This is bonkers mummy behaviour

Omfg.

No one's suggesting you should, however with your first ever experience of parenting a 2 yr old, maybe the first time you've even taking them swimming alone, you're still figuring this out. Give the woman some grace

45 minutes 😂😂😂 who the fuck has time for that nonsense.

That’s exactly the point. You give them age appropriate choices of one small thing to give them some control and independence of thinking.

You don’t let them choose the entire menu for the week, or wander round a changing room for several minutes, or when to leave the park when everyone is cold and tired, or decide which house to live in!

💯
Yesterday my 2 year old made lots of decisions in the supermarket.

What colour treats do you want to buy the dog? He worked on colours...
Do you want the cheese or garlic crackers? Cheese, cool
Would you like watermelon or pineapple. Both... no you can only have one. He chose one.

He also asked for ice cream in the freezer aisle. I said no and guess what no tantrum.

Age appropriate questions are fantastic.

What would you have done here?

Not just mums but dads too.. at the park yesterday. Said dad kept saying oh we need to go, cue child climbing up to top of climbing frame. Dad kept reminding him. Had to make it into a game and then wrestled to get the child’s shoes on. Child was about six. Child then hit him he said oh please don’t do that and then child spat in his face.. dad says oh we don’t do that. Child said I had sand in my mouth.. all very gentle and took a very long time to actually leave!! Was blowing my mind a bit.

Northermcharn

It could have gone either way knocking into her, could have made things easier but certain people would close down if offered help, always luck as to which way it goes x Nice of you to even think it though x hopefully it was just a horrendously bad day and they had a better evening. Swimming is up there with the most stressful of activities

Yeah that’s not how ADHD works. You need to educate yourself

Yep! Absolutely!

No, that's not at all what I've said, you've completely misunderstood my post. I said in a previous post I felt sorry for the child.

I was responding to someone who referred to a post about ADHD.
But it was all a bit of a tangent.

This isn’t gentle parenting. It’s permissive parenting (no boundaries )

Haha yes I can see why an open ended question would be a nightmare 🤣 I always take "giving choices" to mean "giving a choice between two options I'm fine with," I guess I shouldn't assume that's what everybody else means!

No.

I have ADHD. Both of my children do.

This isn't an anti-ADHD comment.

This is from observations of small but increasing numbers of parents who are not parenting their children who then look for a reason beyond their own pack of parenting.

I remember someone on here once posting negatively about a kid having a KFC with her parents. It was on the same day my daughter had her first KFC so it jumped out and stuck in my mind 😆

It showed me how everything that is one here that people post about other parents is a) only a snapshot and b) normally just a vehicle for them to reassure themselves that they're so much better.

My daughter ate five small meals a day, every day, but that one KFC was probably the devil's work to someone and indicative of my terrible parenting as a whole.

So even in this case if it IS the way she parents - who's to say she's not actually getting it dead on 99% of the time with that particular child?

It sounds like the child has sensory issues of some sort which make the changing room experience after swimming quite difficult. We have a child like that in my younger one's swim class - they really hate the cold changing-room and having their wet swimsuit peeled off and showered and hair washed and do get quite upset after swimming. The mum finds all of it quite difficult to deal with too (we've chatted about it), which adds to her difficulty in coping with her child when she's also struggling.

Tbf it could just be a mother who's a bit fed up, suffering sensory overload and wants the whole miserable swimming with small children experience to end but can't quite summon the energy to make it happen. I've definitely been in this situation when at the playground, worn out after a long week, and I say to my child "we need to go" and they say "just five more minutes, mummy" and, half an hour later, we're still there. I could put a stop to it and fireman's lift them out of there, but sometimes quite frankly I can't be bothered so we drift.

I cut parents taking small children swimming a lot of slack because it's such a bloody miserable experience. You get out of the pool, freezing cold, everything's wet, everyone's miserable, the floors are wet, the benches are wet and then you have to wrestle yourself and a small child/small children into damp, sticky clothes (and someone always needs a wee, which means crouching in a filthy toilet cubicle in your swimsuit trying not to touch anything!).

I am so happy now my older DC is 8 and isn't allowed in the female changing-room anymore, because that's one child I don't have to sort out after his swimming lesson. If we had the money, I'd hire a nanny specifically to take my kids swimming so I didn't have to do it.

Fucking hell

The thing about choices is you have to set expectations first. With my son I say you can get a small bar of chocolate today then he picks one out of the multiple bars. Or a small ice lolly. If he chooses a magnum or a giant bar of diary milk I remind him of the parameters. Rise and repeat every time. It works every time.

Then when they're in yr10 and only achieving a Grade 3 equivalent it's all "can you make him revise, he doesn't listen to us" .

shit parenting

Having worked for years in a newsagents, I can tell you that the answer to this is because they are toddlers, so the answer will generally be the biggest bar of chocolate or bag of sweets they can see, or some other equally unsuitable option. The amount of parents who would lift up their child, in front of a vast selection of sweets, say 'what do you want?', then spend the next 10 minutes trying to negotiate them out of what they picked (the biggest thing) and/or trying to diffuse the resulting tantrum because they've then said no to what their child picked. Hold up 2 options people, both of which you'd be happy for them to have, and get them to pick between those options. It's too overwhelming for them otherwise.

I was never a "gentle" parent (70s). My DD said once to me "I saw what happened with DB and didn't do it". Job done then. She has parented her children beautifully and firmly, much better than me. They were a real joy to take anywhere and knew what boundaries were.

My ex friend parented like this. Her kid killed their guinea pig because she wouldn't say no to him under any circumstances.

I know, absolutely bonkers. There would be no way i’d be waiting hours for them to be ready to go home from the park. They looked at me in horror when I said I often had to hold mine in the pushchair with my knee when they went all stiff as they didn’t want to go in. When the story of not crossing the road for 45 mins was told, I asked why the parent didn’t pick him up and carry him across and was told ‘you can’t do that with him’. I try and hold my tongue as he is their child but after a 3 day visit I did make some comments!

I have often said I was a gentle parent but reading this kind of thing, I wasn’t. I just didn’t have a very shouty household, but I had boundaries. Not least, speaking to me respectfully. And I was in charge, not them. I do feel some of these parents are setting themselves up for a hellish teenage period. Friends often ask me what I did to have 2 teens who never caused me a days trouble and I said it was more luck, personality. But I also said that I put the work in years earlier re speaking to me respectfully. I do think that helped. I’m no expert but letting kids dictate everything is not good.