Horses and having children on yards....thoughts?

Farma said:
Mine is in a pram, he literally only comes if he has to, I walk the horse to the field with him occasionally and that's fine, when I muck out he goes in the stable with me to 'help', and if its clear can walk to the muck heap and back, that's it, he will sometimes have a sit on the horse while I hold him and he loves it!
He doesn't run around, make loads of noise or go near anyone else's horse, BUT he can occasionally have a moan if he wants to get out or wants to try and get in the water bucket while he is in the stable, things like that. Like I say nobody has ever moaned about him as such its more the doors that have closed to me since having him and things I have heard. I needed to move yards and simply am not welcome at several nice places if he needs to ever come with me and as I say having been a livery at lovely yards my whole life and had kids around it was a huge surprise to me! I have always had competition horses and lived my life at numerous huge showgrounds and never thought about it! People have kids its just part of being around people I thought!
Even at bd camp there were a few children and buggies, I didn't take my child but didn't mind them at all and I am sure a lot of people go there for a break!
To me having the horse takes a lot of our family money and its nice to have family time there were he can enjoy the outdoors.
I understand the people that don't want loads of kids creating havoc, nobody wants that, but it does seem that it goes further than that for a lot of people and that's what I had no idea about until I had one of my own.
Click to expand...

Clearly the allegedly nice places where you and your well behaved, correctly parented child are unwelcome, are simply not that nice at all. Try to think of their doors being closed to you both as a lucky escape :)
 
I keep my horse in a yard with a lesson program, so there is a fair amount of kids around and the YO has two young children herself. However, they are all always monitored by their parents or instructors, are well behaved, quiet and tend to their lesson ponies well, so I am in no way bothered and never spare an advice or a little help if any of them asks for it.

However, in the past I have experienced horrible, uncontrollable brats running amok the stables, creating dangerous situations (once I even caught two very young girls trying to sit on a horse who had lied down in the field!!) and an intolerable level of noise - I guess there's no need asking why I'm not on there yards anymore (among other reasons)!
 
I like children but I don't like to see unsupervised young children on the yard. If you leave your child in a car or buggy out of your sight then you are potentially putting your child at risk. A loose horse could knock over a buggy or a small child. You should be able to see your young children and get to them quickly should there be an emergency. Yards can be dangerous places.

Unsupervised young children don't just put the child at risk they can make some adults unable to relax as they end up worried about the child getting hurt. Toddlers & babies in prams I think are particularly vulnerable.
 
ILuvCowparsely said:
We have already said we would not be here without our parents conception - but that does not in anyway mean we are born loving kids and wanting them. I have never been maternal and never wanted kids , where as my sisters have. We all have the same parents but we are born different with different values and different expectations and different choices.


I think there are too many gadgets in this world and kids spend more time on them than playing games and cycling, so kids learn aggression - defiance- chat back- dis respectfulness on many of these so call electronic babysitters. WE played outside - had boundaries - never disrespected my parents. The odd smack on the bum or the back of the legs never turned me into a child whose parents were done for reprimanding me this way. Youngsters well teens went off to fight for their country, old ladies felt safer in their house or walking down the street.



I see my youngest niece 3 times a year when we travel to my sister, I rarely get a hello, no thank you form the present. They spend most of the time on the electronic games, yes my sister is wrong imo to let them. You would think they wanted to say hello to us or have a chat but no games are more important.

In car videos - they are another pet peeve = another baby sitter.

We spent out car journey making names out of licence plates seeing how many red cars or such we see etc. This is education imo and make kids aware of their surroundings and thinking of word making out or car plates - travel games like scrabble or draughts instead of head down watching mindless programmes and cartoons, heads down the whole journey


Kids have it easy no no telling off - electronic games on tap. Electronic games = the babysitters of 2017.
Click to expand...

Read your post back: are you really surprised they don’t want to hang out with you?!
 
SpringArising said:
Read your post back: are you really surprised they don’t want to hang out with you?!
Click to expand...

SA I don't need to read anything back, there is nothing I have said or done to make them not want to see us, all I said was I did not want to hold a baby. How I have been with them since they are past the baby stage has not been discussed so what you say has nothing to do with family visits. We have not said or acted inappropriately to them in anyway shape or form, put 2 and two and come up with 6.
You are passing judgement on how I feel about other kids. Not my immediate family
 
Last edited:
I don't have a problem with well behaved supervised children but the safety aspect of children running round wild is not good. This thread also brought to mind the incident some years ago when a yard owners child was in a pram and, if memory serves me correctly, a vehicle moving bales reversed over the pram killing the baby - there are very few safe places on a yard for a pram to be safe from loose horses etc. I also remember one incident on my own yard when a mother brought a child for a lesson and had a baby in a car seat with her. She put the car seat down in the middle of the yard while she went into the office to pay for the older child's lesson and looked surprised when I swooped in and picked up the seat and took it into the office!
 
