to ask what you see other Mum's doing that puts you to shame

[Totality22]

I just saw a mum jogging with her double pram.

Made me feel like shit so I've grabbed another slice of cake

Seriously though, is it normal to look at other Mum's and think "I wish I could do that"

Mums of toddlers who climb onto a dining chair, eat from a plate with a knife and fork, drink from an open cup, and refrain from throwing any leftovers on the floor.

DD gets strapped into her highchair, tips her dinner onto the tray, puts the bowl on her head, and shouts 'hat'. The food is disposed of by alternately throwing it on the floor (and saying 'oops'), squashing and rubbing it around the tray (happily shouting 'mess!'), and being rubbed all over her face in handfuls (while she repeatedly declares it is 'soap').

Snack time at toddler group makes me cringe.

We go to groups several times a week.. Lots of the mummys there swear they have pretty good sleepers. My ds screams for three hours then eventually falls asleep in which he will then wake up every 1/2 hours... How I envy those mums..
The mums who on facebook and out and about who seem to have the best newborn in the world... I know its a snap shot but when I compare snapshot to ds at that moment it makes me want to cry.

wishingwell that sounds rather akin to my DD!! I'm jealous of my parents and PiL as DD is the picture of fab behaviour with them, not a drop gets spilled...

Aww, don't worry about it, SueChef. Feeling confident and happy in yourself when it comes to parenting, or anything else for that matter, does indeed feel exactly as good as you'd imagine it to feel.

Boo, same here, DD is on her best behaviour when there's grandparents around! Maybe I should start inviting them to toddler groups...

The house. It's the house for me. Mums with young, happy children who play and craft freely yet whose houses look like something from the Cath Kidston catalogue. I craft and bake a lot, can do Elsa plaits and sew fancy dress costumes -although haven't been jogging in years now- but live in a shit tip. And those saying, 'you could do those things if you wanted to', I can't. Not without plonking the children in front of the tv all day every day and ignoring them to do the housework. It never ends.

I don't actually get this feeling from seeing what other mums do, but over the years have had a few comments where I was astounded to hear what other parents thought they had seen with me and DS, compared with my version of the same. Sorry, it's ended up long.

Lady who lived at the other end of our street. Came up to me with a six month old when DS was about 3 and told me that seeing me with DS in the first few years, walking along with him in a sling, was what had prompted her to finally take the plunge and have a baby!
She had seen: amazing mother and baby contact, bonding together, me singing to him.
I had experienced: utter exhaustion, a child who DID NOT SLEEP for the first couple of years of life. Daytime naps were a nightmare. After much misery and experimentation, the only way to get him off to sleep involved walking with him in a sling for twenty minutes to an hour. Once asleep, he had to stay in the sling, with movement (no staying still at the traffic lights waiting for the lights to turn green even. Even that long not moving meant immediate waking).

Kindergarten teacher telling me - not from our own kindergarten, but someone who used to pass us at the same time each day on her way to the train station - how lucky I am that DS and I are so close, and how much she appreciated our relationship compared to what she saw with other parents.
What she saw: mother and child spending quality time together and happy in each other's company
What I experienced: DS has ASD, he needs to recover from the amazing stress that spending time at the Kindergarten has just been. I am worrying about him, as no official diagnosis yet, but things are clearly not as they should be, and no one seems to give a damn, or seeing only 'quality time'.

Other school parent telling me how amazing chilled and organised I was with DS in the mornings, even having the time to read with him, and how she envied me.
What she saw: me and DS reading together on the school steps before going into school in the morning.
What I experienced: got up at crazy o'clock to get breakfast and lunch ready for the day. Got up DS, dressed him, fed him, chivvied him to the railway station for the hour it takes to get to school, of which 15 minutes are wiggle room as there are two connections to manage, and delays are always possible. Get to school too early, as the train connections did work this time. DS does not want to go into school as he would have to interact with other kids. I take the time to read with him, as his reading seems to be delayed compared to the other kids in his class, and with his ASD, he never asks for help in class even when he is not following at all. Seriously worried about his reading ability.

Summary: what other people think they see has zero relationship with what is actually happening!

Mums who locate, read and remember all school letters. I never do. I dropped my two off at the childminders on Red Nose day to a bemused "Didn't I realise?" No. And I am a teacher and I was dressed in head to foot red. Even as I send out class letters, I hold a place in my heart for the mum who just won't read / find / have time to pick it out of the school drawer because that's where they shoved it.

Also, mums whose sibling children play beautifully together. I don't care even if it's just for show, mine don't even do that. I could spend my whole holiday delineating the house into zones and still one of them would be stood there with ONE FINGER inside the other zone and Inducing meltdown.

Too depressing to think about or read this

I've often wondered how people manage to have immaculate houses and small children. Not just acceptably clean but sparkling and perfectly tidy. The same with the kids. They look like they just stepped out of a Vertbaudet catalogue all the time, even after eating their home made organic snacks.How?

