What parenting things do other people do that you absolutely refuse to do?

[FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop]

I never bake my kids' birthday cakes. I can buy a very good supermarket one or pay someone to produce something that looks better than what I can do and has cost me less.

I won't do role playing with them. There are no scarier words than "mummy will you play with me - you be the dog and I'll be the owner". I apparently do it ALL WRONG anyway, I usually say something like "instead, why don't we do some painting" or I even say I'm busy. And I thank God every day the days of playing tea parties are over. Me perched on a very uncomfortable toadstool seat pretending to sip tea from a singing Fisher Price teacup for 2 hours and doing it wrong anyway 😂

I'm in my 30s and had unfiltered access to a computer from age 11. I was receiving dick pics on MSN Chat and my parents had absolutely no idea. It was wise to keep an eye on Internet use even 20 years ago to be honest.

I'd love to get away with no sleepovers in primary. Only a few more years to go! He's not properly asked and no one has asked him yet. People seem to focus on family time at weekends. Back in the day the weekend was usually me at my friend's house or her at mine.

Camping. Fucking hate it.

Prettylittle: Yes "dodgy things were available on the internet 20 years ago" but now they are literally thrust in your face through cynical use of pop ups and ads, porn at every other click. Protecting children online is very challenging.
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Very!

I'm glad I don't have small children any more, I'd find that extremely stressful.

I can honestly say I've never had a pop up dick pick, dubious looking adverts and junk mail at times which I don't open and block. However I am not a small child and if I did come across anything dodgy I am able to exercise judgement and discard/ignore it.

As a child I might have been curious, who knows.

I think I just don't pander to my kids to the extent so many others do these days, I don't think kids should be the centre of the universe. My friends tread so lightly with their daughters "they must both have the pink T-shirts or Esmerelda will lose her mind". Whereas I've never stood for that kind of crap, my rules go, kids have very firm boundaries and wouldn't dream of speaking back to me and I'm not afraid to put my happiness first sometimes.

(They're not yet teenagers, I know that's going to be a whole different ball game and not ignorant enough to think I will always manage this, but I dread to think how the teen years will go for my friends who are already letting their kids walk all over them and talk to them how they do).

Name you are spot on. I have friends who would run around catering to their child’s every whim eg making a special trip home to collect a particular toy they decided they want 🙄.

Don’t think it’s a coincidence that these kids are really not popular with their peers as young teens as they have been taught the world revolves around them and as we all know it bloody doesn’t! Ironically the parents in seeking to make them happy have actually made life more difficult for the child.

@MsTSwift yes my boss is like this, it makes things tricky at times as it’s sooo not the page I’m on. She cannot bear to see her children sad or cross or upset in any way so constantly strives to mitigate it. She won’t scold or tell off on public because she finds it embarrassing.

When I took the children away to an air bnb on holiday the eldest kicked off as I had a nicer room with a balcony and a tv and she didn’t. I said well bad luck, privilege of being an adult! She said mum would have swapped with me. I thought yeah, she would have, more fool her!

My peak 🙄 was when the mum collected the child who whispered to the mum that she hadn’t liked the tea I’d made (perfectly dull kid friendly meal) and mum asked me to make the kid something else! I had just tidied up the kitchen. There was tumble weed…

Yeah one child who has never been told no was told no by my dh on dds birthday outing triggering a tantrum 😮. Said child was NT and 11 years old. She’s forever been known as Verruca Salt in our family…

Ok so how it had turned into a smug parenting competition

[quote SmidgenofaPigeon]@MsTSwift yes my boss is like this, it makes things tricky at times as it’s sooo not the page I’m on. She cannot bear to see her children sad or cross or upset in any way so constantly strives to mitigate it. She won’t scold or tell off on public because she finds it embarrassing.

When I took the children away to an air bnb on holiday the eldest kicked off as I had a nicer room with a balcony and a tv and she didn’t. I said well bad luck, privilege of being an adult! She said mum would have swapped with me. I thought yeah, she would have, more fool her![/quote]
Oh dear, Lord! We have friends like this, meekly give up the nicer bedroom in holiday cottages so their DS can enjoy the King-size bed + fancy ensuite. WTAF?

On the other hand, in our family we have a saying 'No pay. No say' which has always worked well with our teenagers. They're bright girls, they wouldn't dare kick off if they didn't get the best room in our already very naice villa.

Friends of ours all agreed we couldn’t possibly go to a one night only event we all wanted to go to as our 10 year olds were getting back from a 3 day residential that day. They got back at 3pm the event at 8pm. Felt like a bad mother but that hadn’t even occurred to me as a reason we shouldn’t go out! Why would I need to gaze at my 10 year old for 5 hours!

@MsTSwift

Friends of ours all agreed we couldn’t possibly go to a one night only event we all wanted to go to as our 10 year olds were getting back from a 3 day residential that day. They got back at 3pm the event at 8pm. Felt like a bad mother but that hadn’t even occurred to me as a reason we shouldn’t go out! Why would I need to gaze at my 10 year old for 5 hours!

My Mother would make me feel super guilty if I did anything like that.

Agree seems to have become a parental comp but I guess conversations evolve.