Farma said:
So if you had a child now, a perfectly normal and well cared for child and you had to leave your yard because others had bad experiences previously or you couldn't find a decent yard because people didn't want someone with a child being a livery, that wouldn't offend you in any way? You wouldn't feel that as a previously welcomed and good customer that has never caused a days problem, suddenly ostracized in a community you have been a big part of?
Click to expand...

No, I wouldn't be *offended* because it's not personal. Those yards aren't saying you're not welcome because of *your* children, they're simply saying they don't accept *any* children. You can't have everything in life and if you're on a yard that is adults only, then decide to have a child, you already know you either need to move yards or never bring the child to the yard. Like many things in life, having children is a choice.

If an adult-only yard makes an exception for one person, they're going to be expected to make an exception for other people too. It only takes one unruly child to ruin the peaceful atmosphere/tidy place/cause safety problems. Far easier for a YO to simply say NO CHILDREN than to tell a livery to leave because their child is deemed to be too naughty. Imagine the fallout from that. Because that would be personal, and "too naughty" is subjective.

The problem with unruly children is no parent ever admits to having them, everyone's child is a little darling in their own eyes. It's impossible for the YO's to tell in advance who is a lazy (or perhaps just struggling) parent who will use the yard for their own downtime, leaving their children to do as they like, versus which parents will actually parent their children whilst they're at the yard. *Everybody* on the yard is a paying customer who deserves good service, not just those people with children. For some YO's they decide "good service" means a blanket ban on children, to avoid anybody turning up with an unruly one.
 
ILuvCowparsely said:
SA I don't need to read anything back, there is nothing I have said or done to make them not want to see us, all I said was I did not want to hold a baby. How I have been with them since they are past the baby stage has not been discussed so what you say has nothing to do with family visits. We have not said or acted inappropriately to them in anyway shape or form, put 2 and two and come up with 6.
You are passing judgement on how I feel about other kids. Not my immediate family
Click to expand...

Why mention your own immediate family then, what does your relationship (or lack of relationship) with your niece have to do with kids on yards. ...but seeing as you mentioned it, visit most young child relatives thrice yearly and they won't have much to say to you. If you knew anything about young children you would know that they do want to play games more than 'chat' to older adults who would rather pull their own teeth out than have kids/be with kids/entertain kids.
 
Anyway back to the matter in hand...

Kids on yards, some will be happy/agree, some will bitterly disagree. Depends which side of the fence your on whether the ones with kids should get chucked off, or the ones who don't want to hear/see kids on a yard leave for pastures new. Surely that's a ,after for the yard owner to decide purely on what they want.

Thankfully (for me) the yard I'm at is child friendly (or as much as it can be when you have the horse-child combo) as yes, I am one of those people who has replicated and created those weird noise making / energy sapping / patience testing things. The owners of the yard also have a young family themselves, so they understand. I enjoy sharing my passion with my children (within reason) and they have learnt lots about responsibility/ respect / resilience along the way.
 
Sugar_and_Spice said:
No, I wouldn't be *offended* because it's not personal. Those yards aren't saying you're not welcome because of *your* children, they're simply saying they don't accept *any* children. You can't have everything in life and if you're on a yard that is adults only, then decide to have a child, you already know you either need to move yards or never bring the child to the yard. Like many things in life, having children is a choice.

If an adult-only yard makes an exception for one person, they're going to be expected to make an exception for other people too. It only takes one unruly child to ruin the peaceful atmosphere/tidy place/cause safety problems. Far easier for a YO to simply say NO CHILDREN than to tell a livery to leave because their child is deemed to be too naughty. Imagine the fallout from that. Because that would be personal, and "too naughty" is subjective.

The problem with unruly children is no parent ever admits to having them, everyone's child is a little darling in their own eyes. It's impossible for the YO's to tell in advance who is a lazy (or perhaps just struggling) parent who will use the yard for their own downtime, leaving their children to do as they like, versus which parents will actually parent their children whilst they're at the yard. *Everybody* on the yard is a paying customer who deserves good service, not just those people with children. For some YO's they decide "good service" means a blanket ban on children, to avoid anybody turning up with an unruly one.
Click to expand...

Yes I do see your point totally, I think until you have been in my position its hard to understand how it feels to be on the other side of it though.
 
