Why cant we ever say " actually it's really easy"

[Fernie3]

About our life choices? In real life people keep saying " wow four children, that must be hard work" or online things like " being a sahm is such hard work" ( not quoting anyone just a general statement) and a million other phrases that say the same sort of thing on a range of topics. Why doesn't anyone ever say something like having more kids isn't tough if it was i would have stopped by now or in my case no being a sahm is easy i have loads of spare time and enjoy watching cbeebies?.

Driving i find hard (keep failing my test) and many people agree with me but not lifestyle choices. Aibu to think that people are afraid to admit that they DONT struggle when it comes to their children or life choices?

( sorry about the overuse of the word choices - cant think how else to say it)

If I find something a piece of piss I wouldn't need to moan about it...

If someone else finds a situation/issue hard I just support them and tell them it gets better etc etc...I do not have a desire to tell other people how easy something was tbh it does sound smug and pretty unhelpful, hence the reason i pick my threads and comments.

You can be supportive and say you honestly didn't find a situation that difficult...whats important is how you say it..

Gooftrop I am not naive enough to think things can't go wrong plenty of things have gone wrong in my life, I Just don't understand why people are ashamed if anything less than being in utter misery at all times. It is more boring to sit there listening to someone moaning constantly in my opinion.

Well, people aren't "ashamed if anything less than being in utter misery at all times". Rubbish.

I personally like being around people who find things easy. I feel that they have a positive aura and i agree with Violethill.

One of my best friends is a very positive woman. When she got pregnant and said she will continue cycling everybody said 'ha, wait and you will see. You will feel tired, lazy etc'. Well she didn't feel tired and she cycled to work until the last day. Others find her intimidating. I love her.

All this 'ha,ha wait and you 'll see' is very negative and boring. And perhaps jelousy.

Ha ha wait and you'll see.

BeenBeta - I find the baby/toddler/pre-school stages a piece of cake. It's the teenage stage I'm finding harder to deal with, although that might be because my (almost) teen also has health issues and learning dificulties and is ASD. EVerybody finds a different stage difficult.

I think people are embarrassed to admit that they are actually quite content with their lot. It's seen as being smug or up yourself.

Slightly off-topic, but I also think people like to dramatise. I have heard nothing but gory birth stories since I got pregnant, the last was a colleague who had a 'very long and complicated labour'. My boss (who is in her fifties) said, ah, don't worry, maybe she wanted a long and complicated labour, and my Mum said that people these days like to 'outbirth' each other.

I'm not saying that her labour wasn't that long and complicated, only that you wouldn't hear about it a generation ago, or see the immediate post-birth photos on facebook.

I think saying that 'life' is easy can be seen as boastful and insensitive to others.

Some people just cope better.

Have to admit that whenever I read on here that looking after a newborn is 'the hardest job in the world' I am tempted to say 'no it isn't.'

What was said earlier on the thread: everything is said in a context and you respond to the underlying subtext, not to the actual words.

It's human nature I'm afraid. When people moan they want support, not someone else saying that it's all fine and they're doing great. Misery loves company and people get jealous and resentful of others who seem to be having an easier time of it than them.

I think if someone approaches you with a problem then it is kinder and more tactful to keep the fact that you don't have that problem to yourself. If someone complains about having a hard time with kids for example, it's just going to make them feel judged and put down if you say "Well I find it all very easy"

However if someone explicitly asks you how you're getting on then I think it's perfectly fine to say you're very happy and having a great time. No one should make sweeping judgements such as "having young children is great/awful" because that is smug and unrealistic. But it's perfectly fine in my book for someone to say I'm finding it all very easy and manageable.

A similar thing used to piss me off at school. I was very academic and found exams very very easy, in fact I would say I have a talent for exams (not a useful life skill at all by the way). Because I used to get such high marks fellow students used to assume I had no life and studied constantly. When I said "No, I actually I just find French/chemistry/history very easy" I would get very negative reactions, as though I must either be lying or somehow implying that they were thick. The thing was, it was the truth and I wasn't going to tell people something they wanted to hear just for the sake of it. I would never mock others for not being good at exams but because I was good at them I seemed to be fair game. Luckily I was confident and just let it slide off me.

