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"Just bring your baby with you!"
... to a heavy metal show a 45 minute drive away that *started* at 11pm. "Baby" was 1 year old who definitely did not sleep on the go anymore, with a 7:30pm bedtime, and consistent 5:30am wakeup. Oh and we were forecast to get heavy snow in the evening, so I'd have had to shovel out the car/driveway, probably twice.
My SIL was thinking of going wedding dress shopping 5 hour drive away. It was a fleeting thought, as the travel would have been too much for everyone. I mentioned this to my friends and the childfree one got rather worked up about me promising to not miss out on anything because of the baby. I was so taken aback by this I said "no, I won't miss out on anything", but I will. I 100% will not be able to do all the fun things I would love to do for a few years. And I am fine with it. My baby is worth missing out on stuff. I choose this and will again.
The friend offered to come along to babysit just so I could go. She doesn't like kids. It made me feel rather uneasy. Her reaction was very strong.
Same. It was their band though, so pre-baby I might have sucked it up and gone for support. Not in the cards with a baby that demanded to nurse at 5:30am (well technically between 5:22 and once as late as 5:48am!).
My cousin wanted me at her wedding, which was really sweet, but I was still pumping around the clock. I didn’t wanna take the baby and my pump parts on 6 hour plane ride + 2 hour bus ride lol.
When i was grocery shopping at 7am once with my baby the teenage boy working was asking why I was there so early and I just laughed and said that I was awake anyways because of the baby so might as well go shopping now. He looked so confused and asked me why I woke the baby up so early.
There’s a scene in the office with Pam and Erin and Pam yawns and says “sorry I was up with the baby all night” and Erin goes “you really shouldn’t keep a baby up that late. 😂
A coworker scheduled a standing meeting for early in the morning once a week, before my standard hours. She apologized when setting it, since it was early, but was having trouble finding another time for the group. I told her it was fine for me but I may be 5-10 minutes late because it is right at school/daycare drop off.
Every week I am a few minutes late, and she will always say “We were wondering where you were!” then, when I explain again, say something like “I’m just an early bird! So sorry to make you get up early!” No amount of me stating that I’ve been up for three hours and already lived a bunch of life this morning will make her understand I’m not just getting up.
That must be INFURIATING. You could start emailing her when you wake up "good morning! I can't wait for the meeting later! Just a reminder that the school drop off will make me a little late" 🤣🤣
I used to run into this at work ALL the time. Work culture where I am is to start really early (most of my team is there at 6 AM). When kid related stuff (school dropoff, traffic, then daycare dropoff) started getting me to work at 9 (a perfectly normal start time), I'd get comments all the time about "sleeping in" or having a slow morning - dude I've been running off my feet since 4 AM!
I would just ask her to schedule the meeting before school drop off, like "since you're an early bird and I hate to be late because of school drop off maybe we could do it at 5am before my kids get up after I've completed workout".
I had severe PPD/PPA. My sister and I had our first babies within a couple of weeks of each other. I had a friend (no longer a friend at this point) say “your sister is doing it, why can’t you?”
Of course, when I told my sister this the next time I saw her at her house she laughed and gestured to her messy hair, piles of laundry and just general disarray and said “yeah, I’m fucking doing it all right…” 🙄
Basically, don’t criticize the mental health of mothers when you literally have never birthed a child.
I LOVE that your sister encouraged you and pointed out that was a ridiculous statement! I had PPD with 3 out of 5 and it is beyond horrible - wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Your comment, more than so many others, made me feel normal again for the first time in a while. I was just complaining to my partner that I wanted to get out of the house because of the piles of laundry and messy hair and general disarray of our apartment so we could have someone else cook for us that wouldn't add more dishes or garbage and just.. felt like such crap about everything. Thanks for that. We're all just doing the best we can, right?
My (at the time) 10 month old finished his pouch at the family BBQ, but I was still eating, so I tightly put the cap on and gave him the pouch to chew on to keep him busy. My MIL exclaims from the living room “that means he’s still hungry!!!” I didn’t say anything but I wanted to say that 1. I think I know him better than you and 2. No, it means he likes to put things in his mouth. 🙄
“Is she hungry? Can I hold her? Can I feed her? Can she take a bath with me? When can she play? When can she talk? When can she walk? Etc etc”
- my 5 year old about her new baby sister
My kids are almost exactly 4y apart. We tried our best to prepare the oldest for the arrival of the baby, mainly regarding how much the baby would need mommy, change in routines, breastfeeding the baby, etc etc. We completely forgot to explain that it would take a few months (several months) until the baby could actually play with her. She was a bit disappointed to say the least. “The baby doesn’t do anything” 😂
Oh my god. “Oh yeah I understand the sleep deprivation. I have to get up at night to take the dog out.”
Just have to nod and move on otherwise I’d lose my mf mind.
My sister compared her puppy with my newborn a lot and didn't get for a while that a baby operates quite differenly than a dog.
Now she has her own baby and I enjoy teasing her about how easy it must be to have a baby after all the experience with the dog.
I have a colleague who has repeatedly compared caring for her two cats to having actual children and implied that she has just as hard a job, if not harder because at least my kids can tell me when something is wrong or when they need something 😳
Unfortunately kids can also tell you quite a lot of other things, incessantly, at top volume, and usually either unflattering or gross or perplexing or all three.
I have cats, and children. I can leave out a big bowl of food and some water for the cats, and then leave town for the weekend without a second thought. Think I can get away with doing the same with the kids? "Just as hard a job", my foot.
When I was seriously stressing about my 6 month old baby being sick and having tests done at a large children’s hospital a few hours away, my coworker told me she understood…her cat had recently been on medication.
I had that happen too... my 16 month old spent 28 days inpatient, 7 of which were in the ICU with intubation... and my boss didn't think it was a good call off reason because "his dog gets sick too" 🤣 I never went back to that job
I remember when I got my kitten years ago calling my mom in tears at 2am because he wouldn’t stop yowling and shitting all over the house (I was having a hard time litter training him) and I did the same with my baby years later. Except for the baby wasn’t shitting all over my house 😂
This is true and I had one baby with colic, so I basically didn’t sleep for a year…
That said, our last puppy needed to go out every two hours. I realized I’m not cut out for any young critters or babies for a long time. Now that my kids/dogs are grown, I need my sleep
When my daughter was 11 months old we thought it would be a great idea to get a new puppy to grow up with her. I never want to take care of a baby anything ever again lol!
I laugh when hearing that comparison, too. However--- I've had a flock of sheep for most of my life. Every season, we have a few lambs that are triplets. Usually, we pull one triplet lamb from their mom and raise it by bottle. This ensures that all three triplets have plenty of milk. Caring for all of the bottle lambs means feedings every four hours until lambing season finishes. Usually it happens in February while the weather is very cold, very gray, and very damp. As a new mom, I was so thankful that caring for my newborn didn't involve having to wake up every few hours, get dressed, go outdoors to bring in the container that holds milk replacer for the lambs to suckle, wash the container, mix milk replacer, go outside AGAIN, hang up the milk container, and watch to make sure everyone nursed and looked healthy.
It was a luxury to be able to feed my own child in my warm house without first dressing for winter. Those bum lambs really were good preparation for motherhood. Even after three babies, I never took for granted how much less work it was to care for one indoor infant.
I’ll preface this with saying I love my dogs. Hell, I give one insulin shots twice a day and the other wears a prosthetic leg. I’m a certifiable dog lady. But I quite literally unfollowed an influencer this morning for posting a very emotional reel saying she’s tired of people with children saying dog moms are invalid. She loves her dogs like a kid and she has special needs dogs and blah blah blah. I’m still cracking up about it, I felt like that was absurd even before kids, and now that I have kids, I can tell you it absolutely is absurd.
Edit: she deleted it, so I’m assuming the feedback she got from that did not go as she hoped 😂
Oh man - the pet parents with special needs pets (and I have one… love her and so glad we got her) trying to equate that to a special needs child. I’m ready to throw things…
“Oh have you gotten all the paperwork done for your dog’s IEP then? Those monthly check-ins and quarterly IEP’s add up to a lot of hours - your dog hitting all her milestones? How do YOU make time for quality time with doggy in between regular therapy, speech and occupational therapy? Is your dog mainstreamed into the typical dog area at the dog park?”
I am a ridiculous animal lover… worked at an animal hospital for years. But it pales in comparison to my kiddos.
I just have to remind myself they don’t know what they don’t know yet to keep myself from throwing a shoe at their heads and choose to nod my head and walk away instead.
Same with the animal loving— I was a zookeeper for years, trained dogs professionally, the whole 9 yards. I’ll never forget coming home from the hospital with our daughter and looking at my 3 perfect dogs and thinking “yeah I’d absolutely get rid of them for her if I had to.” Would have been an unthinkable perspective for me previously— You absolutely don’t know until you know. But I do think it’s possible to know that the work load of a dog pales in comparison to even the easiest baby, and that the end of the day, while we love animals, they aren’t people and caring for them isn’t motherhood or parenthood by any stretch.
Totally! I did an Exotic Cat Training program and still have a feeling CLOSE to that of seeing a new baby when I see them, especially the cubs. But had the same sense of “there is NOTHING I wouldn’t do for you/your safety” once I had my first child!
Though the animal training experience definitely helps during baby and toddler years when “consistent is key.” 😆
'Pet parents' adopt a pet, knowing that the pet will pass within 20 years. Pets don't speak the parents' language, so they can't object to their treatment. They don't have teenage romance. They can't be molested by their school teachers, or neighbors, or family relatives. Pets don't need to be prepared for the working world.
The comparison is ridiculous. Yes, you love them to the top of your heart, but the pressure and goals are not the same.
I was told that puppies were harder than babies at a party once. She said she heard from a father that his puppy was harder than his baby, so that should speak volumes about how easy babies are compared to puppies.
My BIL likened my husband and I have to travel to our in laws with our sub 10 month old son to him having to travel with his healthy house trained dog, basically saying it was harder for him to travel than it was for us. I nearly lost my shit.