KittenInTheTree said:
Clearly the allegedly nice places where you and your well behaved, correctly parented child are unwelcome, are simply not that nice at all. Try to think of their doors being closed to you both as a lucky escape :)
Click to expand...

Or perhaps those yards are nice *because* they don't allow children. Depends on your definition of "nice" I guess. The adult-only yards I've been on have been the tidier, more peaceful, better organized yards.
 
GemG said:
Why mention your own immediate family then, what does your relationship (or lack of relationship) with your niece have to do with kids on yards. ...but seeing as you mentioned it, visit most young child relatives thrice yearly and they won't have much to say to you. If you knew anything about young children you would know that they do want to play games more than 'chat' to older adults who would rather pull their own teeth out than have kids/be with kids/entertain kids.
Click to expand...

I was using them as examples of how kids have too many electronic games and pay more attention to them than getting out in the fresh air and exercising. These children are like this with most of the family, they have not been taught to turn off their gadgets when family visit.

Now returning back to yard children - we have a few that visit and because they are visiting the parents keep them close. We have on occasions screaming but more often than not this is a child free yard.
 
Last edited:
I have vast amounts of patience with children if they have an interest in horses or animals in general
Children also strangely seem to like me but I make my rules very plain and simple

I was once roped in to stay at pony camp to be a helper and given the most awful caravan to sleep in :)
after breakfast in the village hall I would actually find it quite amusing that the gardens had grown sausages or eggs as added plants/ornaments
and I quickly went along collecting the weird leftover food before the villagers found it

However my sister bought a plague for my tack room which reads
Dogs Welcome, all children must be kept on a lead at all times
 
I really can see both sides of this. If you pay livery and have children then those children are going to want to see the horse.. only reasonable. OTOH if you pay livery you don't want, or expect, to be either babysitting someones kids, or constantly falling over them. Possibly the answer would be to allow babies and toddlers in prams at any time but restrict visits by 'running around kids' to a couple of sessions a week? Except of course in emergencies.

Mine are all brilliant with children but I know plenty of horses that wouldn't be.. not necessarily because they are nasty but because they are too reactive.

There has to be a happy medium achieved and I don't suggest the woman who had a pony next to mine and who locked her girls( 7 and 9 years old) in his stable to scream the place down while she went off for a ride!! I was tearing my hair out that particular day!
 
Toddlers, in particular are an uncontrollable hazard. Plus mothers seem to develop selective hearing as soon as they give birth. I can't stand the whole squalling child thing; it's impossible to have a conversation like a rational adult while you have a small human baying for attention.

If I could find a child free yard I would move in a flash.
 
Well if I wasn't bemused at the tolerance of horse people before this thread I definitely am now, lovely to see some supportive and seemingly tolerant folk are around even if they are few and far between!
 
Farma said:
Well if I wasn't bemused at the tolerance of horse people before this thread I definitely am now, lovely to see some supportive and seemingly tolerant folk are around even if they are few and far between!
Click to expand...

Pretend it’s dogs then. There actually isn’t much difference if you think about it.
Dogs can be on yards and either be generally left to their own devices to bark, pee on stuff, thieve food, wander behind horses etc.
Dogs can be on yards under close supervision and well trained managed with the consideration of others.
Dogs can be banned from yards.

I’m probably more dog friendly than I am child friendly.
I really appreciate being on a yard that is Dog tolerant, but I also fully accept yards that ban dogs - not everyone likes them and ultimately I’m there to stable a horse, not exercise/socialise my dog.
 
I'm not a fan of kids in general, but I don't mind respectful, well behaved kids on a yard, with attentive parents.
Now, if we could remove dogs from the yard, I certainly wouldn't mind that, and the funny thing is, I like dogs! Just not so much the barking, chewing, urinating on the hay, defecating everywhere kind that yards seem to attract...
 
Sugar_and_Spice said:
The problem with unruly children is no parent ever admits to having them, everyone's child is a little darling in their own eyes. It's impossible for the YO's to tell in advance who is a lazy (or perhaps just struggling) parent who will use the yard for their own downtime, leaving their children to do as they like, versus which parents will actually parent their children whilst they're at the yard. *Everybody* on the yard is a paying customer who deserves good service, not just those people with children. For some YO's they decide "good service" means a blanket ban on children, to avoid anybody turning up with an unruly one.
Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense to me, not everyone wants to share their down time with someone else children well behaved or badly behaved, I've never had the experience of badly behaved children, no one on yards I've been on would ever brought young children and left them unsupervised so that they could run wild. I was on a yard where a family moved their horses onto the yard including their 12 & 14 year old daughters ponies, the children were on best behaviour and an absolute delight. They had been told that they were on a months trial, no-one would have dreamed of complaining about them, there was nothing to complain about.
 