IME it's similar for people who have no trouble staying slim. A friend of mine is naturally very thin despite the fact that she eats plenty. People had no problem calling her anorexic and asking her if she ever ate anything which naturally used to really upset her. People seem to think that if you don't struggle you're a natural target for abuse. It's a cultural thing I think as British/Irish people do seem to have a huge problem with dishing out praise.

YANBU

I asked on here about some things DP and I were considoring doing - got thr resounding reply DO NOT DO IT YOU ARE MAD / SELFISH / STUPID

did it, best decision - having a blast

everyone finds things different - for instance, I have an 18 week old lab, a 4 year old, im in the final yea of my degree and Im due in 3 weeks - they are my choices, and I work hard, but it doesnt mean that my life is hard

It is partly the avoidance of sounding smug, and party because if you say it is easy, and the other person struggled with then it can can come over as critisising others.

I really get wound up by people like Gooftroop saying "Oh, it is fine now. Wait a while, and you will see how hard it is".

A lot of people said that when DD slept through at about 14 weeks. "Oh, it will not last, that will change". Well it didn't, she still sleeps well.

But then I am an optimist and look towards the future with the expectation that things will be good.

Misdee
I missed the news that you are expecting again. Massive congratulations.

Wait a while, and you will see how hard it is.

Great post Writerofdreams. We all have things that we find easy and things that are difficult. I found having a baby very hard because I was an older mum and had got far too used to being selfish for too long. Also I found the lack of sleep so punishing.

I love my daughter, but am not the maternal type. The thought of having four children to me is .

Yet, I find other things easy - cooking, baking, Sudoku, driving, finding my way around (I have a good sense of direction and cannot understand why others find it so hard).

Usually derogatory comments are a result of jealousy or because we judge people by our own values, which is only human.

YANBU. I understand your position. Having a baby, BFing, travelling with baby, working fulltime and any of the myriad other things people seem to want to offer sympathy for, don't register at all on my stressometer. Plenty of other stuff is harder to deal with (family illness and unemployment etc..).

Now comes the moaning about people who moan

Laquitar/Loudlass - now you have me really worrying about the teenage years.

[clueless about teenagers emoticon]

I do find life difficult. That is kind of my choice though, because I know I wouldn't be happy if I didn't have children or if I didn't have work and study. I always feel that there is more that I could be getting done.

I am sure there are people who are more content than me and get more done, and I think that is great.

I think half the problem is that the word 'hard' has connotations of being unenjoyable.

Yes, raising my children has been hard at times but I've loved every minute of it. Maybe not at the time, but in hindsight it's been the best time. Like all children they have their moments, I have my moments, DH has his moments, but we've come through and it's been, and continues to be, fun.

Oh no beenbeta dont worry i don't actually have teenagers yet. I just imagine it to be hard, i don't know from experience.

I am now at the 'primary school stage' and i find this more challenging than 'baby/toddler stage'. Because a) i am not good with routines and we need a military one with school, activities etc b)i am struggling a bit with my english and with the english school system-it is strange when you have been to very different school than you dcs do- and dcs are bilingual so we constantly question whether we are doing it well.
On the other hand the 'baby stage' was not new to me because i was a nanny before that.

So, thats why i say that the stages are different for each of us.

I have two DC and no way would i put myself through it all again! I'll quit whilst I'm ahead. And yes, I do complain about 'hard it is' at times - anyone that says it's a breeze is just lying.

I agree, OP. I find things quite easy most of the time. My children both have autism and people say oh that must be hard oh how do you cope oh I couldn't cope...

But really, it's not that hard. It's quite fun a lot of the time Sometimes I get frustrated and find things hard, but that tends to be more about me than what the lads have or haven't done. When I calm down I realise I have been rather ott and a bit of a prat, really.