My 3DSs grew up to be lovely young men, despite all the things I did differently or wrong to other parents. They had a mixed diet, some good, some not so good. They ate what they were given, wore what they were given and even if I looked like a burst couch, they loved me. The house wasn't always tidy, we weren't particularly well off and so made our own cheap fun. Life was busy, with 3 under 5, but we were all fed, healthy and happy. They never mention whether the house was hoovered, that they had skips and a penguin biscuit instead of carrot sticks and home made hummus in tupperware tubs. But they remember us all stripping to our underwear to go for a dook in the sea, kicking leaves in the Autumn and rolling down the hills behind the house. They are all confident and accepting of peoples differences. Accept your family, enjoy your individuality and sod what others think.

Yesterday, meeting up with some other mums I don't know too well but who were very naice. They had brought snacks for their DC - cucumber and grapes, in neat little ziplock bags. I had run out of the house late, so my DC sat there instead munching Wotsits and Mini Cheddars I'd bought from the nearby cafe

Of course, then the other DC wouldn't eat their healthy snacks as they wanted crisps too...

I took minor comfort from the fact that the grapes were not halved, even though the DC were quite young

I'm not envious of the other mums who do these things, but I never:

• have tissues or baby wipes (since they are all out of nappies, I forget DS still can't eat without getting it all over his face)
• Had a blanket or cosytoes in my pram, my kids have grown up HARDY which is lucky as DH doesn't like putting the heating on.

- wear make-up or have my hair elaborately styled

• have a tidy or clean house

But I am one of the smug ones whose kids do eat fruit and veg (as well as a gazillion biscuits), also they always read their school reading book and do their homework, I must admit I think negatively of the parents that can't be arsed to do this. Or maybe they are too busy tidying their house or doing their hair? I guess we all have priorities. Oh I also look down on the ones who can't use apostrophes ;-)

As others have said, be aware some of these things may be an illusion. Another mum came to my front door to pick her child up, didn't come in as she was blocking the road and was in a hurry, and she looked down my hall which leads into my kitchen and said, "Oh your house looks lovely and clean and tidy, not like ours!" Seriously, my house is total shithole, but must have got lucky with there not being a ton of stuff on the floor in the hall or kitchen. I did tell her that it really really isn't clean and tidy. I'd have hated for her to go home and feel she had to tidy hers :-)

Someone posted on fb today that she and her three year old had spent the day thinking about numbers and using 'mathematical language' in their games; shape sorting and playing shops. The nearest I got to emulating this with my three year old was him telling me there were '1234567' Pat-bots in the Postman Pat movie.

Also people whose dc 'just toilet train themselves' at barely 2. Ds1 is 3 and I still consider it a major event when he manages to poo on the potty.

Car seat hair is my nemesis. My children come close to socially acceptable at the front, but from the back they permanently look like they've been dragged through a bush in a gale.

Combined with the asbestos 4 year old who has successfully managed the whole winter in shorts, and occasional use of a coat, it's not a great look

If I tried to spruce them up before leaving the house, I'd never get anywhere before bedtime.

Mums who wear high heels when pushing a buggy

When my kids were primary aged... Those mums who spent 6 weeks on making a costume for National Book Day. My kids were lucky if I remembered it at all. My youngest kids went to this particularly competitive church school in a rather stuck-up estate village near here (by chance - as they'd gone to nursery there). The mums would spend WEEKS I swear, working on the eggs for the Easter Egg competition. I used to be a primary teacher so could tell a 'parent made' object a mile off. And apart from my kids' ramshackle eggs, they were all parent made.

Mums who have 4 DC (3 of them under 3) and turn up to school looking like a supermodel.
Mums who jog in the morning (there are a gaggle of them round here who do every morning)
Those who have amazing houses
Those who I've never seen in the same outfit twice in the 2 years DS has been at school. They also never wear black - have enough (very expensive) coats/shoes/boots etc to co ordinte with their outfits.
Those who have perfect hair and makeup and their roots perfectly done, never showing!
Those who have about a million photos of their DC on facebook.
And - in addition to all of the above manage to be a damn CEO/CFO ! (true) and be on PTA.

Scuttling off to do school run my half painted house in black cardi, dark jeans (which are a little tight from lack of exercise), roots badly need doing, eyebrows needing plucking . . .

what's "Makaton"

Makaton is simple sign language for children. DD has picked a few signs up from Something Special.

This thread seems to be mainly about young children.

I felt inadequate yesterday after talking to a mum who's senior school child was doing their 27th after school activity that day, had played in school final match, did activities most days and was academic at school.

Anzu - love your post. It's so true.

Squizita your post made me laugh, I read it about 3 times chuckling to myself!

Mums who seem to just DO so much in a day!

I have to recover for an hour after the school run....then do work...then tidy and it's time to collect them again....my friends are all "Oh I'm going for a run, then work for 4 hours, then I've got to take my neighbour to the hospital and then Harry to dance lessons and then we're going out."

I'm like WHEN DO YOU DO HOUSEWORK!?

Makaton is sign language for learning disabled and other adults that can't communicate via speech, it's simpler to use than British Sign Language. It's recently been picked up for baby classes though as I guess it's easy for children to pick up too. In a way I'm glad it's become cool, the more people that know bits the easier for my brother and other similar adults