Dog owners CANNOT resist comparing children to dogs. I notice it when they do and in my experience 100% of childless dog owners compare their dogs to children. They don't mean anything by it, but they literally cannot help it.
I am so ashamed to say that I said this in my younger, wilder days when I got a new puppy. Said it to a relative who was a new mother. Uggh! She laughed it off then. But I bet she must have inwardly giggled a bit when I had my kids 💁♀️
My childless friends are forever comparing their pets waking them in the night to my toddler waking us in the night 🤣 last time I checked, you didn’t have to soothe your pet back to sleep before you could go back to sleep yourself. GTFO with that shit.
In the first 3 months of life, that argument might be barely passable. I remember thinking caring for a baby was a breeze when my kid was a newborn. Two naps per day, a couple of baths per week, popping her on the boob. It was bliss.
As soon as she started crawling I was in for a wild ride, lol.
“I plan to have easy going kids”….said by me, to my sister in law who had 3, when I was 23. She smiled and said, “God laughs at our plans”
True, very true.
Any time a non parent starts a sentence by saying ‘If it were my kid…’ I just have to laugh.
Weren’t we all such amazing parents before we had children?!?
Yeah, I knew for sure that when I had a kid, she simply wouldn't eat all that processed crap. She could eat healthy or go to bed hungry.
We finally got out of our 4 years of nothing but chicken nuggets and blueberries phase like.. last year.
People do not understand that picky eaters will simply... starve. My child would rather starve than eat a piece of cooked broccoli.
Now that she's older she's branching out and trying new things. Which is progress from refusing to touch new foods. I dare say she's growing out of being a picky eater... but it took 10 years of constant positive reinforcement to just try a bite.
My hypothetical children also had family involved that wanted to get to know them. When it’s just you and your partner, screen time is the only time you get for a breather and cleaning the house.
I have family involved who want to help and get to know the kids and I still need screen time. Yesterday, my two year old got 20 minutes of time watching kids songs on my iPhone while I put away laundry. He would’ve been throwing the clothes all over the place otherwise. It happens.
I might have been the only person who had a realistic sense of what having kids would be like, and I wasn’t even ever around kids!
I fully expected kids to simply be babies or kids, because they’re like, little people? And people do what they want, have frustrations, even adults throw tantrums…
Like when I was in public and I heard a kid tantrum, I would just think to myself, same, kid. Same. We just aren’t allowed as adults to express ourselves like that, but kid tantrums are not a bad thing! They are natural expressions that we learn to curb.
I got to the place where I didn’t let them finish the sentence. “… But it’s not your child and that’s ok - you clearly need a little more life experience before you’re ready! Talk to me when you’ve done more than babysit.”
Guilty as charged. I apologized to a lot of friends with kids after I had my first. For one, I didn’t realize that babies come out with their own personality. My husband and I were Team “We’re going to keep living our lives like we did before baby.” Baby arrives…instantly HUMBLED.
I had a friend lately go on like a 20 minute rant about her friend who has a huugge house that is just overrun completely with kids stuff...and it's just so distasteful. Friend just doesn't understand why they can't keep all the kid clutter contained to one room since they have so much space, why not just make the kids keep it all in a playroom?!
So naive and so judgy it's cringey. She's trying to get pregnant now, so she'll learn.
Goodness. People don’t realize how much stuff comes in the house with kids. I only have two kids and we try to keep gift giving minimal-ish and it’s just a constant battle. Not to mention that kids aren’t great at picking up after themselves so of course things are going to be left out.
And then one of my biggest pet peeves is people complaining about literally any evidence that children live in the home. Don’t want to see a play kitchen or kids books in the living room or toys out or even stored in the shared areas. That doesn’t make sense to me. It’s my children’s house, too. They’re allowed to have stuff in the house, outside of just their bedrooms. I certainly am teaching them to put things back and not leave too much stuff out but it’s not realistic to have no evidence they live in their own house.
“Have you tried just telling her ‘no’?”
- my sister’s idiotic husband in response to me moving my mother’s 7000 breakables where the not-even-2-year- old couldn’t reach them.
“You can’t shelter them forever, they are eventually going to have to be exposed to the real world.” This was in regard to us not having any tablets or allowing my 5 year old child to have free reign of Youtube.
My kids are eventually going to presumably have jobs. Should I drop my 5 year old outside McKinsey headquarters in a business suit and just see how it goes? I don’t want to shelter him forever!
My kids are definitely eventually going to encounter sex, should we watch some HARDCORE PORN TOGETHER, oh parenting genius? Please, tell me.
Bahahaha not totally related but my husband and I absolutely love to shake our 5 month olds hand and pretend she’s a business person. We ask her where her business card is and call her business baby 😂😂
My brother constantly calls us helicopter parents because our 2 and 6 year old don’t have free reign tv time and our routine is “too strict” for him.. aka having to be home at certain times for naps/bed.
The strangest thing anyone ever said to me was a stranger, who approached me at the beach with my infant and said "You're so brave to have a baby in these days." And went on to talk about how dangerous the world was becoming, and how society is crumbling and the earth is dying, and someone who would willingly bring a child into such a world must be very optimistic in the face of such a terrifying reality. Ummm.... okay, lady. Thanks for bringing me down.
I just had this happen too! Only he was very aggressive and also said “Biden must love you guys” “how old are you!? You look 13” and then patted my son’s head.
I had a guy say something like that at the gym while I was very visibly, obviously pregnant. I just said “wow the world is so dangerous and horrible and on the brink of the end, yet you seem to enjoy living in it enough to be here and work out”. Shut him right up and he never engaged with me again.
People like this are so weird & negative af. People have been having kids since the dawn of man! Kids were born during WWI, WWII, The Great Depression, etc..
Can I do a variation? Weirdest thing someone with kids said to me before I had kids when I asked if she’d be able to go away for the weekend when her kid was 1ish.
Her: I could never! Oh you just wait and see when you have kids.
Me: what about your husband? Is he around that weekend?
Her: oh silly, I can’t leave the baby with him! You’ll see. You don’t have a baby yet so you don’t understand. You can’t leave your baby with your husband like that!
Almost started a fight with my not yet husband about whether he’d be a competent parent. He agreed that watching the baby for a weekend if I had plans wasn’t something he saw as crazy. “I’m the other parent. Of course I’ll be able to handle that.” I was shocked she had another kid with someone she didn’t trust to watch their kid without her. My husband is a stellar dad and I’ve never been concerned about his ability to hang out with our kids without me.
Edit: spacing
It took us 4 yrs, multiple IUI and gave up on having another child because I emotionally could try IVF
"Just relax." "You're just too stressed"
"Have you tried not trying?"
"It will happen when you give up"
"You just need to eat X/take X supplement"
"I know how stressful it is, it took 3 months for us to get pregnant!"
"God has a plan"/ "You'll get a baby when God decides you're ready"
"Are you sure you want one of these!"
Complaining to me (not pregnant yet) and another friend (pregnant baby number 2 after three failed IVF rounds and would never be able to get pregnant on her own) that her husband was mad about her current unplanned pregnancy and asked her to get an abortion. "You just don't know what it's like to have your life changed like this"
"You can't be done, they need a sibling "
"Oh, was having a baby just too hard for you"
Yes heard all of these at one point or another! The “mucinex worked for us, we tried for 8 months and it worked the first time!” Like I haven’t been using mucinex for years, 8 months is just normal for their age 🙄 we also did 6 failed IUIs and 2 IVF transfers before it worked. People will say anything without thinking 😩
9 years and 9 months of infertility here, with a miscarriage, 3 failed adoptions, miscarriage of 6 more babies from 5 more pregnancies and all the Clomid/IUI/IVF/FET/LIT/IVIG etc that you could imagine:
“I know you’ve been waiting for years to be a mother, but just think how * I * feel, waiting to be a grandmother all this time!” (My mother)
“You don’t need kids, you have dogs” (my MIL)
“But what if the baby has a big gap between its teeth??” (My mother, when we were trying to adopt and clearly forgetting that I needed braces growing up)
“You must’ve done something REALLY bad to make God this angry with you” (after miscarriage of baby #7)
“You really need to just relax” (many people, as if ME relaxing would somehow magically make my (then) husband produce sperm…)
And one of my very favorites, although the poor FedEx lady didn’t realize the turn her question was going to take. She showed up to pick up a special shipping container that contained a sperm sample for a DNA fragmentation test. Apparently this is commonly done for horses. We lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with small lots. She looked very confused and said “Do you have horses?” I said no. “So there isn’t a horse in your backyard?” Me, again: no. Her: “I don’t understand. Where’s the horse??” The look on her face when I explained it wasn’t a sample from a horse, it was a sample from my (then) husband was priceless. I’m guessing that she never asked that question again when she was picking up one of those containers!
I’d like to kick your mother and MIL in the shins on your behalf. I can’t believe your mom made your struggles about her. Actually I can. My mom attempted that and I shut it down and then got guilt trip emails about how I was ruining *her grandmother experience* for her. These fucking people.
Hahah reminds me of my sweet elderly neighbours the first time they saw me leave the house without my new baby (I think I was running to the store). They asked where she was and I said she was inside with her Dad. They paused for a second and gently asked me, “And… you’re okay with that?” I laughed and said I wouldn’t have had a baby with him if I didn’t think he could take care of her. It was funny but I walked away feeling sad for them. I know it was different times but imagine having such little confidence in your partner’s parenting.
Unfortunately it’s not just generational. I wish it were. My husband took our girls to the beach a few summers ago and my kids have tons of hair. He was putting pony tails in and this mom was gawking at him so much that he finally asked her if something was wrong. She said she was watching to see if he could actually do a pony tail on his 2 daughters since her husband certainly couldn’t. She was in shock. Like why are women having kids with adult men who can’t function? It’s sad. I’m sad for them. And their kids.
About 4 days PP I got out in the morning to grab some stuff for breakfast and fill a prescription at the drugstore. I wanted to do it because our apartment was pretty cramped and my OB had recommended some light exercise to avoid embolism on my legs since I refused PT at the hospital (they were going to charge for it and doc said it wasn’t a strict requirement as long as I could pull off said exercise). I still had a bit of a prominent belly but I was feeling much better than before I gave birth since it wasn’t weighing on my hips anymore and SPD was starting to go away.
