To want to throttle women who talk their kids in REALLY LOUD VOICES

[bbird1]

in public for no apparent reason. It's just bloody annoying. Just pipe down ffs!

The man at the farm was the only time I have ever met a stranger who I am certain was putting on a show for my benefit wrt speaking to his child.

I think that maybe he was just a bit out of his depth. Maybe he didn't spend much time alone with the girl and wasn't quite sure how to act, and was looking at me for approval, or something. That possibly sounds terribly patronising or sexist, but there was a kind of desperation about him!

I am sure I will encounter tuts and looks at some point because we're bringing up DD bilingual. MmeLindor do you ever get funny looks in the UK when you speak German or French with yours?

I always talk very loudly to my 2 boys.
Don't know why really.
But then I talk to everyone loud. I am a very loud person.
I must be very annoying
But I am also one of those who loves the sound of their own voice.

my brother is increasingly deaf, mum used to talk to him loudly...now its more continual shouting.
i spend most of my time on my own little planet. higher than average vlume is required to get my attention. my kids can be like that too.

it isn't necessarily a sign of showing off.

Oh FFS, these threads always end up like this.

There bloody well are parents who put on a show for the benefit of those watching. Why they do it, I don't know. But it's silly.

There are also parents who need to parent their children differently, no one here is or should be judging them. Are there people out there who will judge them? Of course, fact of life, doesn't make it right, but it happens.

I personally err on the side of caution. There are children and parents in my circle of friends who are not NT and so I come at this from a perspective of thinking "well, I'm sure I know how this looks to others, but my friend talking to her DD like this is actually not what you think....".

But then I also know people who absolutely do seek attention for the way they talk to their DC. Little Tarquin and Persephone are soooooooo far advanced compared to all the others that it simply must be pointed out so everyone else can envy their superiour parenting. We all know it happens. I see this frequently because the ILs (and therefore DP and I) have family friends with all the money in the world and no class whatsoever, and I know there are no SENs or other reasons as to why they show off. I do have a silent chuckle at the way they behave, and that doesn't make me a bad person.

'Tarquin and Persephone' - again exactly how many Tarquins are there out there? I met a Ptolemy once but that's it.

"Oh so annoying! The woman in front of me in the postoffice was CLEARLY doing this when she spoke to her daughter:

"Sofiah, this parcel is for Granny. But we don't write Granny on the parcel, we write her grown-up name, which is LADY Marchmaine. Not Granny Marchmaine but LADY Marchmaine."
And she was gazing around the queue as she said it, totally ignoring her tiny toddler who probably isn't speaking yet."

Just to refresh your memories - this was BagOfHolly's story.

The clues are there - that mum not so much TALKING to her baby but being pretentious and PLAYING to the audience.

NB - the tiny toddler not speaking yet.

So people shouldn't bother to speak to children who can't speak?

I clearly am one of these allegedly pretentious parents.

Psammead
I would get funny looks if I talked to the DC in French, as my French is atrocious. :o

When I was in Germany occasionally someone would ask why I was talking English with the DC (as my German is very fluent, indeed with a Franconian accent) and they would be disbelieving when I told them that I was in fact a native English speaker. I am sure that some thought that I was German, but being poncy and bringing my DC up speaking English.

I would just smile and carry on.

YANBU mostly, except have you considered that some people's DCs are hard of hearing? e.g. my DS only has 50% hearing in each ear, and I really do have to speak to him in a very loud voice in order to get him to hear me unless we're in a totally silent room. I'm always aware of how loud I sound, and it embarrasses me, but if DS can't hear me, what else am I meant to do?

Oops. I really should have noticed that there were already 7 pages of replies before I posted!

I have shared my story as an example of how it makes people feel to be publicly judged and why it is so very wrong.

But I think my main point has been missed...why on earth is it ok to openly judge people for how they parent? That is far nastier than genuine 'performance parenting'.

So what if some mums are doing it for your benefit, isn't that a little bit sad? That they feel insecure about their parenting - probably perpetuated by the judgy, bitchy nature of other mothers around them.
Please think about this, next time you are overcome with rage/pissed-off-ness that you cannot contain your eye-rolling, sneering, bitchy comments:
A) As clearly demonstrated here, you have no idea WHY they are doing it
B) IT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!
C) Your impact will be far, far worse than theirs and that makes YOU the self-centred attention seeking bitch.

