have waterproof bed pads for every bed because frankly, we haven’t been able to find any that are comfortable and I’m only willing to compromise so far. If an adult wets the bed we can charge them for the accident - it’s unusual, and we shouldn’t be expected to bear that cost but a kid? It happens at least once or twice a month at certain ages and stages and so I think it’s reasonable to expect accidents if you book guests with children.
Noise. They cry.They scream, they shriek with delight. That’s what kids do, that’s normal and healthy. You can’t ask them not to and if you did, it would only makes matters worse.
Special requests: they only eat certain things, sleep in certain circumstances and they NEED afternoon naps.
Appropriate material in the house. We have a lot of books, some are books that are not suitable for early readers, others are art books and they are not terribly durable when faced with sticky little fingers. There are nudes in some of the art on some of the walls. We are not a G-rated listing. And it’s hard to understand what would be objectionable to any one specific parent. (even harder for me because I am an immigrant and American standards are totally different than British and Canadian standards - totally different.)
They require more effort to clean up after as well.
If we were actually charging prices that are fair to us as hosts, we would charge double for children.
As it is, we don’t accept them in one suite and in the other we ask that they inquire first so we can discuss it. We have had one child stay where it was not a problem in any way but that is the exception, generally speaking, guests who book with kids have some sort of disaster or another that requires a lot of extra time and work for everyone and while we want to be as nice as we can be, it does seem to me that those guests, traveling with those kids are not having a terribly good time themselves.
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In my experience, not washing one’s hands enough is not limited to children. I have to wipe down my refrigerator every day because none of the guests washes their hands before they open it so it’s always sticky and has fingerprints. I always wash my hands first thing when I walk in to the kitchen.
I didn’t say anything about washing hands. In fact, if you saw how infrequently I washed mine you’d be mortified. LOL. But anyway, even clean hands would have produced a similar effect because the problem was them touching, climbing, stroking, maybe even licking (!) the clean shiny car. No adult would have behaved the same way. The problem was also the mother who made no attempt to get them them to stop.
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AMEN. Just say no to children. Each child is ten times more of a burden than an adult and then people just assume that they’re welcome everywhere free of charge. Oh, the entitlement!
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