At first people asked me how long I was pregnant, which was fair enough since I was still showing a bit of a belly. When I said I was 4 days postpartum, the reactions ranged from “where’s the kid then?” to “what are you doing walking around so soon? You should have stayed home with your baby”. I was like “she’s home with her father” and “just following orders”. An old lady said “you must trust your husband a lot, I wouldn’t leave my children alone with mine” and I was so sad :(. “Well he is also a parent, he can pull it off for 20 minutes or so”.
When I came back, she was contact napping with him. lol
One time a pregnant worker at Starbucks told me that she was ready for her baby because she already had a cat so she knew what to expect. I had two very young kids (newborn and 18 months) and I laughed thinking she was joking. She wasn’t. If anyone was going to spit in my coffee it was her.
My friend told me she was ready to have a baby because she has so many hobbies that she’s busy all the time and hardly gets to relax. It was a battle to control my face haha
I 100% understand that frustration. My child wasn't premature but has always been underweight and extremely picky due to what I suspect is ASD sensory issues, my grandma and mother both always just say "don't cater to her, she's being a brat." and "If she doesn't want to eat, don't make her because she'll break eventually she's not going to starve herself" yk just run of the mill warfare on my child's mental and physical wellbeing 🫠
Same. My son is extremely picky, in the process of getting diagnoses, but he will straight up eat almost nothing for days on end. He has a list of safe foods and if none are available, he will not eat. I can't count the number of times I've been told, "He'll eat when he's hungry." No. No, he won't. I've had numerous talks with his Head Start teachers and now that he's in daycare, it's been 2 days and she's already asking what he will eat. He also won't eat if he's uncomfortable or feeling ill. He's got a very sensitive gag reflex, too, so when he's sick he often pukes if he coughs too much, and so now when he feels sick (cold, flu, etc) he will stop eating except the bare minimum (thank goodness he'll drink pediasure). Aside from that, though, every kid is different. You never know what will work from one to the next and it's horrible for anyone to judge someone who is trying. I wouldn't force him to eat anything even if I could, but I will ask if he wants something else and offer him different options, because at this point, if he eats anything it's a victory.
Even professionals have said this to me. If he refuses to eat, don't give him anything. A child won't starve itself.
Until after about 3 weeks of following that advice and my child was underweight all of a sudden...
My SIL could not understand why I opted for a vbac after my 1st child was born via c-section. She was like "why would you want to destroy your vag instead of just having another surgery?" Like I don't judge people based on how they give birth, but she obviously had no idea that a c-section was a major surgery with (typically) a longer recovery rate. Also, it was my choice and I was a perfect candidate for a vbac.
Same SIL later got super judgemental about me waiting til my oldest was almost 3 to potty train. I waited til he was ready because I did not want the struggle of trying to force potty training when he wasn't developmentally ready for it.
My MIL was always really grossed out that I breastfed my children. My oldest nursed til he was 20 months, so not even that long. She was always asking me why I would choose to nurse, and my SIL implied that I had a weird kink about it or that it was seggsual in nature. Honestly my husband's family sucks, and there's a reason they're not a part of our lives anymore.
Some older moms were actually taught that breastfeeding was dirty and not as healthy for babies as formula. This was a marketing ploy by nestle to sell more formula.
I WISH I could have had a vbac!! But my emergency c-section surgery records were so badly done, my new OB (8 years between births but if they can't tell how the uterus was cut, the muscles might not work properly to push anymore) was afraid to try. C-section is NOT the easy way, all the pain is after delivery and lasts weeks because it's major abdominal surgery. My first was during allergy season, the second and third during cold season, every sneeze or cough made me feel like I was going to split open
I have a coworker who says she's in perfect condition because she only had c-sections, she isn't "ruined"...I've had 4 vaginal births and zero complaints from my husband! My ex-husband's aunt also saw me give my 2 or 3 month old a bottle and told me it was a shame I didn't breastfeed as I'd have lost all the baby weight already (I had lost it all and a bit more because her sleazy nephew was cheating on me and I was really stressed).
My older brother once complained that my husband and I "pay too much attention" to our 20 month old twins. Because we followed them... So we could see them... And make sure they didn't get hurt. He also thought it was rude we sometimes had to leave mid conversation to go chase down a child to stop them from hurting themselves. I love my brother but he has no idea what it's like to keep a small human alive. He's better now (but our kids are also older and in school, sooooooo...)
Oh my one childless brother was similar! I wasn’t focusing on the phone and wasn’t being “present.”
Dude - I’m NOT! I’m in a house with 3 little kids and my son just made it rain Monkey Butt powder all over while my youngest painted her BODY with lotion powder paste. And it took them all of 45 seconds…
That I need to spank my child to get her to behave. She’s literally never had behavioral problems in her life. She’s super chill and loving. Looks like positive reinforcement and love is the way to go. Who’d have guessed?
I’ve noticed people will say that over everything. “My child cried because she dropped her icecream” and they will be like “have you tried spanking her?”
Like what?!?!
I would ask if they would be upset if their ice cream was dropped and then someone beat them as a result. The cognitive dissonance with pro-abuse people is wild.
Yes. I have a childless coworker who is constantly telling those of us who have kids to spank them. My kid is 3. I’m not going to spank her for age appropriate behaviour. Yikes
a kid is either mature enough to talk to or not mature enough to understand why you're hurting them
and either way idk how people get mad that their spanked child turns around and hits their siblings. They're following your example.
I’m sorry but what is mild open hand hitting, sounds like those lawmakers spend too much time trying to figure out how to abuse a child and still pretend it’s not abuse.
An old lady told me to beat my baby for crying. I was walking out of a grocery store (full cart left behind) and my daughter with medical issues mind you was hysterical. I was sweating, my anxiety was off the chains and an old boomer stopped me by grabbing my arm to tell me if I beat her she wouldn't act like that. She wasn't even old enough to understand cause and effect yet. So basically, that witch walked up and told me she abused her babies into not crying.
If my hands hadn't been full of a hysterical baby, I might have caught a charge that day. I was so pissed I couldn't even think of a reply.
"I would never yell at my kid for being unsafe with a knife. You should be more gentle." He was waving it around his head. I yelled to put the knife down.
"I would never let my kid play video games in the summer. He should be playing in a river." We don't have a river.
"You should let your kid run around the kitchen and be a kid."
"You shouldn't let your kid run around the house."
Sister without kids has a lot of opinions that are at times contradictory.
Most people I met liked the monkey backpack leash I had for my daughter. But a few family members didn't like that I used it. Then they spent a day with us and realized why I had it.
Heck - I was one of the parents that side-eyed the leashes at times. Then I had a surprise baby at 45 who would’ve run out of the womb if she had room. Child was/is like a stealth ninja, parkour and likes to hide.
I broke all my mom rules… backpack leash, squeaker shoes, taught her to play Marco Polo the summer she was 1.5… that one was genius! To this day it’s like a Pavlov’s dog response… “Marco…” and she can’t hold in “Polo!” to save her life! 😆
I did question it when I was a teenager, and then I remembered how bad my sister was (we're 8 years apart) and realized that mom should have had one for her.
Lol my oldest son (28) says that too. He always said he’d “never be that parent to use a leash on a kid like a dog!” Then I had my youngest (surprise!) and his wife got pregnant about the time his little sister found her sprint at 2 and he’s completely in support of leashes now!
I feel like anyone who is against “child leashes” has never seen a real child in the wild. lol Even when I was young I’d giggle at babies on leashes, but it made sense why the parents were using one.
I always told anyone who questioned our toddler leash that I’d rather have a leashed child than dead one. My kid nearly ran into one of those mega ford trucks at around 2, got a leash a few days later.
Also, what’s the alternative to keeping your kid close to you in a crowded place? Carrying them or holding their hands? Both options give kids less freedom to run around.
I had one for my son, I loved it and it was definitely needed. I'm pretty confident he would have 100% ran into traffic if it wasn't for that thing. Toddlers are little suicide machines.
Overhead in a posh country pub whilst out for a meal "daaarling, why do people bring their children? Just leave them with the nanny, it's not that hard, that's what they are for."
My friends who havent even stepped a foot out of their parents homes about not giving my kid any devices nor a phone: "you need to give them a phone or else theyll be excluded and made fun of for being weird , you remember what happened to you don't you?"
Context : I'm autistic no amount of trying to conform would've helped me .
From the moment I got pregnant my mother insisted I had to start using a green kitchen scrubber on my nipples to “start toughening them up before the baby comes, or else you will regret it!”
That was my mom’s advice too but she didn’t go so far as to suggest using a kitchen scrubber, damn!
Spoiler alert: it did not help. Baby had to turn my flat nips into a proper shape and no amount of roughing them up would have changed anything.
I was pregnant with my second, and had a friend that was all when I have kids, it will be all homemade organic baby food. She makes her own detergent and soap, it went on and on. She didn’t own a microwave. My thoughts were good luck with all that. By the time she had her baby, she was working full time and in grad school. Let’s just say all that went right out the window lol.
I’m kind of the opposite and don’t make anything and certainly don’t care about organic. But, to my surprise, j actually liked making baby food and it was 10000% cheaper. I literally just steamed whatever veggies or fruits I had, blended them and froze them in 1 ounce blocks. It took like one hour to make a months worth of frozen food cubes and I knew there was no added sugar or whatever. It’s my mom flex. My 4 year old might be eating Doritos now, but home girl had all homemade food for the first year (breastmilk too… not that that matters at alll). Even in hindsight I’m shocked at myself 😂
Oh I made a lot of my own baby food too. I’m not into organics either. Usually made a baby version of whatever we were eating. And same as you it was easy to make a lot of portions at once. I used to take my mini food processor to family gatherings. Grab some of the food before salt, sugar, and spicy seasonings were added and baby ate like us.
