To think that children will fit in around OUR lives, not the other way around?

[HonestQuestion]

I am sure I'm going to get flamed for this but maybe there will be some good advice too! (I have NCd)

DH and I were talking last night about how we intend to bring up children. We have seen friends and family where DC rule the roost - everything is organised around the children. The children aren't ever left to their own devices to play; the parents are constantly playing with them and distracting them with activities. The TV is always switched to children's channels, not the news or anything adult. Evenings with the family have to be run on the children's schedule for naps and snacks and feeding.

Even when they are in bed, the mums are held hostage to the DC speaking over the walkout talkie and summoning them to the bedroom plenty of times before they finally go to sleep. We meet up with our friends for lunch or dinner or a day out, and always seem to come home not really having had much of a chat or catch up with our friends - because the day or evening is always all about the children - we all have to be in their thrall!

It seems the experience of raising a child these days is so far removed from how DH and I were brought up. We remember being left to our own devices to play, watching the news and learning about the world from it, we remember that the adults ruled the house - my dad would never have dreamed of having kids' TV on all evening when he got home from work!

And it's so far removed from how we want to raise our children. We don't want to lose 'who we are' and what we find interesting. A friend of ours said on FB the other day that she is going on a mini break and leaving her DC alone overnight for the first time in 3 years! I can't imagine being like that! And I can't imagine having a DC, meeting up with friends but spending that time constantly entertaining the children.

AWBU? I have my hard hat ready...

Yes, I totally agree with you. Everyone you know is a shit parent, but you'll be brilliant.

Christ, it's bad enough when parents judge other parents and deem them inadequate, but even more irritating when people without DC do this too.

Yes, yes it might all be "light hearted" but when you have DC and realise the truth of the saying "A mother's place is in the wrong", hopefully you will feel a bit ashamed of yourself. It's usually the women, or mothers, that bear the brunt of other peoples' judginess - so maybe have a think about whether you want to be a source of support, or a source of "shaming".

Oh how I miss eating chocolate in peace. And having a poo.

I thought like you OP. I was completely unprepared for how completely I fell for my babies. They didn't rule me, they beguiled me with their utter gorgeousness. I didn't care about anything else for a while. I couldn't think why on earth I'd want to do all that carrying on as normal and fitting them into my life when all I wanted to do was wrap myself around them. I think it was hormonal and I did come out of it but love is a powerful drug.

You are talking about how you would do something, when that 'something' is a thing you have no knowledge or experience of. (I am talking about being a parent and having your own children as opposed to watching others parent or being parented yourself).

Me personally? Tbh in most situations I would not take any notice of someone with no knowledge or experience telling me what they would do. How can they know?

Can you not see that that may also apply to yourself and apply it?

Most people strike a balance and there has to be a degree of change and an instinctive response to the children fate hands to you. Most good friends understand this.

With the majority, it's not life revolving round children but round family and pre dc, that's you and your partner and friends. Then new and vulnerable members of the family are born and their developmental needs and basic biology necessitates that their primary caregivers attune to their needs primarily. You genuinely can't know what that means through mere observation.

We renegotiate our lives continually and in the early years of parenting, this change can be dramatic. Of course there are extremes and people can become Parents and sacrifice everything else. Some people are at the other end of the spectrum and neglect their children. Most of us are in the middle.

You need to be mindful of the difference between thinking about what you want to do and deriding the lives of your friends. Your choices are not better. They're just personal to you. It's kinder to accept people for who they are, not judge them because they aren't the same as you.

Who are you leaving your fictional kids with when you go on your multiple minibreaks OP?

Be sure and consult with them before you start ttc.

The poo thing, I'm like, meh, you want to hang around the toilet -fine.

But the chocolate thing (and crisps) SOOO annoying.

One of my favourite memories is of the DP of a school friend telling me when mine were 2 and 9 months how their unborn children would eat WHATEVER THEY ATE WITH NO FUSS. It was all to do with how you bring them up apparently. Their daughter is 11 now and only eats cheese and Melba toast. That's all.

Not read the gazillions of posts but first page is gentle flaming so presume, in classic mumsnet style, a lot of the rest is assurance the OP is mad and this utopia of fitting kids around you is impossible. OP - it's not. We do exactly as you describe. The kids fit round us, not because we are selfish or inconsiderate of their needs, but because we are adults and are equipped to make better choices for our family team. Of course kids would like to rule the roost and dictate events, but that wouldn't be good parenting in my view. The world won't revolve around them, so teaching them that it does will result in a massive shock come pre school/school/job market.

We never have kids tv on (though in fairness we don't watch tv either). We go away without them and have done since they were tiny - preserving your relationship is paramount in my view. We also take them on holiday of course and all go out together. We go out to parties, dinner, theatre etc and use sitters. We also go out to friends' places, take the kids, put them to bed and scoop them up when we leave - they absolutely love this! They are well adjusted kids who understand that they are part of a team, not an inappropriate dictatorship. Don't be put off OP - that Catherine Tate sketch in the car where they can't go into dinner at friends' house because the baby is sleeping does NOT have to be your reality, though admittedly these days lots of people seem to choose that route. Your life can and should go on.

