Do kids have feelings?

Once again I have witnessed a discussion that irritates me something severe........parents who feel the need to discuss delicate subjects regarding their offspring... in front of others.
They discuss the fact that their child has halitosis. The poor kid sits there squirming... why can't subjects such as this be discussed in private with child. Why the need to share???
Halitosis is often the result of a number of factors not just use or lack of use of a toothbrush.

Kids are so focussed on themselves they'd remember it forever - be a bit hard to forgive - they'd chew on it forever. I never even discussed the neighbours in front of my children - not when I was getting personal - they repeat everything to their peers - ask a bus driver LOL

I think treating children like inanimate objects sucks. My daughter has a habit of discussing their shortcomings in front of them - I bounce it back by saying " I wonder who they are mirroring cos they weren't born that way" that soon reverts to normality. As one GD is reaching puberty there are comments about growing breasts that sees the poor kid squirm. I shut that one down by pointing out how embarrassed her Mum was when she was in the same boat - it's a strange dynamic, as if they are wreaking revenge on their own kids for their own discomfort at the same age. I learned about kids repeating things when Amy was little - she got into an altercation with her drama teacher and told her "My Mum says you look like Miss Piggy".

Kidlets are very sensitive and we should not talk about them to others in their presence

I absolutely agree. I never had an easy relationship with my Mum and I remember feeling very unloved a lot of the time because of a couple of things she said when i was very young. She had a habit of telling me when I annoyed her, that I was just like her mother. She also mentioned many times that she never liked her mother. I was only 5 when i put 2 and 2 together and decided she never liked me, although many relatives insisted that I was the apple of her eye. I just never felt like it. I think the "me" that was the apple of her eye, was the "me" that she wanted me to be, to comform to all her ideas of what a perfect daughter should be. She never knew or approved of the real me, even when she passed away last year. We were always friends, but with a wall between us, whereas my Dad always had total respect for me and my feelings and opinions, and was a dear friend who I miss greatly.
The relationship you form with your tinies is the one you get. You only really get one chance.
My husbands Ex is now a grandmother twice over. She gets on, sort of, with my older stepdaughter, but she has barely seen my younger step daughter since she was 3, and she tended to ignore her even then. Now, with the baby, she has started phoning every fortnight or so. She is getting a very chilly reception. She says "I love you" to deaf ears. Anything that might have been there is long gone.
They are precious. They are people. They should be treated with respect.

A very old friend of mine had a similar relationship with her mother and when her own children were born resolved to be a different sort of mother. She confided that she found it very easy to show affection when they were small but later when they went off to school and life got busier and more stressful she got out of the habit. Wasn't until they were teenagers and she was with another friend who also had a teenage daughter that she realized she had forgotten how again. Her friend was very demonstrative and sweet to each daughter and there was an obvious response that she envied - knew her kids were missing out and so was she. She then resolved to say the words 'I love you' every day to them in a manner they would believe. Said it was one of the hardest things she ever learnt to do - to say those three words - she felt stupid and thought they would think she was stupid too. She had never heard them from her own mother, never learnt to say those 3 words - just could not believe how hard it was to get the words out. Told me years later she was still self conscious about it but it had got easier and meant a lot to her - that it had brought her closer to her kids - and they all say it now - every time they meet or speak to each other - if one forgets, the other reminds them

My boy gives me a peck on the cheek when I drop him at the station, whenever he leaves the house and comes home