Strangers touching my kid

Taiwan Parenting
1

Hi all,

It really makes me angry when we are out and about with the young-un (half Aussie and half Taiwanese) and strangers come up to us, tell us how cute he is and then touch him. I hate this…absolutely detest it. I tell the wife to tell them to not touch him but they still do it. I even go as far as moving their arms and hands away from him but they still do it. They touch his golden hair, touch his face and hold his hands. I think this is very rude and very inconsiderate.

Does this happen to other people and if so, how do you stop them…

2

Ah, yes. I’m in the States now, but my little one was born in Taipei. People couldn’t keep their hands off him! They’d touch him even after they’d just sneezed or caughed into their hands! A couple of times complete strangers went so far as to bend down and try to take him right out of his stroller, and once, even my arms! They also did other crazy stuff, like hooting or barking into his face, or clapping at him loudly, to try to get a response from him. I’d forgotten how hateful that kind of behavior is, now that I’m away.

And I did everything from ask nicely, to pulling their hands back away from him or off him, to getting angry with them. Nothing worked.

3

Nothing does work so I’ve pretty much given up. The only thing I insist on is not touching their hands but I explain why and they usually get it. My older kids just tell them in Chinese not to touch them.

4

Strangers touch my little ones too, and my kids are Asian. Holding their hands, touching their faces, wanting to hold them, etc. I cringe inside when they touch without asking, everyone from seniors at the park to restaurant servers. I think it’s just the strangers’ attraction to all babies.

If they want to hold the baby, I tell them, “Sorry, he’s really fussy now (or he’s sick).” My husband started to say that the baby will cry (from stranger anxiety), and that has worked the best. If I’m holding the baby and they touch him, I have turned away “looking” for someone/something, or covered the baby’s hands, or retracted his arm. Then I walk away and reach for the nearest babywipe/sink. All the while, trying to keep a smile on my face. Some get it, others don’t. Just keep the babywipes handy.

5

Filthy, grubby hands are always aiming for my son’s cheeks and it pisses me off immensely, but its hard to keep the blabber mouthed, twit twittering, smatter mouths away from him all the time. Even our local homeless guy enjoyed putting a smelch of grungy stain on his face if he ever got the chance to get close enough.
You must understand that in Taiwan a baby is considered to be much the same as any cute pet that someone might walk around on a leash, so one shouldn’t expect the kind of respect usually demanded by humans to be offered to a child, instead much more like the kind of respect any animal at Taipei zoo might be rewarded for looking cute.
As much as the physical assault of dirt that my kid had to put up with during his early childhood was the verbal assault on his intelligence with all the “Oh, look! Your eating noodle-noodles!” and the “Shoe-shoe” and all that. Anyone who speaks Chinese knows what I mean here. Its like children are even afforded their very own stupefied language offerings in the form of nonsensical jibber jabber mish mash as if they couldn’t possibly begin to understand the complicated world of adult language until they are about 20 years old (and by that age here they are still often a bit slow). I hate this rubbish too. I always spoke to our son as I would an adult, even if I knew he would probably not at first understand what I was talking about. Funny then, that now he is probably a better speaker than most children at his age and without being spoken to as if he had the intellectual capacity of a sea cucumber.

6

Before a recent visit to Taiwan by my brother, sis in law and my nephew, I would never have believed the amount of attention babies get.
Every bloody day there was a chorus of “hao ke ai” and people wanting to pick him up. In fact one day he was picked by an old gentleman (without permission)and my brother was ready to deck him.
I’m obviously biased so I’ll tell you he is the cutest kid on Earth, but why do local people here not respect boundaries here without being told? How would old people react if you started pinching their cheeks and telling them how much they look like thier kids?

7

Funk500. Yes, the same thing goes for constantly and uninterruptedly giving out candy/sweets to kids. It drives me F’ing bonkers. Most kids here have the most awfully rotten teeth cum about three years plus, not to mention the rising levels of diabetes in young adults. I would have thought that by now people would have begun to put two and two together, but I’m constantly reminding people that it isn’t respectful to offer kids sweets without first asking the parent’s permission. Plus it makes my boy all the more upset when I have to remind him each time that he shouldn’t accept sweets from anyone. I’m sure he feels that I’m simply unfair a lot of the time when this happens. Why me?!!!