I don't have children but from observing friends there are aspects of life that need to change in order to provide a safe secure famiy environment and there are some behaviours which become adopted because a family has become totally child dominated.

I've seen loads of old friends this week - this mostly involved family dinners at 6:30pm, then either helping with bath time or sitting reading while my friends managed bath time then chatting once it was over. At one house I also cleaned the kitchen!

I have very good friends who come for dinner, put their kids to bed in my house and then go home without them - I return the kids the following morning. Having been careful to not drink too much!

10years ago we would have been in a restaurant. And we still could it just woukd have either cost a lot more -babysitter, or I would only have seen one half of the couple.

Today I'm going to a cross- generation university sports club reunion, my generation have largely opted out of the boozy evening function, instead we are meeting in a local gastropub at lunchtime with a handy child friendly activity. The kids are mostly 3-7 so will be left to get on with it while the adukts talk.

I'm accepting of this as otherwise I simly wouldn't see my friends!

Op, you parent your way. Everyone else will parent theirs. There isn't a right or wrong - but you might find children don't have the same ideas as you do.

I judged some ways of parenting before I had children and I judge the same ways of parenting after I had children. The only difference now is that I'm allowed to do so on mumsnet and with my friends in rl who once gave me the "you don't know because you haven't experienced it lines"

I firmly believe that people without children have a right to their opinions and express them because children are part of our society and we all have to live together, and that means tolerating each other. We are never going to be able to completely avoid children however tempting that idea may be sometimes, but also children need to be able to adapt to not being the centre of everyone's universe.

I also believe that, whilst having children is a massive change in our lives, it is not the only massive change that we are ever going to be expected to adapt to. Using my personal experience again, I have, in nearly 50 years: experienced the loss of my family's wealth, nearly died through cancer, lost my leg, had my fiancé kill himself, meet and marry my husband, change my career, become a step mother.....all before having children....and my life continues to change now I've had them.

OP I think the mistake you're making is to base things on your memory. What age are you in your earliest memories of playing alone etc? For me I'm about 6 or 7. As my DD gets older she plays alone more and I can imagine quite a bit of space when she's 7 but at 3 she can't concentrate without help and needs someone to play with.

If you are loaded, then there is a chance some of what you want might happen. But most of the people I know found that 2 parents in full time work ( or more likely 1 full time and one part time) meant that childcare fees took almost all their disposable income - very little left for babysitters as well as 2 tickets to the cinama, let alone a meal out afterwards. Trips away were completely out of the question, for both cost and childcare reasons. Even now, ( youngest is 15 ) we only manage a couple of weekends away a year, and that's using big brothers for childcare.
And asfsr as flexibility is concerned, either you have a routine, by which I mean DC eat and sleep regularly, or they 're up for most of the evening.
On top of that, most small babies and children wake up really early, like 5 am,
So late nights for you are suddenly not so attractive.
Anyway, good luck to you, I used to think like you, assumed I would have a nanny, who conveniently wouldn't live in but would be available whenever I wanted. Then reality hit.

OP I was like you before kids, I used to see what I thought was parents pandering to their kids and despair.

Then we had premature twins and everything changed mostly because I learned what was and wasn't worth it in terms of pushing it to make a situation like it was pre kids, for us.

I think for your original post you don't know what is pandering to a child and what is parents making choices that seem like pandering because the consequences of doing something in the short term aren't worth it. A good example is sleep and naps. Our kids don't nap now but when they did they would be horrors if we kept them awake when their nap would usually be. After a couple of times dealing with that we decided we didn't want to pay the price. Same with going out, we could have had a sitter much earlier than we did, but we chose not to because the kids used to wake up in the evenings and would have been really upset if we weren't there. On chatting to our friends, we can now if we go somewhere with a play area; if not we can't.

It's just choices and consequences, and they are different for everyone. There's a good Penelope Leach book about baby's first year, it gives choices parents can make about routines etc and outlines the likely pros and cons of each, might help to read that when you do have kids, it helped me.

I think it is actually a good thing that you are talking together about your attitudes to parenting before you have children. I know a couple with teenagers where the father never wants to be the adult. He was great when it came to fun and games with little kids but just won't do discipline. His lovely wife tries to put in boundaries but gets undermined constantly. Their relationship has really suffered because of it. There will always be disagreements and things won't happen as expected but I do think starting out on the same page and continuing to communicate will help.

On the other hand it pays to be flexible right from the start! Before my first pregnancy I had all these plans that I would eat super healthy food and continue to exercise throughout. What I hadn't anticipated was being pole axed for much of the first 3 months by overwhelming morning (ha!) sickness. Just having a shower was at times a massive effort and nibbling cracker biscuits was about all I could manage. I felt quite guilty about it at the time. This time round I have accepted that my body just doesn't like early pregnancy and I am not beating myself up for not being perfect.

Oh, bless.

I haven't RTFT but I think you are not being completely U.