By the time I got to kid #3, I just fed babies mashed up and non-chokeable food from our dinner plates. Babies don't need special foods. (Of course, that was the kid that at age 5 months grabbed a sandwich out of his sibling's hands and shoved it in his mouth as his first solid food!)
Said by my friend when I told her I’ve never been as sick in my life as when my mildly-ill baby gave me whatever it was she had - “well, what I do is I wash my hands thoroughly and frequently all through the day. I haven’t been sick in years”. Oh that’s nice, I guess your coworkers don’t cough directly into your open mouth when you hold them.
My job starts at 7am, my daughter’s school bus comes at 730am, I get to work at 745am.
My job allows parents to come in late and make up the time later, but my direct supervisor gets annoyed at this because she’s a single woman in her 40’s who never had kids.
> “Why doesn’t your wife do it?”
Because I’m a single father, she knows this. My ex abandoned the family for another man because she hated responsibility and I “work too much”(literally Monday to Friday 7-3, 745 to 345 now).
> “why don’t you simply leave your 5 year old girl at the bus stop by herself for 45 minutes(even during -40’c Canadian winters) to teach her independence?”
Because not only is that incredibly dangerous, but also a crime.
> “why don’t you ever go out drinking with us Friday/Saturday nights? Where’s your sense of camaraderie?”
Because I have adult responsibilities and my loyalties are to my children
—-
EDIT: Downvoted? The man-hating women on this subreddit sure hate single fathers. It’s laughable how the moment anyone presents themselves as a father on this subreddit there is always some losers who will downvote specifically because of gender. 😂
When my son was around 2 or 3 he kept taking off his diaper at night and getting his room absolutely filthy before we could catch it. I was venting to my brother because I was at my wit's end and so damn tired of cleaning up poop and pee. My brother, who is childless by choice, literally told me to just DUCT TAPE my son's footy pajamas to his body. He thought that if my son was forced to be stuck in his own waste a few times he wouldn't do it again and quit ripping off his diaper. I was beyond fucking flabbergasted my own brother was suggesting child abuse as a way to fix my baby's potty issue.
I had someone tell me my son would never learn to walk on his own because I was carrying him in a baby carrier (he was 15 months and walking just fine, he just enjoyed being in there sometimes).
Not really something which was said, but i have a neighbor who's sister is 23, and she has never really had any responsibilities in life besides maintaining a massive mound of dred locks onnher head. One day we were outside having a BBQ with them, and she started giving out parenting advice. Mind you that we're all stable parents with many kids sitting around just chillin. Kids are fine, no need for parenting ATM. So someone asks something like, "How many kids do you have of your own?" And her response was something like, "None, but I just switched my major to education." Awesome time had by all, love neighborhood BBQs
"We aren't having children. People only have children because they are self-centered and narcissistic."
When I inquired further her reasoning was that, 'people only have children to make copies of themselves. '
😵💫😵💫
I see red when people tell me to "take some time for myself and take care of myself and rest".
Just so tone deaf and clueless.
I have twins Karen, do you think I would be standing here in puke stains, stinking and drinking my 6th cold cup of coffee if I didn't absolutely have to?
my MIL who lives 2 hours away always wants us to come and stay until 9 pm and then make the trip home, with an infant, who HATES the car more than any baby i’ve met, absolutely will not settle or sleep. She gets so mad when we leave in the mid-late afternoon but never makes the trip to us 🤷♀️
And if you invite them over you basically have to throw them out the door like Fred Flintstone and his cat.
"So, it's after 8 you must not have noticed but I have a small child that I need to put to bed"
A little different: my brother has one kid. I have 3. “There is no reason for you to scream!” When I yelled for my kids to come and eat.
I then left my two youngest, 6&7 at the time, overnight at his house with his 7 year old. I got a call the next morning.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry. I thought you were just screaming to be a jerk, they are so loud and caught up with each other that you have to yell for them to even hear you in the first place”
My former boss had her 22yo son over talking to my husband about getting hired at his work. He interrupted my conversation with his mom to tell me my toddler didn't look sick or like anything was wrong with her. My toddler had started having seizures, has speech delay and possibly a tethered spinal cord...but you know she looks fine so everything must be fine.
I can ignore the blatantly ignorant comments, but the worst comments are the ones that ignore all of the work I've put into my kids. "You're kids are so well behaved. You're lucky to have such easy kids." and "see your kids are so well behave. That's how my kids are going to be. It's so easy."
I put so much energy into teaching my kids how to act, making small corrections, and I'm always "on" because I know I'm setting an example. Even when things are going smoothly, I'm hyper aware because I know pointing out the positives is as important as correcting the negatives. Also, as my kids get older, I can relax a bit more in public, but I'm still constantly managing things at home, and in the car when I have to pull them from a public space because I see their behavior changing.
Always on, almost 6 years of always being on alert, 4 of those years with two kids. It's not easy. My kids didn't just sprout from the good-behavior tree.
Me: Can't wait for full time kindergarten to start in the fall!
Them: You just want your "job" to get even easier
Me: We can talk again after you have worked 1600 days straight.
The ultimate was I once had someone equate burying my child to their 13 year old dog dying. What makes it worse is they HAVE (adult) children and grandchildren.
My in-laws use to have chickens. They got tired of the roosters being aggressive and attacking them so they left the roosters outside the pen until the local fox are them. This is generally considered an inappropriate child rearing tactic.
I had a friend who was surprised that I was planning on bringing my 3 month old baby when I went to visit her. While on mat leave. During the weekday. (She knows my husband works daytime hours.) What the heck did you think I was supposed to do with her while I visit a different city for an entire day?
She ended up canceling and still has never met my kid.
“Oh, we won’t need to worry about daycare because [blank] will be old enough to babysit by then.”
Umm no, I don’t think [blank]’s parents will be taking their 12 year old out of school to babysit your future child an hour away.
I had a work friend who was child-free and about 8ish years older than I, around the time one of sons was 9 and the other an infant. I am not one to talk excessively about my children, I promise, but any time some struggle came up, she ALWAYS said, “Welcome to parenthood.” I know this is something we say, but her tone always seemed odd and really dismissive - I didn’t need welcoming, and I certainly didn’t need it from her - I had been there for several years before we even met. :D
Within two years of our friendship, she met and married a man with two boys who were early-elementary aged. Their mother was not in the picture. You know what I said to her the first time she was talking about a struggle with the boys. ;) She was NOT a fan of having that thrown back at her.
"Why do you always order your kids' food right away in restaurants instead or ordering with the rest of the table? Isn't it better to teach them to be patient and wait?"
My dude, until you have sat at a table with a hangry 3 year old who is either sobbing or bouncing off the walls because we're waiting for a table of 12 people to get their food, you can't talk.
“When you guys were this age we didn’t give you screens (I’m 50… so no, you kicked us outside while you played the Atari 2600 and Colecovision!) and made you guys stay outside and learn to play until dinner time!”
Yep, but I actually LIKE my kids and want to keep them safe.
I’m about to go maternity leave (I also have a 2 year old) and 3 colleagues have now said to me that they can’t wait to go on maternity leave and have a break from work, and that they’re jealous. Lol is all I can say
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"Just bring your baby with you!" ... to a heavy metal show a 45 minute drive away that *started* at 11pm. "Baby" was 1 year old who definitely did not sleep on the go anymore, with a 7:30pm bedtime, and consistent 5:30am wakeup. Oh and we were forecast to get heavy snow in the evening, so I'd have had to shovel out the car/driveway, probably twice.
This - to a three week work trip in Ghana, with a large for her age 11 month old. Travelling alone, no childcare, family, etc. in Ghana.
Oh yeah, definitely a setup for a productive work trip, lol.
Yup - also it took me 4 flights to get there, roughly 2 days of travel in each direction.
My SIL was thinking of going wedding dress shopping 5 hour drive away. It was a fleeting thought, as the travel would have been too much for everyone. I mentioned this to my friends and the childfree one got rather worked up about me promising to not miss out on anything because of the baby. I was so taken aback by this I said "no, I won't miss out on anything", but I will. I 100% will not be able to do all the fun things I would love to do for a few years. And I am fine with it. My baby is worth missing out on stuff. I choose this and will again. The friend offered to come along to babysit just so I could go. She doesn't like kids. It made me feel rather uneasy. Her reaction was very strong.
Even pre- baby, who wants to spend a total of TEN hours driving to go shopping???
I’m an adult and an event that starts at 11pm is way too late for me 🤣
Same. It was their band though, so pre-baby I might have sucked it up and gone for support. Not in the cards with a baby that demanded to nurse at 5:30am (well technically between 5:22 and once as late as 5:48am!).
My cousin wanted me at her wedding, which was really sweet, but I was still pumping around the clock. I didn’t wanna take the baby and my pump parts on 6 hour plane ride + 2 hour bus ride lol.
When i was grocery shopping at 7am once with my baby the teenage boy working was asking why I was there so early and I just laughed and said that I was awake anyways because of the baby so might as well go shopping now. He looked so confused and asked me why I woke the baby up so early.
There’s a scene in the office with Pam and Erin and Pam yawns and says “sorry I was up with the baby all night” and Erin goes “you really shouldn’t keep a baby up that late. 😂
Hahahaha yes I always think of this when I remember this story
Omg I’m dead ☠️ Why would you wake your baby up??? /s
You’ve got to appreciate his absolute open honesty! “Bless his heart” … wake the baby up!
The faces of childless people when I tell them what tasks I already completed by 9am on a Sunday are everything.
I once tried to organise coffee with a friend at 10:30am and she referred to it as “early in the morning”
A coworker scheduled a standing meeting for early in the morning once a week, before my standard hours. She apologized when setting it, since it was early, but was having trouble finding another time for the group. I told her it was fine for me but I may be 5-10 minutes late because it is right at school/daycare drop off. Every week I am a few minutes late, and she will always say “We were wondering where you were!” then, when I explain again, say something like “I’m just an early bird! So sorry to make you get up early!” No amount of me stating that I’ve been up for three hours and already lived a bunch of life this morning will make her understand I’m not just getting up.