8

I can see how giving them sweets or picking them up might be inappropriate, but just tousling their hair and saying they’re a cute kid: what on earth is wrong with that?

ever seen kids playing in a kindergarten? there’s a hell of a lot more germ swapping going on there. anwyay, kids benefit a lot from having continual immune system challenges when they are very young.

but then I am not a parent, just a doctor.

9

I used to just squat down and hold my son between my knees and get him to engage in conversation with people. They didn’t usually try touching him when I was right there holding him and were satisfied with a short conversation with us…“How old is he?, etc…”. I’d do a similar thing when he was in a stroller and just move it so he was facing more towards me. If he didn’t like the people, I’d tell him to say goodbye and we’d be on our way with a friendly goodbye and without any negative feelings of the situation.
He’s almost 4 now and handles himself well when this happens; somehow moving in such a way so they can’t touch him and then dominating the situation through conversation. He’s very sociable, I think naturally but also because of the way I dealt with these earlier situations.

The thing that irritates me now is when they experiment on him by insisting on speaking Englsih. I had to intervene a few times and tell people that he will not speak English to them if he knows they normally speak Chinese. Now he just ignores such attempts and replies back in Chinese. Maybe I’ll tell him to simply tell people he doesn’t want to speak English to them, if he doesn’t like it.

10

What’s the point of touching a baby in the street, anyway? It’s not like they have any pockets and even if they did, there wouldn’t be much money in them. I just don’t see the point unless its to distract the mother. Even then, though, her purse is going to be full of baby stuff you’d have to dig through to get to the cash or the phone.
There are much, much easier marks.

11

Been there and told each person each time that my daughter does not eat sweets from strangers so “BU YAU”. Although from the stares I have gotten, it appears you can be disrespectful in Taiwan in reminding people that they should be respectful, and ask the parent first.

12

funny, a brisk “bu yao mo ta, hao bu hao” often got the same stares. well fu2, i always figured.

13

[quote=“urodacus”]I can see how giving them sweets or picking them up might be inappropriate, but just tousling their hair and saying they’re a cute kid: what on earth is wrong with that?

ever seen kids playing in a kindergarten? there’s a hell of a lot more germ swapping going on there. anwyay, kids benefit a lot from having continual immune system challenges when they are very young.

but then I am not a parent, just a doctor.[/quote]
If you were a parent, then I doubt you’d see it this way. The point is that when complete strangers touch your kid, you have no idea where their hands have been since they were last washed. Not knowing, though, is not the worst. The worst is when some mouth-breathing knuckledragger at the supermarket stops chopping up pork ribs to come over to touch your kid on the face (without of course washing his hands), when a complete stranger pinches your child’s cheek so hard it leaves a bruise or when the cleaning lady picks him up in the lobby after she’s been collecting large loads of trash. Nine out of ten strangers who touch my son touch him in an intolerable way. Hardly anybody just brushes their hand over his head. Kids don’t need the “immune system challenge” of trichinosis smeared across their faces or the sundry bacteria of a whole apartment block’s trash pressed up against their bodies.

14

I think many foreigners here are a bit hypersensitive about this issue. People are always giving my son lots of attention here, and it doesn’t really bother me. We go for daily walks along a busy street behind my house, and my very friendly wife stops to talk with many strangers who are interested in our boy. Most don’t actually touch him, and the few that do are not a big deal IMO. Come on, every time he falls down on his little butt (he’s one year old) his hands touch the filthy ground here. A quick wipe with a diaper wipe and it’s all good. If a meat cutter in a supermarket touched him I would definitely speak with the manager, that’s just ridiculous.

What I think is more dangerous is the psychological effect of being told you’re “so cute” fifty times a day. My son has learned to milk the attention for all he can, to the point of pointing at people who don’t clap for his antics and waiting for them to clap and tell him he’s cute. He’s only a year old now so it’s pretty funny, but it won’t be if it he grows up thinking he’s the center of the world.