You have to have extremely thick skin when you have SN in the family.

Fact of life. There's little point getting upset over every little thread which contains a perceived slight.

FWIW my response was usually pretty direct when anyone was rude in public...

I'm not offended by this thread, I have been offended by RL - that was not a perceived slight. I am trying to use this thread to get people to see that sometimes you should just walk on by.

Could the poster present in the post office not have said "Gosh, has she not yet read Debretts Correct Form? Oh dear, I suppose she'll get there eventually" with a tilty-headed sympathetic gaze?

Georgimama - hey, it's not about NOT talking to children too young to speak back it's about the content. And in the post office story the clues are in the content.

The reality is people WILL judge and think pretentious twit if you draw attention to status and title this way, via a conversation with a baby!

I have not really noticed this, in the way it is described. I have a horrible suspicion that is because most people round here are a bit like this

TBH if there is a parent giving it "Oh you clever girl blah blah" thing and doing the looking around smiling thing, I just think that they are very proud of their children (which is actually quite nice) and give them a smile back. This seems to make their day, so all good IMO.

Re the wittering on inanely at a pre-verbal toddler. Doesn't everyone do this? A combination of sleep deprivation, having the tremendous company of a toddler of most of the time, and an idea that you should talk to children about what you are doing even if they can't talk back (this is instinctive isn't it?) mean that surely most of us have been there.

fearne I'm not sure that people I don't know in rl being judgy offends me as such, but comments and staring makes me

I've said this before, but my usual response to someone being stare-y is/was "would you like me to wheel him nearer so you can get a better look?" This usually shames them fairly effectively.

my family member is obviously SN, so we have slightly different experiences wrt the general public I would have thought...

SardineQueen.

Yes - I think you're right and some mum's do appreciate a bit of support - a smile or something.

How about if the child is deaf?

I've posted this before but:

My mate organised a coach trip from her yard, to see a horsey event a fair few miles away. Among the coachies were a very very posh, loud mother and her two equally posh, loud daughters, who I'm guessing were about 13/14 or so.

The entire way home (so for over an hour) they played a game called The Parson's Cat. This game involves starting at the beginning of the alphabet, and thinking up adjectives for said bloody cat.

So imagine it, if you will. Three ridiculously loud, carrying voices, going "The Parson's Cat is an ACROBATIC cat".... "The Parson's Cat is an ATHLETIC cat" etc etc. And then there's a pause, and you think "Oh thank God, they've stopped" and then you hear "The Parson's Cat is a BEAUTIFUL cat" and you realise that they haven't stopped, they'd just run out of "A" words. And that you've still got the rest of the bloody alphabet to go.

Neither the mother or the daughters had SEN, or were hard of hearing. They were just the worst kind of loud, attention-seeking ( "Listen to us! We play EDUCATIONAL games! Don't we have huge vocabularies!" ), arrogant twits. It maybe wouldn't have been so bad, but it was late at night, and some people - especially a few of the younger kids - were trying to snooze but that didn't matter to Mrs Loud and her offspring. It was far more important that they showed off their vocabularies AT THE TOP OF THEIR VOICES

CalamityKate - I might try that game with my DCs next time we're on a road trip - out of earshot of anyone else, of course!

smartyparts I constantly refer to myself as "mummy" with my 3.7 ds, he cannot say the word, he calls me bubby. It's simply to help him to learn the "m"sound. Constant repetition is the only way to help him to learn to say the sounds he can't, there's no other way.

On another point I do agree you have to have thick skin when you have kids with SN, I also have 1 ds and 1 dd with ASD. It doesn't stop the judgypanters being twats though.

'On another point I do agree you have to have thick skin when you have kids with SN, I also have 1 ds and 1 dd with ASD. It doesn't stop the judgypanters being twats though.'

That's when I used my teacher voice to explain what's going on to the gawpers. Now DS is older, he often explains for himself.

headfirst at least you're not one of those mothers who adopt their child's baby words into normal language and call themselves "bubby" until the child is in his/her thirties....