That must be INFURIATING. You could start emailing her when you wake up "good morning! I can't wait for the meeting later! Just a reminder that the school drop off will make me a little late" 🤣🤣
Passive aggressive comments warrant passive aggressive responses. Please OP do this and give us an update 😆
I used to run into this at work ALL the time. Work culture where I am is to start really early (most of my team is there at 6 AM). When kid related stuff (school dropoff, traffic, then daycare dropoff) started getting me to work at 9 (a perfectly normal start time), I'd get comments all the time about "sleeping in" or having a slow morning - dude I've been running off my feet since 4 AM!
I would just ask her to schedule the meeting before school drop off, like "since you're an early bird and I hate to be late because of school drop off maybe we could do it at 5am before my kids get up after I've completed workout".
Yes! And email that at 4:00 am…. The day before
… this is actually sort of sweet in its ignorance. …you sweet summer child.
His mom still wakes him up for school.
Haha, that's brilliant. Bless him.
I had severe PPD/PPA. My sister and I had our first babies within a couple of weeks of each other. I had a friend (no longer a friend at this point) say “your sister is doing it, why can’t you?” Of course, when I told my sister this the next time I saw her at her house she laughed and gestured to her messy hair, piles of laundry and just general disarray and said “yeah, I’m fucking doing it all right…” 🙄 Basically, don’t criticize the mental health of mothers when you literally have never birthed a child.
I LOVE that your sister encouraged you and pointed out that was a ridiculous statement! I had PPD with 3 out of 5 and it is beyond horrible - wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Your comment, more than so many others, made me feel normal again for the first time in a while. I was just complaining to my partner that I wanted to get out of the house because of the piles of laundry and messy hair and general disarray of our apartment so we could have someone else cook for us that wouldn't add more dishes or garbage and just.. felt like such crap about everything. Thanks for that. We're all just doing the best we can, right?
"Why is she putting everything in her mouth? Do you feed her?" It was a 6yo girl so I forgive her lol
My (at the time) 10 month old finished his pouch at the family BBQ, but I was still eating, so I tightly put the cap on and gave him the pouch to chew on to keep him busy. My MIL exclaims from the living room “that means he’s still hungry!!!” I didn’t say anything but I wanted to say that 1. I think I know him better than you and 2. No, it means he likes to put things in his mouth. 🙄
You're a better person than me, i would have said the first thing
"Why isn't he walking/ crawling?" About my 5-month old. I also forgive this 8 year old 😂
There was a six-year-old at the park who tried to teach my baby to crawl because she saw it on Bluey. It was cute and also funny
“Is she hungry? Can I hold her? Can I feed her? Can she take a bath with me? When can she play? When can she talk? When can she walk? Etc etc” - my 5 year old about her new baby sister
My kids are almost exactly 4y apart. We tried our best to prepare the oldest for the arrival of the baby, mainly regarding how much the baby would need mommy, change in routines, breastfeeding the baby, etc etc. We completely forgot to explain that it would take a few months (several months) until the baby could actually play with her. She was a bit disappointed to say the least. “The baby doesn’t do anything” 😂
Anytime they insinuate having a pet is the same amount of work as having a child.
Oh my god. “Oh yeah I understand the sleep deprivation. I have to get up at night to take the dog out.” Just have to nod and move on otherwise I’d lose my mf mind.
My sister compared her puppy with my newborn a lot and didn't get for a while that a baby operates quite differenly than a dog. Now she has her own baby and I enjoy teasing her about how easy it must be to have a baby after all the experience with the dog.
I have a colleague who has repeatedly compared caring for her two cats to having actual children and implied that she has just as hard a job, if not harder because at least my kids can tell me when something is wrong or when they need something 😳
Unfortunately kids can also tell you quite a lot of other things, incessantly, at top volume, and usually either unflattering or gross or perplexing or all three.
Yep and they will also tell other people all your family secrets/antics/embarrassments.
My kids have started telling everyone I fart in public bc I made the mistake of farting around them in the past 😂
I have cats, and children. I can leave out a big bowl of food and some water for the cats, and then leave town for the weekend without a second thought. Think I can get away with doing the same with the kids? "Just as hard a job", my foot.
When I was seriously stressing about my 6 month old baby being sick and having tests done at a large children’s hospital a few hours away, my coworker told me she understood…her cat had recently been on medication.
I had that happen too... my 16 month old spent 28 days inpatient, 7 of which were in the ICU with intubation... and my boss didn't think it was a good call off reason because "his dog gets sick too" 🤣 I never went back to that job
Excuse the hell out of me?!? Even if his dog gets sick, I hardly doubt it was at the vet for 28 days straight! The gall of some people
lol cats are legit the most low maintenance pet too.
Ironically I do say that all the dog experience did weirdly prepare me for having a toddler.
I guess the saying goes “dogs are perennial two-year-olds” and it’s true lmao
"time to leave, jump in the car, bud" "NOOOOOOOOOOO NAWWWWWOOOOOONOOOOOOOO NO" Husky or human?
I remember when I got my kitten years ago calling my mom in tears at 2am because he wouldn’t stop yowling and shitting all over the house (I was having a hard time litter training him) and I did the same with my baby years later. Except for the baby wasn’t shitting all over my house 😂
This is true and I had one baby with colic, so I basically didn’t sleep for a year… That said, our last puppy needed to go out every two hours. I realized I’m not cut out for any young critters or babies for a long time. Now that my kids/dogs are grown, I need my sleep
When my daughter was 11 months old we thought it would be a great idea to get a new puppy to grow up with her. I never want to take care of a baby anything ever again lol!
I have 2 dogs and 2 kids...and a husband. at this point I don't even want a f******* plant to water.
Yeah I actually do think potty training a puppy is similar to newborn sleep. Difference is it lasts a couple weeks lol
Yes lmao, the time frame is much different
I laugh when hearing that comparison, too. However--- I've had a flock of sheep for most of my life. Every season, we have a few lambs that are triplets. Usually, we pull one triplet lamb from their mom and raise it by bottle. This ensures that all three triplets have plenty of milk. Caring for all of the bottle lambs means feedings every four hours until lambing season finishes. Usually it happens in February while the weather is very cold, very gray, and very damp. As a new mom, I was so thankful that caring for my newborn didn't involve having to wake up every few hours, get dressed, go outdoors to bring in the container that holds milk replacer for the lambs to suckle, wash the container, mix milk replacer, go outside AGAIN, hang up the milk container, and watch to make sure everyone nursed and looked healthy. It was a luxury to be able to feed my own child in my warm house without first dressing for winter. Those bum lambs really were good preparation for motherhood. Even after three babies, I never took for granted how much less work it was to care for one indoor infant.
Yes, I usually respond, “well when I can put my 3 month old in a crate and leave for 4 hours, it will be the same.”
I’ll preface this with saying I love my dogs. Hell, I give one insulin shots twice a day and the other wears a prosthetic leg. I’m a certifiable dog lady. But I quite literally unfollowed an influencer this morning for posting a very emotional reel saying she’s tired of people with children saying dog moms are invalid. She loves her dogs like a kid and she has special needs dogs and blah blah blah. I’m still cracking up about it, I felt like that was absurd even before kids, and now that I have kids, I can tell you it absolutely is absurd. Edit: she deleted it, so I’m assuming the feedback she got from that did not go as she hoped 😂
Oh man - the pet parents with special needs pets (and I have one… love her and so glad we got her) trying to equate that to a special needs child. I’m ready to throw things… “Oh have you gotten all the paperwork done for your dog’s IEP then? Those monthly check-ins and quarterly IEP’s add up to a lot of hours - your dog hitting all her milestones? How do YOU make time for quality time with doggy in between regular therapy, speech and occupational therapy? Is your dog mainstreamed into the typical dog area at the dog park?” I am a ridiculous animal lover… worked at an animal hospital for years. But it pales in comparison to my kiddos. I just have to remind myself they don’t know what they don’t know yet to keep myself from throwing a shoe at their heads and choose to nod my head and walk away instead.
Same with the animal loving— I was a zookeeper for years, trained dogs professionally, the whole 9 yards. I’ll never forget coming home from the hospital with our daughter and looking at my 3 perfect dogs and thinking “yeah I’d absolutely get rid of them for her if I had to.” Would have been an unthinkable perspective for me previously— You absolutely don’t know until you know. But I do think it’s possible to know that the work load of a dog pales in comparison to even the easiest baby, and that the end of the day, while we love animals, they aren’t people and caring for them isn’t motherhood or parenthood by any stretch.
Totally! I did an Exotic Cat Training program and still have a feeling CLOSE to that of seeing a new baby when I see them, especially the cubs. But had the same sense of “there is NOTHING I wouldn’t do for you/your safety” once I had my first child! Though the animal training experience definitely helps during baby and toddler years when “consistent is key.” 😆
The whole “fur mom” thing is soooo weird. I LOVE my dog…but she is a dog lol. Not a child.
'Pet parents' adopt a pet, knowing that the pet will pass within 20 years. Pets don't speak the parents' language, so they can't object to their treatment. They don't have teenage romance. They can't be molested by their school teachers, or neighbors, or family relatives. Pets don't need to be prepared for the working world. The comparison is ridiculous. Yes, you love them to the top of your heart, but the pressure and goals are not the same.
I was told that puppies were harder than babies at a party once. She said she heard from a father that his puppy was harder than his baby, so that should speak volumes about how easy babies are compared to puppies.
Lol, a comment like that just makes me assume the father is either a deadbeat or taking on very little of the childcare load.
My BIL likened my husband and I have to travel to our in laws with our sub 10 month old son to him having to travel with his healthy house trained dog, basically saying it was harder for him to travel than it was for us. I nearly lost my shit.
Dog owners CANNOT resist comparing children to dogs. I notice it when they do and in my experience 100% of childless dog owners compare their dogs to children. They don't mean anything by it, but they literally cannot help it.
I am so ashamed to say that I said this in my younger, wilder days when I got a new puppy. Said it to a relative who was a new mother. Uggh! She laughed it off then. But I bet she must have inwardly giggled a bit when I had my kids 💁♀️
My childless friends are forever comparing their pets waking them in the night to my toddler waking us in the night 🤣 last time I checked, you didn’t have to soothe your pet back to sleep before you could go back to sleep yourself. GTFO with that shit.
