What smug parenting things did you say before you was a parent

[Soubriquet]

Mine

I was going to breastfeed.

Not really smug but I said it in a way before I was old enough to know better that it wasn’t easy...

No dummies

Nope Dd had gone. Ds refused his

Going to use a sling

Did with a bit with dd, more with ds when I discovered better slings

No plastic tat.

Yeah that didn’t last

No screens until they were older.

I discovered I preferred my cup of tea hot

baby led weaning and it was going to be all organic

Mostly baby led. Spoon fed on occasion. Definitely not organic as I remembered I had to eat too

This thread is making me super anxious - so far I've stuck to all of mine and was feeling rather smug about it, now I'm dreading the moment the wheels come off!

I was always massively anti-CBeebies and have managed to stick to that, but i do have a baby who loves TV, she's obsessed with Gardeners World. Not sure that will last much longer, the pull of Peppa is strongggggg.

I will make them do their own chores

much easier, less stressful and quicker to clean a whole house while they’re out for an hour

We will go pumpkin picking and on days out and long walks and bicycle rides

reality is we go pumpkin picking, they whine about how far they have to walk, where’s the toilet, how are we not at the car already and I end up with £20 of pumpkin that no one wants to eat

I will make world book day costumes. Nativity costumes. History costumes.
I might, had I had more than one evenings notice

Their toys can stay in their room
hahahahahaha

They will not watch endless amounts of YouTube. If they do want to watch tv they can watch endless hours of Little House on the Prarie, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, Songs of Praise, Countryfile, Gardeners World and Antiques Roadshow like I did

of course all of those things come with a commentary like ‘this is boring, can I watch cartoons, I’m going to play a really noisy game instead’. Apart from Antiques Roadshow which is now a game of ‘guess what it’s worth’

In going to come across as uber smug but I didn't have too many expectations or many aims so as a result the few things I was adamant about I stuck with.

"There's no way I'm going to respond/talk to my children when I'm on the phone to other people (like talking with friends). It's very rude and totally unnecessary. The children have to learn to wait"

Cue business call (I work from home) and youngest running in painted yellscreaming "MUUMMMM! I've just

Mine was never going to watch Peppa Pig, ever. So she decided to watch Bing instead.

I now positively encourage Peppa...

Sorry posted too soon.

There's no way I'm going to respond/talk to my children when I'm on the phone to other people (like talking with friends). It's very rude and totally unnecessary. The children have to learn to wait"

Cue business call (I work from home) and youngest running in painted yellow screaming "MUUMMMM! I've just turned into a banana!"

@Bitchinkitchen

This thread is making me super anxious - so far I've stuck to all of mine and was feeling rather smug about it, now I'm dreading the moment the wheels come off!

I was always massively anti-CBeebies and have managed to stick to that, but i do have a baby who loves TV, she's obsessed with Gardeners World. Not sure that will last much longer, the pull of Peppa is strongggggg.

I like a bit of Adam Frost myself.

Watching open ceremony of the olympics with friends and their teenage sons, their blackberries pinged through the whole thing and they couldn’t take their eyes from them....

Dh and I agreed that would never be our children glued to their phones, our children are now 17 & 18 and absolutely glued to phones

Oh god the things I said pre kids. No plastic toys , no character clothing , no junk food , only healthy organic homemade food, only water, very limited tv and talk to their level .
I now basically have two children who are basically a walking advertisement for Disney who love nothing more than sweets for dinner and the house looks like a toy shop throw up all over it.
They wouldn’t survive and either would I without the iPads
So yes that’s all working out well

Well, whatever works!

As long as the kid isn’t harmed, go for it! We all need to take it easy at time’s too

No cosleeping.
Own bed from cot.
Ha.
My bed from the start more like.
Then bargaining that 'now you are at big school no sleeping with mummy ' it cost me a sonic game.

My DH said he would never bribe them with money, and was disgusted that I freely bribe them. I know for a fact he slipped our eldest (3) some cash to stop interrupting his work call yesterday. The good news is, the children will be more than able to pay for university at this rate!