I refuse to call it "parenting". I am a parent, I don't have a "parenting style", I just dragged my son up any old how to the best of my imperfect ability.

I always managed to go to the loo alone when he was a child.
I didn't have kids' music or "tapes" on in the car, he listened to our music.
We didn't go to Disneyland or Peppa Pig world though we did go to Legoland.
We did holidays we wanted and he tagged along.

As mentioned on another recent thread, I did not do dressing up days (his dad did).

However, I did once go away on a business trip and realise that I still had his favourite teddy bear in my car. I did contemplate putting it in a taxi. But it turned out that I didn't really need to be at the hotel overnight, and it was a 45 minute drive home, so I went home and went back early the next morning so ds got his teddy.

My biggest "parenting" fail has been producing a lazy son because I was always too impatient to wait for him to do things himself so I just did them for him. I do wonder how he will cope at uni. My DH says he'll do things when he needs to. We will see. I was pretty lazy myself but manage to run a home now.

Both of my children slept in their own room from the start. My daughter (2nd child) grizzled a lot so at 7pm I'd give her 3 dummies, one in each hand and one doing its stuff, and then shut her door. Once she'd had her 11pm feed, I'd go to bed with a pair of earplugs in and sleep through until 6am. I've no idea what she did as I couldn't hear her but she survived. I never pandered to them over bedtimes.

@Billandben444

Both of my children slept in their own room from the start. My daughter (2nd child) grizzled a lot so at 7pm I'd give her 3 dummies, one in each hand and one doing its stuff, and then shut her door. Once she'd had her 11pm feed, I'd go to bed with a pair of earplugs in and sleep through until 6am. I've no idea what she did as I couldn't hear her but she survived. I never pandered to them over bedtimes.

There's 'not pandering' and then there's 'not able to hear if your children are in any trouble in the night'. My ex was like this, slept calmly with his earplugs in right until I shook him awake because one of our DC's was struggling to breathe and was being taken to hospital in an ambulance with lights and sirens.

Yes, there's 'not pandering, and then there's 'irresponsible'.

I don't think she meant it.

@Maggiesfarm

I don't think she meant it.

Oh. Right. It didn't come across, as I can imagine people doing that TBF. But then maybe not admitting to it on a parenting website perhaps.

I could be wrong but it didn't ring true to me. Nothing we can do anyway! I cannot imagine any going that far actually.

Thank god mine are older and we managed to miss:

Elf on the Shelf
Tummy Time
Christmas Duvet sets ... just why!?

Hated role play, but did love taking them out to beaches, parks etc.

Looking back I was a bit uptight about sugar ... they used to hand me the haribo from their party bags . DD, now 20, likes to mention that frequently a a sign of child abuse. She also loves to mention car journeys, off to a holiday cottage/camp in the UK, where I'd pull into a garage and they'd beg for sweets ... I'd return with a little pack of raisins or a mini cheese/cracker/pickle pack.

Oh, I'm on a roll now ... she (and her sister) frequently mock our 'first aid' set up when they were children ... out of date calpol, two plasters and a couple of safety pins. They remember going to friend's houses who had proper cupboards which looked like a Boots counter.

It sounds perfectly plausible to me although I wouldn't have done it. I'm guessing that DC is most likely now an adult, or at least a teenager, though! I can't see it being an approach in recent years but it certainly used to be fairly normal to do things like that.

The thinking is they are totally safe in a cot and there isn't much that could happen overnight that would be hearable anyway. If they are going to suffocate/overheat/etc you wouldn't hear it anyway (and SIDS info wasn't really well publicised until "back to sleep") and there is a school of thought among some people that "just" emotional distress/crying is not something to be responded to at night. I think I'd want to hear in case a child was sick or had their leg stuck in the cot or something anyway, but then again I'd want to respond if my child was simply upset at being alone... so maybe I can't judge.

Apparently my mum used to put me in a separate room and close both doors. If I cried really hard she would hear me, but otherwise not. It's weird to me, because she was an extremely responsive/caring parent otherwise but it was the 80s and expectations for night time were apparently different.

Oh blimey just read that about the sleep ... that's a step way too far!

@BertieBotts my DDs are 20 and that would have been shocking even then!

@ArtemisFlop

Loving this thread - really interesting. Interested to hear why people don't go for primary sleepovers? I don't tend to either but one DC is a bit young and the other is a bed wetter so I feel reluctant to put them in that position away from home. What are other people's reasons for not wanting sleepovers for 11s and under?

When I was young, sleepovers were a secondary school thing (I can’t remember them ever being mentioned at primary), so I suppose I feel primary age is too young.

At the moment (DD is 6), I wouldn’t allow sleepovers because:

• She still has a bedtime routine to get to sleep (bath & stories), and I worry she would get upset and be unable to settle.
• She still struggles a bit with getting dressed and undressed, and I would feel awkward if another parent had to help her.

When she’s older (8 and up), I would reconsider.

The first thing to accept re sleepovers is that there will be little to no sleep. I think when you first start doing them this comes as a shock.

So always arrange for a Friday /Saturday if possible (weekend sports activities permitting). I always used to make them all sleep in the living room too, so no noise upstairs.