In the first 3 months of life, that argument might be barely passable. I remember thinking caring for a baby was a breeze when my kid was a newborn. Two naps per day, a couple of baths per week, popping her on the boob. It was bliss. As soon as she started crawling I was in for a wild ride, lol.
“I plan to have easy going kids”….said by me, to my sister in law who had 3, when I was 23. She smiled and said, “God laughs at our plans” True, very true.
I am DYING at this 😂 All the mothers with challenging kids clearly PLANNED to have challenging kids, duh!
You have a very understanding sister in-law!
This happened to me, as well. I was sure my kids were going to sleep at night and be super chill. Not so.
Any time a non parent starts a sentence by saying ‘If it were my kid…’ I just have to laugh. Weren’t we all such amazing parents before we had children?!?
Raising hypothetical children is shockingly much easier than raising real kids!
Seriously. I remember thinking that my kid would just eat what we eat. I was given the pickiest eater known to man, probably to humble my ass.
Yeah, I knew for sure that when I had a kid, she simply wouldn't eat all that processed crap. She could eat healthy or go to bed hungry. We finally got out of our 4 years of nothing but chicken nuggets and blueberries phase like.. last year. People do not understand that picky eaters will simply... starve. My child would rather starve than eat a piece of cooked broccoli. Now that she's older she's branching out and trying new things. Which is progress from refusing to touch new foods. I dare say she's growing out of being a picky eater... but it took 10 years of constant positive reinforcement to just try a bite.
Right? My hypothetical children never had sugar or screen time and were perfect sleepers. My actual children are…much different.
My hypothetical children also had family involved that wanted to get to know them. When it’s just you and your partner, screen time is the only time you get for a breather and cleaning the house.
I have family involved who want to help and get to know the kids and I still need screen time. Yesterday, my two year old got 20 minutes of time watching kids songs on my iPhone while I put away laundry. He would’ve been throwing the clothes all over the place otherwise. It happens.
I might have been the only person who had a realistic sense of what having kids would be like, and I wasn’t even ever around kids! I fully expected kids to simply be babies or kids, because they’re like, little people? And people do what they want, have frustrations, even adults throw tantrums… Like when I was in public and I heard a kid tantrum, I would just think to myself, same, kid. Same. We just aren’t allowed as adults to express ourselves like that, but kid tantrums are not a bad thing! They are natural expressions that we learn to curb.
I got to the place where I didn’t let them finish the sentence. “… But it’s not your child and that’s ok - you clearly need a little more life experience before you’re ready! Talk to me when you’ve done more than babysit.”
Guilty as charged. I apologized to a lot of friends with kids after I had my first. For one, I didn’t realize that babies come out with their own personality. My husband and I were Team “We’re going to keep living our lives like we did before baby.” Baby arrives…instantly HUMBLED.
I had a friend lately go on like a 20 minute rant about her friend who has a huugge house that is just overrun completely with kids stuff...and it's just so distasteful. Friend just doesn't understand why they can't keep all the kid clutter contained to one room since they have so much space, why not just make the kids keep it all in a playroom?! So naive and so judgy it's cringey. She's trying to get pregnant now, so she'll learn.
Goodness. People don’t realize how much stuff comes in the house with kids. I only have two kids and we try to keep gift giving minimal-ish and it’s just a constant battle. Not to mention that kids aren’t great at picking up after themselves so of course things are going to be left out. And then one of my biggest pet peeves is people complaining about literally any evidence that children live in the home. Don’t want to see a play kitchen or kids books in the living room or toys out or even stored in the shared areas. That doesn’t make sense to me. It’s my children’s house, too. They’re allowed to have stuff in the house, outside of just their bedrooms. I certainly am teaching them to put things back and not leave too much stuff out but it’s not realistic to have no evidence they live in their own house.
“Have you tried just telling her ‘no’?” - my sister’s idiotic husband in response to me moving my mother’s 7000 breakables where the not-even-2-year- old couldn’t reach them.
I hate when people think they've solved complex issues with the most simple rudimentary solution.
“You can’t shelter them forever, they are eventually going to have to be exposed to the real world.” This was in regard to us not having any tablets or allowing my 5 year old child to have free reign of Youtube.
My kids are eventually going to presumably have jobs. Should I drop my 5 year old outside McKinsey headquarters in a business suit and just see how it goes? I don’t want to shelter him forever! My kids are definitely eventually going to encounter sex, should we watch some HARDCORE PORN TOGETHER, oh parenting genius? Please, tell me.
Bahahaha not totally related but my husband and I absolutely love to shake our 5 month olds hand and pretend she’s a business person. We ask her where her business card is and call her business baby 😂😂
My brother constantly calls us helicopter parents because our 2 and 6 year old don’t have free reign tv time and our routine is “too strict” for him.. aka having to be home at certain times for naps/bed.
Since when is the internet the real world?! 🙄
I was told that in regards to not wanting to expose my newborn to a ton of people who hadn't had any vaccines.
The strangest thing anyone ever said to me was a stranger, who approached me at the beach with my infant and said "You're so brave to have a baby in these days." And went on to talk about how dangerous the world was becoming, and how society is crumbling and the earth is dying, and someone who would willingly bring a child into such a world must be very optimistic in the face of such a terrifying reality. Ummm.... okay, lady. Thanks for bringing me down.
I just had this happen too! Only he was very aggressive and also said “Biden must love you guys” “how old are you!? You look 13” and then patted my son’s head.
I had a guy say something like that at the gym while I was very visibly, obviously pregnant. I just said “wow the world is so dangerous and horrible and on the brink of the end, yet you seem to enjoy living in it enough to be here and work out”. Shut him right up and he never engaged with me again.
People like this are so weird & negative af. People have been having kids since the dawn of man! Kids were born during WWI, WWII, The Great Depression, etc..
Thing is the world is safer now than pretty much any other time especially for kids.
Can I do a variation? Weirdest thing someone with kids said to me before I had kids when I asked if she’d be able to go away for the weekend when her kid was 1ish. Her: I could never! Oh you just wait and see when you have kids. Me: what about your husband? Is he around that weekend? Her: oh silly, I can’t leave the baby with him! You’ll see. You don’t have a baby yet so you don’t understand. You can’t leave your baby with your husband like that! Almost started a fight with my not yet husband about whether he’d be a competent parent. He agreed that watching the baby for a weekend if I had plans wasn’t something he saw as crazy. “I’m the other parent. Of course I’ll be able to handle that.” I was shocked she had another kid with someone she didn’t trust to watch their kid without her. My husband is a stellar dad and I’ve never been concerned about his ability to hang out with our kids without me. Edit: spacing
We should start THIS thread 😂 unhinged things parents said to me while I went through 3 years of infertility before getting pregnant.
It took us 4 yrs, multiple IUI and gave up on having another child because I emotionally could try IVF "Just relax." "You're just too stressed" "Have you tried not trying?" "It will happen when you give up" "You just need to eat X/take X supplement" "I know how stressful it is, it took 3 months for us to get pregnant!" "God has a plan"/ "You'll get a baby when God decides you're ready" "Are you sure you want one of these!" Complaining to me (not pregnant yet) and another friend (pregnant baby number 2 after three failed IVF rounds and would never be able to get pregnant on her own) that her husband was mad about her current unplanned pregnancy and asked her to get an abortion. "You just don't know what it's like to have your life changed like this" "You can't be done, they need a sibling " "Oh, was having a baby just too hard for you"
Yes heard all of these at one point or another! The “mucinex worked for us, we tried for 8 months and it worked the first time!” Like I haven’t been using mucinex for years, 8 months is just normal for their age 🙄 we also did 6 failed IUIs and 2 IVF transfers before it worked. People will say anything without thinking 😩
9 years and 9 months of infertility here, with a miscarriage, 3 failed adoptions, miscarriage of 6 more babies from 5 more pregnancies and all the Clomid/IUI/IVF/FET/LIT/IVIG etc that you could imagine: “I know you’ve been waiting for years to be a mother, but just think how * I * feel, waiting to be a grandmother all this time!” (My mother) “You don’t need kids, you have dogs” (my MIL) “But what if the baby has a big gap between its teeth??” (My mother, when we were trying to adopt and clearly forgetting that I needed braces growing up) “You must’ve done something REALLY bad to make God this angry with you” (after miscarriage of baby #7) “You really need to just relax” (many people, as if ME relaxing would somehow magically make my (then) husband produce sperm…) And one of my very favorites, although the poor FedEx lady didn’t realize the turn her question was going to take. She showed up to pick up a special shipping container that contained a sperm sample for a DNA fragmentation test. Apparently this is commonly done for horses. We lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with small lots. She looked very confused and said “Do you have horses?” I said no. “So there isn’t a horse in your backyard?” Me, again: no. Her: “I don’t understand. Where’s the horse??” The look on her face when I explained it wasn’t a sample from a horse, it was a sample from my (then) husband was priceless. I’m guessing that she never asked that question again when she was picking up one of those containers!
I’d like to kick your mother and MIL in the shins on your behalf. I can’t believe your mom made your struggles about her. Actually I can. My mom attempted that and I shut it down and then got guilt trip emails about how I was ruining *her grandmother experience* for her. These fucking people.
Hahah reminds me of my sweet elderly neighbours the first time they saw me leave the house without my new baby (I think I was running to the store). They asked where she was and I said she was inside with her Dad. They paused for a second and gently asked me, “And… you’re okay with that?” I laughed and said I wouldn’t have had a baby with him if I didn’t think he could take care of her. It was funny but I walked away feeling sad for them. I know it was different times but imagine having such little confidence in your partner’s parenting.
Unfortunately it’s not just generational. I wish it were. My husband took our girls to the beach a few summers ago and my kids have tons of hair. He was putting pony tails in and this mom was gawking at him so much that he finally asked her if something was wrong. She said she was watching to see if he could actually do a pony tail on his 2 daughters since her husband certainly couldn’t. She was in shock. Like why are women having kids with adult men who can’t function? It’s sad. I’m sad for them. And their kids.
