Canary in a coal mine - single gender locker/rest rooms

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The pool by my house has a rule that children over six have to use their own gendered dressing room.

Since Mo is taking swimming lessons for the next two weeks I thought it would be a good time to try to get him used to using the mens locker room since it will be all kids in there.

Mo is resisting. He wants me to take him through the women's locker room to get to the pool.

Luckily one of my ex-neighbors has a seven year old son in the same class and today we made a deal that his son "Jay" would show Mo the way of the men's locker room.

This really has to be an equally difficult situation for dads and daughters. (Perhaps I'm being sexist but I would feel more comfortable sending a girl into a room full of strange women than by sending a boy into a room of strange men.)

I'm wondering how other parents feel about/do about single gender rules.

Thanks!

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Unisex restrooms and dressing rooms would be the answer.

Come to think of, I was over the weekend at a gathering in a
hotel restaurant where there was a separate restroom for parents with children (unisex). thought this was a great idea.

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I agree. Some of the newer pools have what they call "family" locker rooms which are little private areas (one family per room).

There is no way that our neighborhood pool is going to do this - the building is tiny.

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Took my sons to the 'Y' when they were young. Luckily there were 2 of them so I could send them in together. Still, they were only 4 and 6 when they started swimming lessons so I made a habit of taking them to the door of the men's changeroom and then yelling loudly as they went in "I'll be standing right outside this door and I expect you out pronto and if not I'll be coming in there to get you!" This probably made all the old geezers nervous but we never had any problems and everybody in there knew I was waiting and listening.

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Good advice Tai Chi! Thank you.

I'm gonna start working on my mean mamma voice!

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Re: Canary in a coal mine - single gender locker/rest rooms

boomerang wrote:

T (Perhaps I'm being sexist but I would feel more comfortable sending a girl into a room full of strange women than by sending a boy into a room of strange men.)

I don't think you are being sexist. The reality is pedophiles are more likely to be men and women tend to be more watchful of other people's children.

I remember when I was probably about Mo's age, my father took me and my brother to a Saturday matinee. When I said I had to pee there was no way he was taking me into the men's room, so he pushed me into the ladies room and told me to sing (very loudly) "You Can't Get A Man With A Gun" from "Annie Get Your Gun" the whole time so he could keep track of me.
(Show tunes were popular at my house.)

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I was blithely unaware of all this as a child (though my mother spanked me once when I was nine for letting the building doorman let me into our apartment when I was home before she was, probably the only time that happened. Good grief, she may have had tea at Schraft's, and missed the subway, not late by much. Or else we got out of school early. No kidding re Schraft's as she was a strick teetotaler and so not a lady of affairs. (I might understand her more in retrospect..)

And I don't know it much as an adult either, not having children to raise of my own, and my borrowed child, my niece, being of my own gender.

Still, if you are going to worry, why would Family make you lax? Plenty of weird families out there.

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Another own-gender here (and very thankful for the reduced complications thereof), but E.G. HATES this situation when he's doing something with her, solo. I like the singing solution, that's very cool. Also the Tai Chi variant. I'll share those with him.

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Ha! Green Witch - that's a good story! I can just hear Mo belting out "You Are My Sunshine".

The family locker rooms are private. You go in and lock the door - it is made for situations just like this. For instance, me and Mo would have our own lockable room to change/shower in.

The cruddy thing is that a lot of these locker rooms are HUGE and the exit is not the same as the entrance. You typically go in by the check in desk and exit at the pool area. There is no way that you can keep an eye on both doors. And they have that freaky echoy locker room sound.

This is kind of driving me nuts.

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Canary in a coal mine - single gender locker/rest rooms

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