My grandson, who is five, was abused by the woman operating this store today. He had brought in his own toy, as kids will do, and she accused him of stealing it from the store. I have never known my grandson to steal anything and for him to be spoken to so rudely was completely uncalled for. I realise that opshop volunteers are difficult to come by, but perhaps a bit of training in customer relations would be useful. This woman obviously has no kids of her own, so a bit of instruction in how to treat kids with respect might be helpful. My grandson was in no way disrespectful to her so she should return the kindness.

I would not recommend this business as from almost the moment I walked in the store the owner was confrontational and insulting. I am an artist myself and have my own ideas as to colour, style and dimension. He basically told me I did not know what I was talking about and he didn't want to do business with me.

My family has been attending swimming lessons at the Aquatic Centre for over two years and have been generally very pleased (aside from parking issues) until today when it became very obvious that the management of the pool arbitrarily apply rules to some but not all. Two years ago, when my grandson was a few months shy of turning three and had been taking lessons for most of the year, I asked his teacher if he was ready to progress to the next level. She said 'absolutely', but that I had to get the 'ok' from the manager because there was a policy that children under 3 cannot progress to the next level. Given that the university teaches pedagogy - and that pedagogical findings indicate that ability, not age, should determine a child's progress - I thought this quite odd, but I was happy to go along with university policy. To cut a long story short, he was denied access, I withdrew him from lessons for the last term as he was well and truly bored with nursery transition activities, and due to a fright he received in the ocean over Christmas his progress was set back an entire year ($700 worth of lessons!). I am sure that had we continued with the lessons at the next level this would not have occurred.
Today we arrived at our Level 1 lesson to find that a child under 3, who in fact had none of the nursery transition skills, was being allowed into the class. Nothing could convince the manager that this was not suitable for the more advanced students and I have had to change my grandson's class. When I asked why the child who had no skills whatsoever couldn't go into the nursery transition class that was on at the same time (and which requires the parent to be in the water at the same time) I was told that the mother couldn't and the dad - who was present - obviously didn't want to either. It is my understanding that you cannot enroll your child in nursery transition unless you are willing to go into the water with them. So on three counts (age, ability and parent participation) the aquatic centre is applying different rules for some with no good or logical reason. This child and the family had never attended the centre before and yet those of us who have been attending for over two years - and made to follow the rules - are disadvantaged by the centre's biased and pedagogically unsound approach.