For me there are kids and kids!! We have both lots a nice family where the kids are respectful and helpful. One isn't even really interested in having a horse but will sit and chat for ages with people. I have all the time possible for this type of kid

The others run screaming and unsupervised and are a hazard and a nuisance.

Wonder how tolerant people would be if they ended up in the same situation as me when I got landed with a vet bill when my horse hurt herself in the stable terrified as the boy played football against her stable wall!
 
On the yard I am on currently there is 2 sides to the yard. With a road in between, both sides have a school each and similar stable set up. One side children are allowed, the other side they are not!

I am on the side where they are not, although there is the occasional exception for closely supervised well behaved children when childcare arrangements break down.
The side I am on is lovely, quiet and friendly, you can leave stuff out and expect it to be there when you come back from your ride, it is peaceful and relaxing. All the jumps etc are well cared for and any issues with them reported and fixed quickly.
You could not pay me to be on th either side of the yard! Children there run riot and even the kids with ponies of thier own are nightmares
They occasionally come across and use our school, normally leaving jumps all over the place, poos everywhere and seem to have no concept of how to share a school nor do they seem to respect the fact that with a young sharp horse and having a lesson you may want the school to yourself (others from my side of the yard quite happy to work round this, and as a return when they want the school to themselves I leave them too it as they too have some difficult horses). Thier jumps etc the yard owner has given up replacing or repairing as they don’t bother looking after them and you can’t even leave a headcollar outside of your stable over there.

I’ve been over a few times, normally because I’m trying to find the yard owner (to pay livery money to her) or when a friend of mine had her horse on that side whilst waiting for a stable on our side. I’ve seen horses chased round, youngsters run ragged under the guise of “playing with them” frankly dangerous riding in the school etc.
 
I don't have any children liveried here, through choice, but some of my liveries have children, and I'd never say they couldn't bring them up. It doesn't happen very often, as both liveries enjoy their child-free time too much!
I bred one myself, so I'm not anti-kids - but I do like the yard to be quiet and orderly, so I'd be driven a bit nuts by squawking kids and child-style mess. I also like to be able to swear horribly when the urge overcomes me.
 
I don't enjoy children on our yard. I thought it was adults only but they bring their young kids down. I asked a child to stop running in front my horses stable waving a whip, next day I found my feed bowl cover had been stabbed through with a sharp instrument (by coincidence the previous evening said child had been cutting up carrots for her pony after I'd spoken to her....extreme coincidence). I'm fed up of screeching babies and toddlers. I work in a school of over 1500 kids all day, I don't want to see more kids in my down time, especially when they are a lazy, spoilt brat. Said kid still runs around yard until she sees me watching her, wish her mother would ask her to walk around horses. Ironically they think my horse is wild, good, might make them behave better around her or avoid her. Get sick of seeing babies and young kids perched up on mums horse, no hat or anything, when any horse could spook.
 
I did have to ask one livery to stop her 2-year old child from running UNDER my horse's tummy when he was tied up.

I had only had him a week, so didn't know him at all. He could have kicked out at her and at the height she was, that would have been a direct contact with the child's head!

The livery was very offended by this!! We didn't really speak after that, I used to bump into her at various yards or events and always got the cold shoulder. The daughter is now 21 and doesn't run under horses' tummies any more!!
 
Sugar_and_Spice said:
Or perhaps those yards are nice *because* they don't allow children. Depends on your definition of "nice" I guess. The adult-only yards I've been on have been the tidier, more peaceful, better organized yards.
Click to expand...

I have literally never found that to be true. Have encountered some utterly bizarrely behaved and horrendously messy and inconsiderate adults around horses - at least with children, they are still trainable! Once they hit adulthood, really there's no hope.

Moreover, the poster I was responding to has a well behaved and correctly parented child, as opposed to the stereotypical unsupervised demon in small human form that some of you appear to feel defines all children. So really, yes, I do think they've had a lucky escape. People who are intolerant of well behaved, correctly parented children, make me a tad wary. They often turn out to be a bit odd in general, and not the sort that I would trust around anyone or anything that matters to me. I shan't infer that they're all sociopaths, but I do think it.
 
KittenInTheT People who are intolerant of well behaved said:
Why? Not everyone has to like kids. I can't understand why people are intolerant of well behaved polite dogs, but they are, doesn't make them sociopaths.

I've just been to see a friend who has a 7 month old daughter, she was cute in a way I suppose but I had no desire to hold her and yes her shrieks and squeals were a tad grating. That's what babies do and I would never complain about it as bad behaviour but it doesn't mean I have to enjoy it!
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top