15

[quote=“Redmenace”]

What I think is more dangerous is the psychological effect of being told you’re “so cute” fifty times a day. My son has learned to milk the attention for all he can, to the point of pointing at people who don’t clap for his antics and waiting for them to clap and tell him he’s cute. He’s only a year old now so it’s pretty funny, but it won’t be if it he grows up thinking he’s the center of the world.[/quote]

This is exactly what happened when I brought my 15 month old to the States. Of course people here still think he’s adorable, but no one reacted like the Taiwanese to him. He was visably bewildered because no one gushed over him and he began to TRY to be cute to get that reaction from them. It took him a while to get used to things being different.

16

I don’t get it. People are just being friendly. Why be so uptight?

17

it’s more the aggressively pushy types, who don’t say a word to you and start touching your kids face. not quite a friendly chat.

18

Fox, it just doesn’t stop.

Every time you leave the door, your child - the helpless little thing that you obsess about taking care of is touched, talked at, prodded, and grabbed away from you by people you don’t know. Back in our respective countries, babies get this sort of attention, but it’s no where near the scale it is here - honestly, it’s not even close. If this were, say, once every three or four trips outside, it would be one thing - it simply isn’t. Depending on the age and whatever qualities people ascribe to “cuteness” it posesses, it can get overwhelming.

I think people react to foreign and mixed children here the same way that westerners might react to someone walking around with holding a baby koala - your first impulse is to touch it. I wouldn’t think if I saw one, I’d just reach over and grab that little sucker. It’s not in any way ill-intentioned, and most of us here understand that. If the person holding said ball of cuteness appeared hostile and told me not to touch it, my immediate reaction would be slightly hostile disappointment before logic kicks in and calms me down. It would be the first time I got to hold a koala, but from the koala’s point of view, it would be maybe the tenth such encounter that day.

The koala’s keeper would most likely react pretty strongly too - he or she just wants to go about their business buying eucalyptus leaves or whatever they went out to accomplish - raising koalas can be damned tiring work, and they most likely aren’t as fesh, relaxed, or diplomatic as they would like to be. Suddenly they have to work crowd control, all the while worrying about issues like language barriers, objectification, safety, and controlling the environment for their koala (keepers spend a lot of time obsessing over this one, for better or worse).

Over time, the combination of attention and maybe even the koala’s ability to perceive stress from its keeper can affect its behavior. Some koalas come to expect this attention, even demanding it when they go out and don’t receive it. Some koalas begin reacting negatively, withdrawing, crying out or even biting at the people who are trying to simply love them because they’re so cute that they can’t help themselves. This plays on the keepers’ minds something awful. They may be trying to provide what they think is the best possible environment for the koala to feel comfortable and as much like any other small furry animal they see. The koala had no control over being born as stunningly appealing as it is, but here it is anyway- glorious, furry and cute…

Dang, I can’t resist the urge to touch that koala. What’s the keeper’s big deal? Just let me hold the koala, don’t get all huffy about it. I don’t mean it to be a hostile act, I just want to hold that koala. I want to gush over it and walk away. I don’t know, or I’m not sure I even care about what my harmless cradling does to the koala when I’m gone, and I certainly don’t give a rip what its keeper thinks. I mean, what’s the big deal? just let me hold it for a minute, would you? Sheesh!

That’s how I see it, at least.

19

Lol very nice anology merge!

Another part is the kid himself. Even though I try to be good natured about it (within reason) my kids have their own opinions. They are not little pets just dying to be stroked, they are people with their own ideas, personalities and temperments.
My kids hate HATE being touched by strangers. My sone is especially sensitive and as a baby would burst into tears when he was touched or someone tried to take him out of my arms. I would tell people not to touch him out of respect for his feelings not mine.
Now they are a little older, three and four, so they have learned to say ni hao and move out of the way if they don’t want to be touched.

20

Just need to “train” the kids right. When the hands come close they make a growling noise, blow some saliva bubbles and snap at the strangers fingers. Give the kids a bug zapper to zap the offending hands.