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AIBU?

to want to push this performance parent off the train?

121 replies

K8Middleton · 09/07/2013 13:39

I'm on the London to Brighton train. There is a man with a four year old boy loudly performance parenting. The kid wants to just look out the window but every time he just sits quietly performance dad starts with Tim [not his real name], can you see the children? Tim, let's count to 40! Tiiiiiiim, where is the window? Is it on the left or right? Tiiiiiiiiim, when you go to school what month with it be?

AIBU to shove him out the window?

OP posts:

Report

littlepeas · 10/07/2013 15:55

Of course I was encouraging my dd, but it was in front of lots of people and I felt like I was showing off, which is why I felt self conscious! I could well imagine someone thinking I was performance parenting! I killed the thread anyway.

theodorakisses · 10/07/2013 19:09

We all show off a bit, it doesn't make us assholes. I am worse with animals than kids. Have fostered loads and my FB is tedious.

YouTheCat · 10/07/2013 19:21

I'm terrible with cats. I think I PMCL (performance mad cat lady) - even if they aren't mine and I've just encountered them on the street.

Pixel · 10/07/2013 19:36

A few, years ago we were camping and there were a couple of families camping together a little way from us. There was lots of pp going on (all kids had names like Willow and Adonis) which after a while got dd and I sniggering as the comments got more ridiculous (to us anyway, in silly mood). By the evening they were doing some kind of quiz game in a very loud show-offy way so the whole site could hear when actually we'd all have preferred some peace thanks very much, then it went quiet and there was some discussion about little Alexander-the-great using the camera. We were inside our tent by this time and I whispered to dd that they were probably making a human pyramid, in an attempt at sarcastic humour, and guess what? They were!
How's that for performance?

PrincessScrumpy · 10/07/2013 21:33

Thanks for the catch up:)

ArtemisatBrauron · 10/07/2013 21:56

haha I went to an exhibition in the British Museum a few weeks ago and encountered the most extreme version of this I have ever seen. A mother with a baby about 18 months old, droning on and on to the poor thing "Look, Sebastian, how many tiles are there in that mosaic?"
Baby: "Gaaaaa"
Mum: "Yes, 1,376! Good Boy!! Look - what animal is that in the fresco?"
Baby: drools and looks away
Mum:"Yes, it's a purple-footed swamp hen! WOW! And how many rings does that cast of a dead woman have on?"
Baby: chews own hand
Mum: "THREE! YES! Good BOY!

Embracethemuffintop · 10/07/2013 22:09

Im sure people must of thought this of me when my son had speech delay. I was advised to talk non-stop to him about everything and I did. It was a habit that has been difficult to break after he caught up. He's 11 now and I catch myself still doing it and sometimes he'll be like, 'you can stop narrating now mum'.

I know this situation is different, but I must of looked like a PP for many years even though I wasn't

ZingWidge · 10/07/2013 22:18

artemisa

but you see how you remembered all those details?
so it was useful after all.

hazeyjane · 10/07/2013 22:34

It is a strange thing as well, if a child is completely non verbal, for example, I can't imagine ds ever talking, we still chat - as in I talk and he signs and makes an 'uh' noise, but obviously there are no actual words and ds's world of interest is very small. I think sometimes I might overcompensate, because it would be easy to just stop talking altogether, or to just limit what I talk about to helicopters, fire engines and cake.

hazeyjane · 10/07/2013 22:36

Ok have just read your 'extreme perfomance parenting' example, Artemisa and think that it just sounds normal, so clearly I am a performance parent, and that is why I have never seen anyone doing it.

ArtemisatBrauron · 10/07/2013 22:39

haha hazey were you at the Life and Death in Pompeii exhibition recently?!

I think that conversation would be normal with an engaged 5 year old who actually knew what was going on but it was bizarre watching the mum talk at the baby like that, and claiming he was responding when half the time he was looking longingly over her shoulder at something else!!

ArtemisatBrauron · 10/07/2013 22:40

Also different if there are SEN/other issues and the child can't respond but this was such a young baby that I am not convinced there was anything going on apart from mychildisageniusitis...

Ok I need to be less judgemental.

K8Middleton · 10/07/2013 23:50

Haha at "world peace" Poor kid. Can you imagine the child's Christmas List?

Dolls' House
Bike
Ballet lessons
Pony

Helping out in a hostel soup kitchen
World peace
Contribution to poor kid's gap year fund to build schools in The Developing World
Oxfam goat

OP posts:

McGeeDiNozzo · 11/07/2013 05:14

More straw men in this thread than the entire DVD box set of Worzel Gummidge!

No-one is suggesting that talking to your child in public, in general, is bad.

ImTooHecsyForYourParty · 11/07/2013 06:30

Absolutely, McG!

you can talk to your kid in Latin at 3 days old if you want to. If you do it while scanning to make sure you have an audience/because (be honest) you're playing to the crowd and you don't interact with the child in this way if there's nobody else around to see it - you're a performance parent!

If the person who has your attention and focus is the child and no part of you is attempting in any way to get any sort of response or thought or opinion or attention from anyone around you and you are doing nothing that you don't do when you're somewhere there is not another living soul for miles - you aren't.

Trying to make people look is performance parenting. Thinking that you are impressing passers by is performance parenting. Looking for that eye contact so that you can smile and they will know how advanced your child is is performance parenting.

I don't understand why there's confusion between the two.

exoticfruits · 11/07/2013 07:24

Well summed up, ImTooHecsy- I can never understand why people don't understand the difference.
Any thread about performance parenting gets people huffily saying that of course you should engage with your children or they have DCs with SEN and have been told to talk- that is not what we are discussing! You are not performance parenting!
They should not be confused.

ArtemisatBrauron · 11/07/2013 07:43

hescy hat is off, bowing to your superior summing up skills!! The BM woman was scanning the room smugly after each utterance, lasering in on people whose children were playing/running around and curling her lip as if to say "MY 1.5 year old is enjoying the exhibition!"

ZingWidge · 11/07/2013 08:02

hecsy good post.

I would even say it's just plain showing off.

K8Middleton · 11/07/2013 08:41

Art at "more straw men than Worzel Gummidge"

Quite.

OP posts:

YouTheCat · 11/07/2013 09:31

Exactly Hecsy. Round this way you get the anti PP people though. They aren't showing how clever their child is and looking for an audience. They are calling their kids little shits and looking for someone to challenge them to start a fight.

Some lovely sorts round here.

SchroSawMargeryDaw · 11/07/2013 11:57

My DP is a performance parent... He sings in taxis. I have actually heard a taxi driver turn the radio on and up after he started singing "heads, shoulders, knees and toes" for about the 4th time in 10 minutes.

You have my sympathies!

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