children in the department - (Oct/25/2008 )
@ lolita: fake emails are never an answer. And if you are annoyed you should stand up to your opinion OR you have to take the situation and be friend with everybody.
@ telomerase: should be, but usually the situations are not as they should be.
Nevertheless: we had a class of children running around in the lab recently; I think I scared them to death when I was throwing them out of the lab (I was handling some very toxic chemicals at the time and nobody warned me that thirty 12year old will be running around)....but it got really fun later the day 
I walked around the corner and *whosssshhhh* no children around....
But now serious: if you are working in a lab children are a definite no-no. They are ok in the social room if they behave, but nowhere else. A lab is a dangerous environment for people (children and grown ups) who don't know about the risks.
I agree. Childrens should not be allowed in labs. I would even add : neither in the social room.
People who work in labs handle very dangerous chemicals, viruses, or bacteria. Kids are far more prone to infections than we are, and thus the slightest encounter with those pathogens could be health treatening.
And I guess no jobs (other than home caretaker) are mother (or father) friendly. There are kindergardens that children can go to, or babysitters, etc. People should not bring their child to the lab. Ever.
If children behave themselves (quietly sitting at the desk reading a book or drawing or playing DS), I think it is OK to leave them in the office occasionally, but not every week.
Sometimes, parents do have problem in finding someone to take care of their children.
eg. nanny on holiday...cannot find a emergency nanny.
Parents should never bring their children in the lab.
Lolita:
I can totally relate to you. I have the same problem.
Bringing children to lab is: inconsiderate, dangerous (specially to the children, but to everyone else too), annoying, disrespectful (specially if the kids are out of control), and in my opinion, a sign of bad parenting (what kind of parent will bring a child to a human pathogens lab and let them play with pipettes, benchtops, chairs, etc... ?).
HOWEVER, fake mails are not the answer. It seems that you rely on that, at least that's the way it looks considering your previous posts. A fake mail is childish, unprofessional and I doubt anyone will take an anonymous mail seriously.
Discuss this with your labmates and supervisor. I am pretty sure that you are not the only one at lab annoyed because of that. You may find support. If that doesn't work, then you may consider taking the issue to a higher level, but do it PERSONALLY, not sending fake mails. If that doesn't work or you don't feel like doing that yourself, just deal with the fact of having children around.
I too have been trying to figure out how to handle this situation and not create a war in the lab. One post-doc in our lab has a 5 year old daughter. He brings her into the actual lab and then walks away from her. I wind up having to watch after her because everything goes directly into her mouth. I could ignore her but then I'd be watching a child poison itself and I figure the child shouldn't be the one to pay (potentially with her life) for having a stupid parent. It makes me angry though. I'll be in the middle of an experiment and I have to stop everything. I've even dragged the kid to her dad and told him that he needs to watch her but within 5 minutes she'll come walking back into my area, alone. He won't even notice that she walked away until I drag her back again. My boss doesn't believe it's that bad and has asked him to try to keep it to a minimum. sigh. What can you do? If I report it all hell will break loose inside the lab and my boss would be very angry. I've tried talking to the boss but as I mentioned, he blew me off as exaggerating. No one else in the lab minds but then again none of them have a bench next to this guy and the daughter doesn't bug them (she always comes back to where Dad works). They all think she's cute and fun! I know being the only student in the lab meant I'm lowest on the priority list but does it really mean I'm a free babysitter for the post-docs as well?
rkay, you could play hide and seek with her.....she should hide and her daddy should seek her
do you have any councelling in you faculty? Usually they handle such problems quite decent (at least here, they just talk to the people and tell them if they do not change it will have serious consequences).
or take a video of the girl in the lab and show your boss, maybe he sees the danger; and he will be the one responsibel if anything happens in his lab......
do you have any councelling in you faculty? Usually they handle such problems quite decent (at least here, they just talk to the people and tell them if they do not change it will have serious consequences).
or take a video of the girl in the lab and show your boss, maybe he sees the danger; and he will be the one responsibel if anything happens in his lab......
but isn't this the one and the same unsympathetic feudal PI rkay wrote about before? I think it's still best to convince the father (even if she has to start nagging)....gosh, his lab skills are probably excellent but his parenting skills suck (he shld have his license revoked).
Besides, like she said- she can't start a war, so the key would be to make the postdoc realise the danger or risk he's putting the child in and the how he's causing rkay a great inconvenience by making her a babysitter. If it rarely happens (he doesn't really have anybody/any place to leave the child to) then maybe it's not worth starting a lab war over it. But if it's a frequent or regular occurrence and is disruptive to rkay's work then she shld really do something about it (also primarily for the child's welfare).
As a last resort, the nanny cam is not such a bad idea but I'd show the footages to the postdoc or better yet to his wife (mother of the child). Not a fan of this really (using technology to spy, invade privacy etc) but we're talking about what's best for the child here, perhaps, it might solve this problem without having to go to the higher level....