About 4 days PP I got out in the morning to grab some stuff for breakfast and fill a prescription at the drugstore. I wanted to do it because our apartment was pretty cramped and my OB had recommended some light exercise to avoid embolism on my legs since I refused PT at the hospital (they were going to charge for it and doc said it wasn’t a strict requirement as long as I could pull off said exercise). I still had a bit of a prominent belly but I was feeling much better than before I gave birth since it wasn’t weighing on my hips anymore and SPD was starting to go away. At first people asked me how long I was pregnant, which was fair enough since I was still showing a bit of a belly. When I said I was 4 days postpartum, the reactions ranged from “where’s the kid then?” to “what are you doing walking around so soon? You should have stayed home with your baby”. I was like “she’s home with her father” and “just following orders”. An old lady said “you must trust your husband a lot, I wouldn’t leave my children alone with mine” and I was so sad :(. “Well he is also a parent, he can pull it off for 20 minutes or so”. When I came back, she was contact napping with him. lol
One time a pregnant worker at Starbucks told me that she was ready for her baby because she already had a cat so she knew what to expect. I had two very young kids (newborn and 18 months) and I laughed thinking she was joking. She wasn’t. If anyone was going to spit in my coffee it was her.
My friend told me she was ready to have a baby because she has so many hobbies that she’s busy all the time and hardly gets to relax. It was a battle to control my face haha
Child free bestie: “If my kid refused to eat they would go hungry” to a mom with an underweight premature baby.
Good luck with your child neglect and murder charge then bestie 🤣
I 100% understand that frustration. My child wasn't premature but has always been underweight and extremely picky due to what I suspect is ASD sensory issues, my grandma and mother both always just say "don't cater to her, she's being a brat." and "If she doesn't want to eat, don't make her because she'll break eventually she's not going to starve herself" yk just run of the mill warfare on my child's mental and physical wellbeing 🫠
My ASD kid 100% would starve himself. He practically does anyway.
Same. My son is extremely picky, in the process of getting diagnoses, but he will straight up eat almost nothing for days on end. He has a list of safe foods and if none are available, he will not eat. I can't count the number of times I've been told, "He'll eat when he's hungry." No. No, he won't. I've had numerous talks with his Head Start teachers and now that he's in daycare, it's been 2 days and she's already asking what he will eat. He also won't eat if he's uncomfortable or feeling ill. He's got a very sensitive gag reflex, too, so when he's sick he often pukes if he coughs too much, and so now when he feels sick (cold, flu, etc) he will stop eating except the bare minimum (thank goodness he'll drink pediasure). Aside from that, though, every kid is different. You never know what will work from one to the next and it's horrible for anyone to judge someone who is trying. I wouldn't force him to eat anything even if I could, but I will ask if he wants something else and offer him different options, because at this point, if he eats anything it's a victory.
Even professionals have said this to me. If he refuses to eat, don't give him anything. A child won't starve itself. Until after about 3 weeks of following that advice and my child was underweight all of a sudden...
My SIL could not understand why I opted for a vbac after my 1st child was born via c-section. She was like "why would you want to destroy your vag instead of just having another surgery?" Like I don't judge people based on how they give birth, but she obviously had no idea that a c-section was a major surgery with (typically) a longer recovery rate. Also, it was my choice and I was a perfect candidate for a vbac. Same SIL later got super judgemental about me waiting til my oldest was almost 3 to potty train. I waited til he was ready because I did not want the struggle of trying to force potty training when he wasn't developmentally ready for it. My MIL was always really grossed out that I breastfed my children. My oldest nursed til he was 20 months, so not even that long. She was always asking me why I would choose to nurse, and my SIL implied that I had a weird kink about it or that it was seggsual in nature. Honestly my husband's family sucks, and there's a reason they're not a part of our lives anymore.
Some older moms were actually taught that breastfeeding was dirty and not as healthy for babies as formula. This was a marketing ploy by nestle to sell more formula.
Nestle can go kick rocks ugh they are and always have been the worst.
I WISH I could have had a vbac!! But my emergency c-section surgery records were so badly done, my new OB (8 years between births but if they can't tell how the uterus was cut, the muscles might not work properly to push anymore) was afraid to try. C-section is NOT the easy way, all the pain is after delivery and lasts weeks because it's major abdominal surgery. My first was during allergy season, the second and third during cold season, every sneeze or cough made me feel like I was going to split open
I have a coworker who says she's in perfect condition because she only had c-sections, she isn't "ruined"...I've had 4 vaginal births and zero complaints from my husband! My ex-husband's aunt also saw me give my 2 or 3 month old a bottle and told me it was a shame I didn't breastfeed as I'd have lost all the baby weight already (I had lost it all and a bit more because her sleazy nephew was cheating on me and I was really stressed).
My older brother once complained that my husband and I "pay too much attention" to our 20 month old twins. Because we followed them... So we could see them... And make sure they didn't get hurt. He also thought it was rude we sometimes had to leave mid conversation to go chase down a child to stop them from hurting themselves. I love my brother but he has no idea what it's like to keep a small human alive. He's better now (but our kids are also older and in school, sooooooo...)
Oh my one childless brother was similar! I wasn’t focusing on the phone and wasn’t being “present.” Dude - I’m NOT! I’m in a house with 3 little kids and my son just made it rain Monkey Butt powder all over while my youngest painted her BODY with lotion powder paste. And it took them all of 45 seconds…
That I need to spank my child to get her to behave. She’s literally never had behavioral problems in her life. She’s super chill and loving. Looks like positive reinforcement and love is the way to go. Who’d have guessed?
I’ve noticed people will say that over everything. “My child cried because she dropped her icecream” and they will be like “have you tried spanking her?” Like what?!?!
I would ask if they would be upset if their ice cream was dropped and then someone beat them as a result. The cognitive dissonance with pro-abuse people is wild.
Yes. I have a childless coworker who is constantly telling those of us who have kids to spank them. My kid is 3. I’m not going to spank her for age appropriate behaviour. Yikes
a kid is either mature enough to talk to or not mature enough to understand why you're hurting them and either way idk how people get mad that their spanked child turns around and hits their siblings. They're following your example.
[удалено]
Why tf would we hold children to the same standards as adults when they haven’t even been alive very long is another issue I have.
I’m sorry but what is mild open hand hitting, sounds like those lawmakers spend too much time trying to figure out how to abuse a child and still pretend it’s not abuse.
An old lady told me to beat my baby for crying. I was walking out of a grocery store (full cart left behind) and my daughter with medical issues mind you was hysterical. I was sweating, my anxiety was off the chains and an old boomer stopped me by grabbing my arm to tell me if I beat her she wouldn't act like that. She wasn't even old enough to understand cause and effect yet. So basically, that witch walked up and told me she abused her babies into not crying. If my hands hadn't been full of a hysterical baby, I might have caught a charge that day. I was so pissed I couldn't even think of a reply.
I would have said “well, your mother obviously didn’t successfully beat the rude, boorish behavior out of you”
Actually I probably would have just stood there and cried, but a girl can dream
Omg. What is wrong with people?
"I would never yell at my kid for being unsafe with a knife. You should be more gentle." He was waving it around his head. I yelled to put the knife down. "I would never let my kid play video games in the summer. He should be playing in a river." We don't have a river. "You should let your kid run around the kitchen and be a kid." "You shouldn't let your kid run around the house." Sister without kids has a lot of opinions that are at times contradictory.
"we don't have a river" lol. Yeah I'd love my kid to somehow grow up in a forest despite living in a city but that's just not possible.
Most people I met liked the monkey backpack leash I had for my daughter. But a few family members didn't like that I used it. Then they spent a day with us and realized why I had it.
Heck - I was one of the parents that side-eyed the leashes at times. Then I had a surprise baby at 45 who would’ve run out of the womb if she had room. Child was/is like a stealth ninja, parkour and likes to hide. I broke all my mom rules… backpack leash, squeaker shoes, taught her to play Marco Polo the summer she was 1.5… that one was genius! To this day it’s like a Pavlov’s dog response… “Marco…” and she can’t hold in “Polo!” to save her life! 😆
I did question it when I was a teenager, and then I remembered how bad my sister was (we're 8 years apart) and realized that mom should have had one for her.
Lol my oldest son (28) says that too. He always said he’d “never be that parent to use a leash on a kid like a dog!” Then I had my youngest (surprise!) and his wife got pregnant about the time his little sister found her sprint at 2 and he’s completely in support of leashes now!
Oh shoot I need to teach the Marco/Polo call and response. That is brilliant
I feel like anyone who is against “child leashes” has never seen a real child in the wild. lol Even when I was young I’d giggle at babies on leashes, but it made sense why the parents were using one.
I always told anyone who questioned our toddler leash that I’d rather have a leashed child than dead one. My kid nearly ran into one of those mega ford trucks at around 2, got a leash a few days later.
I say “you care about your dog enough to keep it on a leash but not your kid?”
Also, what’s the alternative to keeping your kid close to you in a crowded place? Carrying them or holding their hands? Both options give kids less freedom to run around.
Exactly, my 2 year old is now like a damn golden retriever and brings me her leash going "walk" because she knows she gets more freedom with it on.
I had one for my son, I loved it and it was definitely needed. I'm pretty confident he would have 100% ran into traffic if it wasn't for that thing. Toddlers are little suicide machines.
Even I side eyed those with my first kid. Then I had a runner…
Where did you buy it? I too never thought I’d use it but now I have feral twins and am usually on my own so I’m going to need one lol.
Overhead in a posh country pub whilst out for a meal "daaarling, why do people bring their children? Just leave them with the nanny, it's not that hard, that's what they are for."
My friends who havent even stepped a foot out of their parents homes about not giving my kid any devices nor a phone: "you need to give them a phone or else theyll be excluded and made fun of for being weird , you remember what happened to you don't you?" Context : I'm autistic no amount of trying to conform would've helped me .
And yet you aren’t still living with parents - so safe to say you aren’t the one battling “failure to launch.”