I have 3 DC and due number 4 in November. In some ways my life does revolve around my DC. We take them out to do fun activities, hold parties for their birthdays, have their friends round for tea, go to every school event (I work part time). A lot of my life is taken up with child things.

However, that's not to say I entertain them at all times. 7pm is when the tv in the living room is switched to adult tv and my kids have strict (early) bedtimes in a day to day basis but is altered for special occasions. I have a job, hobbies and they entertain themselves loads. We have never brought them home from a gathering in time for their bedtime, they either sleep when their there or more probably enjoy the gathering and go to bed late. They never sleep in so the next day they just go to bed earlier.

If I'm speaking to someone and my child wants something, they must wait until I have finished. I am not at their beck and call but neither am I not there for them when they need me.

This is just the way I do it though. I don't judge those who do it differently. It may be that they get anxious or that their children can't cope with altered routines.

I don't think anything anyone says or anything you read can adequately prepare you for being a parent. It is nothing like I expected.

I had a list of preconceived ideas about what we were/weren't going to do. They all went out the window one by one. I hadn't conceived of how all consuming it is in the first few years.

Life changes so much when you have kids. You're in for a shock.

I was like that before kids. I was not going to live a life cluttered by toys and revolving around kids' every whim. It lasted through the baby days and the poor poppet got to go to cocktail parties in a papoose.

Later we caved. Cartoons in the evening, sitting room looked like a nursery. It's a short time, as they got older the house is still taken over by their stuff, but their and our stuff are quite similar now. Musical instruments and we got them watching Dr Who. The Gruffalo- and dinosaur years are short and don't much matter. We are back to where we started with the addition of lovely young ones and the youngest is not even teenaged yet. And yes, everybody is glued to tablets years before we were going to allow them.

YANBU but YA seriously over thinking it. The most important thing is not to be too rigid, they will sure as hell beat that one out of you, whoever they turn out to be. And remember how much influence you have over what they will get into, nobody has to disneyfy their life until the kids have credit cards to get all the undesirables themselves.

The sleeping thing is an interesting one. Lots of parents these days accept their kids waking up at 5am and resist going to bed (the walky talky reference in OP says it all)nor spend hours lying next to them to get them off to sleep. We never have - we need our sleep as much as they do and were never willing to create those bad habits which would come back to bite us. We had one good sleeper and one terrible. We didn't just accept it, we taught her over a bitterly long and exhausting period of years that nighttime is for sleeping and starts around 7pm and finishes around 7am. Anything in between, unless an obvious emergency, is time for sleep. Lots of good things then flow from that - if they get up at normal time and someone else is in bed (other parent lying in) then you speak and behave in quiet tones until everyone is awake - because this is their 'nighttime' still. At the weekend we put their gro clock on for later and they play in their room quietly til the sun comes up. Basic manners all children can easily be taught, from very young in my experience, but it does require hard bloody work and a steely determination that they WILL eventually learn the social mores that apply to everyone.

My hubby is a shit sleeper too but wouldn't dream of waking anyone else up in the middle of the night or at 5am in the morning. We teach our kids the same basic manners. To each his own, but if you allow your kids to get up at 5am, that's your CHOICE. Op - it is possible to do things very, very differently.

Fwiw - once my strong willed youngest got the sleeping thing, she became a much more pleasant child to be around. Knackered kids are often terrible eaters, badly behaved, difficult to sooth, terrible to toilet train (all my experience). Get the sleep right and everything is easier. You are doing them a great service by teaching them very early that sleep is good. My youngest falls into bed now and says 'this is my favourite place'. It can be done.

I'm just at any post which goes along the lines of "lots of parents ........ xyz but WE ...... abc"

It's just a presumption of what "everyone" else does (who is this "everyone"?) and a tacit assumption that what you do is better.

Everyone (mostly) does their best, in whatever form this takes, don't they?

Actually, when dd was a newborn, life was pretty easy. I could cart her about and she just slept most of the time. Once she started walking at 9mo and getting a bit of independence my lunch/coffees with friends reduced drastically. So you might get lucky at the baby stage, assuming no reflux, colic etc.

She is nearly 5 now, and if she isn't in bed by 7.30 she is grumpy the next day and doesn't concentrate at school, so I am pretty much governed by that.

I had all sorts of marvellous ideas about parenting before she got here, now I am far more realistic. For example, she was only going to drink water, and milk. I reasoned that if I never gave her anything else she would never get a taste for it. She hates water, and has from the first few sips. My not givin her juice resulted in horrific constipation, relieved only by Movicol and occassionally manual assistance from me. Now I don't care too much what she drinks as long as it isn't my wine as long as she is drinking.

Children are like a box of chocolates OP. I hope it works out for you.

OP you have contradicted yourself. I don't have children either but I do teach eleven year olds. You said they won't be allowed a phone. You also said your child will be able to be left to their own devices to some extent. When they finish school are you going to pick them up and therefore that will affect your career/ finances? Or are they going to walk? What if they walk and need to contact you or have an emergency? That is one big reason why parents give their DC mobile phones. For safety. That's just an example of how day-to-day life will change people's plans/philosophy. You can make a plan but it won't work.