To think why bother having kids in the first place!

[Chelazla]

Lots of us have to work, we pay people to look after our kids, put them in breakfast club, holiday club etc. It needs to be done! BUT watching the Wright stuff I'm mystified that people are paying £2000 to people to potty train their kids and £20 per hour to ride a bike!!! Surely if you can't be bothered to do these most basic of things why bother having them! Maybe I'm being unreasonable but to me it's madness!!

God,I had plenty of this why have him? shit when I returned to work. I worked shifts and so wouldn't be there every minute of the day. I throw money at things if I can't do it whether it's football club or stuff at school. I don't have time to go in and help with reading so I buy shitloads of stuff when PTA are fundraising for the school. I love my son,we did however cut the cord in hospital and don't remain attached 24/7.

Well, I don't see why anyone needs to pay somebody else to teach their children French or German: I can do that myself. People just have different skills and areas of confidence.

Agree that swimming yes, cycling no is totally arbitrary. I've been involved in the swimming lessons not only of my own dc, but of nieces and nephews too. Never had any success with teaching bike riding, though I can ride a bike.

Isn't it just the same as paying for swimming lessons or Sleep Training or Horse riding? We might know how to do all these things but sometimes want to get a professional in?

Really? Asking for a thread to be deleted because you are to delicate to read the replies? I hope MNHQ says no!

People paid me to clean their house, I'm sure they could have done it themselves. I know people who can and do a great job of cutting their own kids hair, I couldn't, it would be a disaster from crooked start to crooked finish. I found it really really difficult to teach mine to ride a bike, my dad taught them in 5 mins. I won't teach them how to drive when they're older either, I'll pay someone and I also paid someone to tutor one of my kids.

To be fair, there is absolutely no need to swear at anyone.

They won't say no. It's not like before sadly.

YABU. My best friend had been potty training her child for going on 6 months to not much success. She cried constantly thinking she was failing her, was desperately unhappy. It started impacting on the whole family. It was such a relief to her to get a wonderful person to come in and sort it all out in a few days. Before she thought she was failing as a parent. It was such a relief to me to see how much happier the whole family were. Don't judge people. You have no idea why people choose to spend their money how they do. They are fantastic parents but just couldn't get to grips with this one thing, so to them the best thing they could do was to get help.

OP Parent bashing was never going to end well, maybe name change and move on?

I hope that this thread isn't deleted.

sleephead I love your post! I can see us doing the same for dd (7) because she gets so scared when I take her out. She was the same with swimming but started lessons when she was 4 and now swims like a fish. I see no wrong with using a service if it helps with your family. Too many judgmental people around.

I enjoyed potty training but still can't teach my DD (7) to ride a bike despite a lot of attempts. Where do I sign up?

It turned nasty because your OP made it so. You're basically saying that parents who pay for outside help with their parenting shouldn't bother having kids. That's pretty nasty and judgmental.

You say you pay others to look after your kids so you can work. Why did you bother having kids if you weren't prepared to do the most basic thing of actually caring for them? (See, it's pretty shitty to have your parenting choices judged isn't it)

Because, to be quite honest, when your child is in nursery they do the bulk of the potty training work.

Jaw drops! (but I'm assuming this was tongue in cheek anyway) It never crossed my mind to send them to pre-school not potty trained. Some other kids were still in nappies, but I thought they might have underlying issues. They all started preschool about age 2

When your child starts nursery at 6 months because you are both at work, then obviously some potty training takes place at nursery.

I plan to send my 3 year old on the bike course, it's £60 for 3 hours near me and I think it's money well spent. Probably wouldn't bother with the potty training course but wouldn't judge anyone (parents included) on the things they choose to outsource..

I would gladly outsource getting DS to brush his teeth! Would save a lot of grumbling and yelling.

It's a dangerous path to start judging which bits of parenting are "worthier" than others I think. Just because people do things differently doesn't mean they are doing them wrong.

At this point I would actually pay someone to teach my kids to ride bikes! DS1 is 9 and is absolutely 100% opposed to bike riding. We've tried and tried and at this point I've given up. I would dearly love him to be able to ride a bike and if someone else would teach him (without any of the parent/DC negative dynamic we have going on currently), then a few £20 sessions would be money well spent.

I've saw something about paying to potty train before. The only opinion I have of someone who pays another that much money to potty train their child has more money than sense.

rosy71 my kids started pre-school around 2yo each, and none of them were remotely potty-trained, and neither were most of their friends. No issue, they were just too young, no big deal.

My daughter was potty trained at 2yo. I got a medal 🎖

Then they found out about ds and took it away :(

Or erm, nobody actually gave a shit because it was real life.

It's all relative OP.
You can say why bother having kids to almost any parenting scenario.

Using childcare and not having a sahp, after school and breakfast clubs, summer camps, boarding schools, private/ grammar with long commute for the child.
And all maner of parenting and discipline preferences.

I wouldn't have paid anyone to do these basic things with my children as I saw it as my role as a parent.
However, I use a boarding school, it's all relative.

I'm sure this has been mentioned but potty training specialists are just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm a Nanny and jobs for Rota Nannies are in their hundreds - where there are two (or more) nannies employed to provide 24/7 care.
Myself and a lot of my nanny friends have worked jobs where there are two nannies per child, plus a housekeeping team, chauffeur etc when one or even both parents don't work. Its really really common and whilst I absolutely do not begrudge anyone paid childcare (obviously, as I'd be out of the job) some of these families make me wonder why they had children in the first place as they don't interact with them at all.
Many of them are also very poor employers who go through staff like tissue paper to ensure that the child doesn't have a lasting attachment to another person.
And some are just plain bonkers (I had a job where I had to sleep in the same bed as my four year old charge and only ever do exactly what he told me, which mainly involved hand feeding him nutella whilst he watched TV) but I'm derailing now...

My sister taught both of my children to ride bike. She is an award winning cyclist. So took great pleasure in teaching them both.

Wowzers. More stories please RentANDBills!

JennaRainbow
I could write a book on it! So much madness!

Who cares? Potty training is grim. Nursery will do most of it for us. I didn't have kids to do crap like potty train, no 😭😭