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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Oh, It's a Sign All Right

I had to go to the Upper East Side this week and while navigating Lexington Avenue, I peeped into a passing stroller. I do this a lot now, though I admit it is less to get a gander at the baby within's cuteness and more to see is the kid is asleep. (My child has not fallen asleep in a stroller since he was about five months-old and, embarrassingly, if he is kept out for so long that he realizes he is very, very tired will start shouting "BED!" from his rolling prison.)

At any rate, I looked into the stroller and saw a generic baby with a plastic little stop sign dangling over her head, which read: "Please wash your hands before touching mine."

Why is this a good idea, this little touch of unpleasantness? It doesn't matter that the stupid sign says "please," it's a little bit of modern rudeness that only serves to distance people from each other.

I know. Of course I know. I know all too well how important it is to keep an infant's hands clean. My objections have nothing at all to do with practicality. What is wrong with simply saying, gently: "Oh, could you please wash your hands?" What is wrong with talking to someone? AND, AND, if someone actually commits the heinous act, one can always, wash one's baby's hands. Portability is one of the nice things about those baby wipes (and they apparently take out all kinds of stains).

Really, if you can't get up the guts to politely ask someone, stranger or friend, to wash before noodling with your baby, you have no business having one. That is a tiny and easy battle and things only get harder to negotiate as the kid grows. And those problems won't really fit on signs you can hang off your kid's jacket.

Having a child, especially in a city, really doesn't give anyone license to be obnoxious and self-involved and the facts that people fall into hideousness all the time, and companies are willing to make products with idiotic cutsie names that encourage this behavior, is no reason why it should be thought of as inevitable or amusing.

I suppose on the plus side, if I see any kid even partially obscured by signage, I know I oughtn't bother with the parents. So maybe the little missive has a purpose after all.

posted by Elise at 5:27 AM

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19 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I loved your comments about this. I think I would laugh out loud if I read this, unless, of course, there was one beside it stating, "I am also mute and cannot communicate." That being said, I would be intensely annoyed if people were constantly touching my baby. But what I really want to know is this: do that many babies really get pawed over by germ-ridden strangers? Or is this a made-up paranoia about germs that permeates so much of our antibacterial culture, especially in regards to parenting?

10/19/2006 9:17 AM

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you but I will note that when my babe was tiny and we were out for his first several outings I was shocked at the number of people that would come up and touch his hands. At like, the grocery store. Mostly grandparently type people. And my fearful heart would wonder if they had just come from some germ-ridden geriatric group and whether he would immediately get flu and die.

... however, I talked myself out of these thoughts and washed his hands, muttering "global village" the whole time. I want people to connect with my child and look out for him in his life, so a few germs will be par for the course.

And after we survived his first cold I felt much more blase.

10/19/2006 10:33 AM

Anonymous said...

Same here--my babies were touched occasionally by strangers, and they were always elderly folks who seemed kind of lonely and so excited to see a baby that I would have felt awful telling them to back off. So I used Elise's solution--baby wipes, as soon as we were out of sight. Baby wipes are amaszingly multi-functional!

10/19/2006 10:39 AM

Anonymous said...

Sorry - I disagree. I think these are mostly for preemies. When you have a preemie, a cold could literally kill them. With that in mind - I don't care what anyone thinks - I put signs, i say back away, I would put my kid in a bubble. I don't think you should be so quick to judge. Talk to the parent - see their situation. You will be able to tell there situation and decide if you want to be associated with them. Some parents of preemies don't go out for months and months and still need to be careful during their first outings.

10/19/2006 5:21 PM

Anonymous said...

Great point about the preemies. It well could be that the baby Elise saw had serious health concerns. Or it could be that the parents suffer from OCD. Regardless, the sign is off-putting. I suppose a homemade sign saying, "My baby has health issues; please don't touch him" could invite unwelcome conversations, however.

10/24/2006 10:55 AM

Elise said...

Actually, the baby I saw was on the large and strapping side of the continuum. As I said, I am well aware of hand washing concerns with babies and am very familiar the germ theory of disease and believe in it. I do think, though, that if your infant - premature or immune-compromised in other ways - is that threatened by contact, then you need to be much more proactive than dangling a plastic sign over its head.

10/24/2006 12:02 PM

Anonymous said...