HEY! Your kid just pooped on the floor--take him home!

It seems birthday season is upon us again. This time of year tends to be full of birthday parties and festivities. My son is turning four, so parents are starting to up the ante. Instead of the good old home party with a few games and some cake, we are venturing into the party that requires the booking of some fancy location where a party planner takes over and the parents can sit and "relax". We were at just that kind of birthday party this weekend. The indoor play gym we were at was enormous. Slides, tunnels, netting and tubes galore. The perfect place for children to be children. All was going relatively smoothly until one parent noticed a backlog at the slides. A child had vomited. Great. The parents were trying to clean up the mess without drawing too much attention to themselves. I don't think it occurred to them that vomit carries bacteria and spreads germs-so goes the circle of life. I could hear other parents saying things like "my child had a fever yesterday, but seems ok today..." or "Sally threw up three times yesterday, but she looks fine today". Seriously? I'll admit there have been times where my child was sick and I brought him out--to pick up a litre of milk or because I had to pay a bill on time but for the most part we are housebound for at least a few days. I would like to think that I have some sort of respect for other people and would like that respect in return. I don't want your germs, keep your kids at home if they are sick or have been sick in the past few days. How unfair to everyone else attending to be forced into a room with your sneezing, puking child. Read up on it, your child is contagious for a longer period than you might think. Believe it or not, the puking wasn't the worst of it on that fine day. After calling over a lady who worked at the play gym, and watching her 'disinfect' the puke site, we were drawn to another incident. All the commotion seemed to be coming from under the slides this time. Parents were running, children were screaming and crying. And a poor elderly man was scooping and smearing poop around, desperately trying to clean up his grandson's accident before he was found out. Guess what?! Poop news travels FAST! My friend, whose son was celebrating his birthday that day, approached the man and asked him what he was doing. When he refused to call over an employee of the play gym, my friend ran over to grab her again for another toxic clean up. My beef here isn't with the children, it's with the adults. The adults who are so desperate to get out of the house, they feel the need to drag their sick kids out in public. They claim silly things like their 3 year old would have been devastated if they had to miss the party--guess what? Your three year old will get over it. And your three year old probably wouldn't even remember there was a party. Your three year old needs to rest comfortably in their own home instead of puking or pooping in public and have kids running from them in terror. Grow up, adults! Have a little "poop" etiquette.