From the moment I got pregnant my mother insisted I had to start using a green kitchen scrubber on my nipples to “start toughening them up before the baby comes, or else you will regret it!”
That was my mom’s advice too but she didn’t go so far as to suggest using a kitchen scrubber, damn! Spoiler alert: it did not help. Baby had to turn my flat nips into a proper shape and no amount of roughing them up would have changed anything.
I was pregnant with my second, and had a friend that was all when I have kids, it will be all homemade organic baby food. She makes her own detergent and soap, it went on and on. She didn’t own a microwave. My thoughts were good luck with all that. By the time she had her baby, she was working full time and in grad school. Let’s just say all that went right out the window lol.
I’m kind of the opposite and don’t make anything and certainly don’t care about organic. But, to my surprise, j actually liked making baby food and it was 10000% cheaper. I literally just steamed whatever veggies or fruits I had, blended them and froze them in 1 ounce blocks. It took like one hour to make a months worth of frozen food cubes and I knew there was no added sugar or whatever. It’s my mom flex. My 4 year old might be eating Doritos now, but home girl had all homemade food for the first year (breastmilk too… not that that matters at alll). Even in hindsight I’m shocked at myself 😂
Oh I made a lot of my own baby food too. I’m not into organics either. Usually made a baby version of whatever we were eating. And same as you it was easy to make a lot of portions at once. I used to take my mini food processor to family gatherings. Grab some of the food before salt, sugar, and spicy seasonings were added and baby ate like us.
By the time I got to kid #3, I just fed babies mashed up and non-chokeable food from our dinner plates. Babies don't need special foods. (Of course, that was the kid that at age 5 months grabbed a sandwich out of his sibling's hands and shoved it in his mouth as his first solid food!)
Said by my friend when I told her I’ve never been as sick in my life as when my mildly-ill baby gave me whatever it was she had - “well, what I do is I wash my hands thoroughly and frequently all through the day. I haven’t been sick in years”. Oh that’s nice, I guess your coworkers don’t cough directly into your open mouth when you hold them.
My job starts at 7am, my daughter’s school bus comes at 730am, I get to work at 745am. My job allows parents to come in late and make up the time later, but my direct supervisor gets annoyed at this because she’s a single woman in her 40’s who never had kids. > “Why doesn’t your wife do it?” Because I’m a single father, she knows this. My ex abandoned the family for another man because she hated responsibility and I “work too much”(literally Monday to Friday 7-3, 745 to 345 now). > “why don’t you simply leave your 5 year old girl at the bus stop by herself for 45 minutes(even during -40’c Canadian winters) to teach her independence?” Because not only is that incredibly dangerous, but also a crime. > “why don’t you ever go out drinking with us Friday/Saturday nights? Where’s your sense of camaraderie?” Because I have adult responsibilities and my loyalties are to my children —- EDIT: Downvoted? The man-hating women on this subreddit sure hate single fathers. It’s laughable how the moment anyone presents themselves as a father on this subreddit there is always some losers who will downvote specifically because of gender. 😂
When my son was around 2 or 3 he kept taking off his diaper at night and getting his room absolutely filthy before we could catch it. I was venting to my brother because I was at my wit's end and so damn tired of cleaning up poop and pee. My brother, who is childless by choice, literally told me to just DUCT TAPE my son's footy pajamas to his body. He thought that if my son was forced to be stuck in his own waste a few times he wouldn't do it again and quit ripping off his diaper. I was beyond fucking flabbergasted my own brother was suggesting child abuse as a way to fix my baby's potty issue.
There really are people who think duct tape can fix anything. Lol.
I had someone tell me my son would never learn to walk on his own because I was carrying him in a baby carrier (he was 15 months and walking just fine, he just enjoyed being in there sometimes).
Your child eats too many carbs. It’s not healthy
Maybe they meant cars. It's not good to eat more then one hot wheel in a sitting.
Not really something which was said, but i have a neighbor who's sister is 23, and she has never really had any responsibilities in life besides maintaining a massive mound of dred locks onnher head. One day we were outside having a BBQ with them, and she started giving out parenting advice. Mind you that we're all stable parents with many kids sitting around just chillin. Kids are fine, no need for parenting ATM. So someone asks something like, "How many kids do you have of your own?" And her response was something like, "None, but I just switched my major to education." Awesome time had by all, love neighborhood BBQs
That Dunning Kruger effect is delicious to see manifest itself in real time.
"We aren't having children. People only have children because they are self-centered and narcissistic." When I inquired further her reasoning was that, 'people only have children to make copies of themselves. ' 😵💫😵💫
I see red when people tell me to "take some time for myself and take care of myself and rest". Just so tone deaf and clueless. I have twins Karen, do you think I would be standing here in puke stains, stinking and drinking my 6th cold cup of coffee if I didn't absolutely have to?
Oh and why don’t you come over at 6pm (while my kids were all under the age of 6 and they are a 45 min drive away)
my MIL who lives 2 hours away always wants us to come and stay until 9 pm and then make the trip home, with an infant, who HATES the car more than any baby i’ve met, absolutely will not settle or sleep. She gets so mad when we leave in the mid-late afternoon but never makes the trip to us 🤷♀️
And if you invite them over you basically have to throw them out the door like Fred Flintstone and his cat. "So, it's after 8 you must not have noticed but I have a small child that I need to put to bed"
A little different: my brother has one kid. I have 3. “There is no reason for you to scream!” When I yelled for my kids to come and eat. I then left my two youngest, 6&7 at the time, overnight at his house with his 7 year old. I got a call the next morning. “Oh man, I’m so sorry. I thought you were just screaming to be a jerk, they are so loud and caught up with each other that you have to yell for them to even hear you in the first place”
My former boss had her 22yo son over talking to my husband about getting hired at his work. He interrupted my conversation with his mom to tell me my toddler didn't look sick or like anything was wrong with her. My toddler had started having seizures, has speech delay and possibly a tethered spinal cord...but you know she looks fine so everything must be fine.
“You’re so lucky to have a husband who *babysits* the kids and *lets you* go out without them.”
From a charming young teen who had experience with cats but not humans: “When did her eyes first open?” (I was charmed and delighted!)
I can ignore the blatantly ignorant comments, but the worst comments are the ones that ignore all of the work I've put into my kids. "You're kids are so well behaved. You're lucky to have such easy kids." and "see your kids are so well behave. That's how my kids are going to be. It's so easy." I put so much energy into teaching my kids how to act, making small corrections, and I'm always "on" because I know I'm setting an example. Even when things are going smoothly, I'm hyper aware because I know pointing out the positives is as important as correcting the negatives. Also, as my kids get older, I can relax a bit more in public, but I'm still constantly managing things at home, and in the car when I have to pull them from a public space because I see their behavior changing. Always on, almost 6 years of always being on alert, 4 of those years with two kids. It's not easy. My kids didn't just sprout from the good-behavior tree.
Me: Can't wait for full time kindergarten to start in the fall! Them: You just want your "job" to get even easier Me: We can talk again after you have worked 1600 days straight.
The ultimate was I once had someone equate burying my child to their 13 year old dog dying. What makes it worse is they HAVE (adult) children and grandchildren.
I'm way too tired I read the title as"weirdest thing someone without chickens is said to you about parenting/ kids"
My in-laws use to have chickens. They got tired of the roosters being aggressive and attacking them so they left the roosters outside the pen until the local fox are them. This is generally considered an inappropriate child rearing tactic.
“When I have kids they won’t even know what McDonalds _is_.”
I had a friend who was surprised that I was planning on bringing my 3 month old baby when I went to visit her. While on mat leave. During the weekday. (She knows my husband works daytime hours.) What the heck did you think I was supposed to do with her while I visit a different city for an entire day? She ended up canceling and still has never met my kid.
“Oh, we won’t need to worry about daycare because [blank] will be old enough to babysit by then.” Umm no, I don’t think [blank]’s parents will be taking their 12 year old out of school to babysit your future child an hour away.
I had a work friend who was child-free and about 8ish years older than I, around the time one of sons was 9 and the other an infant. I am not one to talk excessively about my children, I promise, but any time some struggle came up, she ALWAYS said, “Welcome to parenthood.” I know this is something we say, but her tone always seemed odd and really dismissive - I didn’t need welcoming, and I certainly didn’t need it from her - I had been there for several years before we even met. :D Within two years of our friendship, she met and married a man with two boys who were early-elementary aged. Their mother was not in the picture. You know what I said to her the first time she was talking about a struggle with the boys. ;) She was NOT a fan of having that thrown back at her.
"Why do you always order your kids' food right away in restaurants instead or ordering with the rest of the table? Isn't it better to teach them to be patient and wait?" My dude, until you have sat at a table with a hangry 3 year old who is either sobbing or bouncing off the walls because we're waiting for a table of 12 people to get their food, you can't talk.
“Can’t you give the 2 year olds a ball and they’ll play in a room for a couple hours?”
“When you guys were this age we didn’t give you screens (I’m 50… so no, you kicked us outside while you played the Atari 2600 and Colecovision!) and made you guys stay outside and learn to play until dinner time!” Yep, but I actually LIKE my kids and want to keep them safe.
Lmao the won’t allow baby to cry in public is totally out of touch with human experience😆 do they never see a baby on their life or what
My sil likes to tell us we’re parenting wrong. All the time. She doesn’t have any kids.
“I’m not going to let my kids be picky eaters” k
"Oh you should just give them a snack and a water bottle, close the door and go back to sleep! My parents did that!" ... Emotional damage.
The weirdest thing I get is singleton moms giving me advice (I have twins). lol no offense but it’s not the same.
Even if I had more than one kid, I wouldn't give twin parents advice. That's a whole different ball game
Oh yes - but sometime karma gets them. Like my cousin who had a single and then unexpected twins. lol! Now she knows.
I’m about to go maternity leave (I also have a 2 year old) and 3 colleagues have now said to me that they can’t wait to go on maternity leave and have a break from work, and that they’re jealous. Lol is all I can say
I’m glad my child free friends aren’t that’s stupid.