I said they would be trilingual. They depend on me for two of those languages and I work away. It’s definitely more like bilingual and occasional outbursts of the third thanks to my PA valiantly keeping it up.

My wooden toy thing was studiously undermined by all grandparents. My dad gave my eldest a pork pie (we live in an Arab country) and now we have a little addict on our hands.

My FIL made a mobile with little guns on it to wind me up, after I very kindly wrote a small handbook on our ‘family ethos’ for everyone and emailed it out. It was mainly about not being racist, homophobic or encourage violence but still was wanker behaviour.

I won't have cbeebies on all the time! Ha! Lockdown well and truly put paid to that!

Touch wood however, because of cbeebies, I have managed to keep her away from the blasted pig (peppa). As far as she is concerned, peppa is a book character

I always said I would never bring DS into my bed. I would be strict and bedtime would be bedtime and that would be that, no messing about begging them to get into bed.

I have army crawled out of that bedroom after patting him to sleep more times than I can count. Any sign of illness I drag him straight into my bed. Utter, utter wanker.

I met a close childless friend last week. She said

• Its perfectly acceptable to say no to your kids when they want to play.
• The best parents read to their kids instead of putting the TV on, that's how they learn language skills.
• they will eat what you put in front of them, just don't introduce them to junk food.

I lolled all the way home 🤣😂

As I was being wheeled back to my room after having ds , the midwife commented that he was a big lad and that a dummy might help tide him over between feeds. I still cringe when I think of the withering look I gave her and the outrage in my voice when I declared ' no child of mine will ever be given a dummy' . He had one within hours

Not me, but DH:

On seeing a toddler refusing to be put in a buggy, screaming, arching back “my child won’t ever have a tantrum like that, I’ll make sure of it”.

On hearing a screaming baby in Tesco, he was looking around and I asked him why “I just want to see how shit the mum is. She should leave the checkout and see to the baby before she pays”

Twat.

No guns in this house! None

Water guns will be the only exception

Ds’s favourite toy is a bright green and orange gun that makes loud noises which he got from the fun fair

"We won't have too many toys. We'll just have a selection of good quality toys that won't take up too much room."

Within 2 years of starting our family we ended up building an extension to accommodate all the plastic crap toys.

I was adamant any children would sleep in their own rooms and actually said to DH we'd put a lock on the inside of our bedroom door to keep them out (although he said this was cruel).They definitely would not ever get to sleep in the bed with us.

DSs 4 and 1 and have both coslelt from birth A good nights sleep won very quickly.

During my first pregnancy, colleagues were asking about my expectations of labour and birth. I actually said I'd had a tooth access once and doubted it could be worse than THAT!

@MaMisled

During my first pregnancy, colleagues were asking about my expectations of labour and birth. I actually said I'd had a tooth access once and doubted it could be worse than THAT!

Oh dear god you didn’t?

If I was your colleague I would have been silently laughing at you.

The baby will fit into my life rather than me fitting around the baby....hahahaha as if

They won’t want to eat crap food if they never get it at home, I’m never going to feed them crap food, we’ll always eat as a family at the table, I’m never going to end up one of these mothers pandering to their children (like mother in law) making separate meals for everyone.
In reality, I find myself making 3 separate meals most nights and Ds’s diet is so restricted I’m waiting to see a psychologist about him. 😓
Also bedtimes! They were going to go to bed, get a story and a cuddle, then they would self settle. Like bollocks will they! DH and I take a child each and lie in bed with them until they’re asleep. We’re the shittest parents I’ve ever seen!

"My child won't even know what a television is" - hahahahaha
"Why would you give a baby chocolate, sweets and icecream when they don't even know that they want them, there's time enough for that when they have found out what they are" - I did actually stick to this to a certain extent, and you could not now find a child more obsessed with sweets, biscuits etc. so probably had the opposite effect.
I bought cloth nappies before DS1 was born but never even got them out of the bag
"Baby needs to learn to sleep through normal background noise so we won't be tiptoeing around while he sleeps" - before I got a baby who was so hard to get to sleep that I would have done anything to keep him that way.