Private methods prevent extending the parser

Hi there!

I'm using the socket-io parser and trying to add a bit of functionality on top, without duplicating everything. It would be amazing if I could just extend the socket-io parser and overwrite a couple of the methods (e.g. the string parsing), but because they are all private I'm not able to. Is there any chance they could be made protected so this is possible?

Many thanks,

Oli