Is this what you call performance parenting?

This thread makes me want to go round projecting my voice as apparently hearing a mum speaking to their child gets people's backs up. I could have had much more fun when DDs were younger if I'd only known there were so many numpties with a hair trigger.

My DH was a bit like this when ours were small. It's bloody irritating at times. Whenever they asked a question he would expand the subject and ask them more questions about it until he found one they didn't know the answer to, hence they'd learned a new thing.
They didn't want a lecture or lesson they just wanted a quick answer and I think it's frustrating to be constantly quizzed.

@Elektra1: You live and LEARN!

How true. From this thread I learned of the class-based nature of a certain insult; you learned how an average four-year-old can learn to play chess.

A degree from Cambridge? Pfui. (None of my degrees from there, though some of my childrens'.) Mumsnet is the place to learn important stuff.

You're putting on a feverish performance in this very thread. You're gushing: "Look at me, look at me! En't I such an excellent parent, sooo much better than you little people."

Classic public performance posing, and quite hilarious. 😂

You just sound like a good parent to me, @NotSoSlimShadee .

As long as your child was happy and engaged I wouldn't care what other people thought. Parents are judged whatever they do. There are far worse examples of parenting than a mum asking her child questions. What has the world come to??

OP needs to come back and clarify whether she was talking overly loudly.

I don’t think of this is performative unless you were screaming it loudly. I always wonder if people who judge “performance” (also known as talking to your kids) perhaps lack the general knowledge necessary to have these conversations so snark about it to cover their own inadequacy.

Seriously, don’t give it another thought. You are engaging with your daughter, chatting, educating - all great. Focus on your relationship with her and ignore any bitter people around you.
Trying (and sometimes getting it wrong) is part of parenthood and everyone who tries is to be respected.
People judge and will always judge whatever you do, so best crack on trying to be the best parent you can be ❤️

@persoe thank you for explaining to me that “learning is really fun for a human”, something that despite having a degree from Cambridge myself, being a lawyer, and having raised (as a single parent) children who obtained first class degrees, was unclear to me. You live and LEARN!

Yes it sounds like performance parenting to me. Especially the second example, I internally cringed. I can see Mr Tumble or similar with a huge grin saying 'That's right! Hey kids! WHAT OTHER animals live in Australia?!' 🙈

I spoke to my young kids all day long. I answered questions all day long. By 4 I was googling half the time because they'd be asking me shit that I had no idea of the answer 😂

But it was natural:
'Mum what's that?'
'That's a Lorikeet, they're from Australia'.
'Like kangaroos!'
'Yes that's right'.
That's a natural learning experience that happens multiple times a day with a curious and engaged kid. Zero effort required.

'Mum what's that?'
'That's a Lorikeet, they're from Australia. Can you remember what other animals are from Australia?'
'Kangaroos'.
'Yes! And do you know where Australia is?'

That's not natural conversation. You're just firing questions at the kid, with the aim of purposely turning it into a learning experience.

You didn't need to. The kid was learning organically anyway. It's tiresome and (to many others) amusing.

Agreed, and it’s SO depressing - everyone seems to want to just be the lowest common denominator in case they are “pretentious” or “swots”. It’s bullying, really.

It's pretty difficult to avoid being aware of people sniggering at you. That's mainly what makes it nasty, bullying behaviour (as opposed to internally eye-rolling).

Indeed. It's much ruder to pass judgement in public on the conversations that strangers have with their families than to be a little too loud in public (even if OP was).

THIS. 100%

Who gives a toss what they thought? Their opinions were uninvited, valueless and should have been kept to themselves.

Not rtwt as I was bored by the other one. Tell them to piss off and mind their own business (or some politer alternative).

What I learnt from the other thread is that a surprising number of obnoxious nosy parkers don't seem to have a problem with listening in on and judging private conversations between parents and their young children.

It's a gross invasion of the privacy of family life. A form of bullying, really. Parents do tend to speak more clearly and loudly to their children by necessity because interactions with young children often require this, but this does not necessarily mean that they are inviting interference in and judgment of their family life with their DC, just that they can be overheard going about their business.

You would be totally justified in saying to your DC (in a normal volume of voice), "Now there's an example of how not to behave, sweetie. Laughing at people in public is rude and nasty".

No. I can't stand the overuse of the term 'performance parenting' or 'performance anything'. In real life, as opposed perhaps to Instagram, few people are trying to show off to strangers. They are getting on with their lives and acting naturally. Sometimes with insufficient awareness of their surroundings.

So you were not performance-parenting. Could you have been annoyingly loud and unaware of how much your voice was carrying? Quite possibly; I don't know as I wasn't there. But that would be the opposite extreme from performance parenting.

She's 4 every trip to the park is a learning experience. All day every day is a learning experience at that age whether parents engage or not.

Ignore it OP seems like perfectly reasonable conversations, I have all sorts of conversations with my children that people may think are unnecessary but they love learning so not going to stop. They are like sponges and absorb everything, why wouldn't you take any chance to teach them.

Also think that even if people have heard it doesn't mean the OP is talking loudly, I've heard people's conversation when walking past them/at the park and they've been speaking at a reasonable volume but as the surroundings were quiet I heard them.

Keep having interesting conversations with your child.

You said in both incidences that they just came up as you were finished talking so you must have been talking quite loudly if they were able to hear you. Whilst you may not have intended it, I think both the women and the couple saw it as performative parenting.

Performative is putting on "perfect parenting" for others approval..

If you normally chat in a different way, but then act as you described in public = performative parenting.

If that is your normal style of parenting all the time = not performative.

(Also, those interactions are great. Teaching about chess is lovely, it's a great game for kids.. 4 is on the young side, but perfectly possible I'd the child is patient enough naturally to handle it.. and encouraging memeory and learning by linking new experiences to existing knowledge is great for their development and future education)

I do this... so I'm reading in interest. DD is 2 and we explain things to her. My dad was the same. But I don't want to be hated for it!

Ignore. In my view it's part of the time-honoured tradition of anti-intellectualism in the UK.

yes if you ger, but by 4 I think you can start to bring more detail in. My son was obsessed with the Titanic when same age and would’ve felt patronised if I started saying “big boat that got a hold in it due to a lump of ice” because he knew lots of details about it, although in other ways (eg adding up) he had no interest so I didn’t push. You follos youf kid’s interests at that time.