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!!

big ears when people say nursery trains them they are talking about full time private day nursery, not preschool

Oh FGS judgemental much?! Why do you give a a shit if someone else pays someone to teach their kid to ride a bike?

If I was a gazillionaire I'd pay £2k for potty training it's a massively PITA!

I wish I could have paid for someone to teach ds to ride a bike. 2 years of utter misery for all involved (including the neighbours who had to hear it all). Shoelaces were hard too.

Currently paying for swimming lessons, but might as well just burn that money.

What a timely thread. This morning no have spent 2 sodding hours in the park trying to teach DD's to ride. My back is hurting do much they I've cried. It's also a very frustrating task. I'd happily bung someone £100 to teach them to ride.

DS taught himself to ride a bike - wouldn't let us near him. I didn't realise he'd saved me money.

If I'd known I would have reinvested that money in someone who could make him a not-fussy eater.

I think yabu I'm afraid.

Paying someone to toilet train or teach your kid to ride a bike isn't the done thing, but I don't see it as much different to paying for nursery, swimming lessons or anything else that you outsource.

If I was rich I wouldn't work and I'd spend loads of quality time with my kids, but I'd pay someone to do loads of the mundane jobs that I don't enjoy.

Also the people paying for these services might have been really struggling.

I can't ride a bike...so someone else taught both of my DC to do it.

Wish I'd known you got courses because I had to just harass my friends, lol

I need those Bike lessons for my DCs, I loose my shit far too quickly - have no patience

Potty training DD was hugely stressful as she was so strong willed. It took 3 attempts and a lot of defiant behaviour. She listens to other people just not me so if I could have afforded it I would have paid. Depends on the child. Some kids are more obliging. If paying to teach them something reduces the stress why not?

OP is a little judgemental.

I'd pay someone to do the potty training! At least to clean up the poo accidents!

I can ride a bike, but I learned in a backwoods country area where there were very few cars, and I only ride now on very chill bike trails. I've never ridden on a busy road (or in fact any road where you couldn't see a car coming a half mile off) and I have no idea about what rules apply.

If I was teaching a child who lived in a town or city I might do the first attempt or two, but once they had the idea I'd definitely enlist a friend who rides to teach them all the rules of the road.

The toilet training I totally get. I've seen a lot of parents make a big drama out of it and traumatize their kids and themselves...it's not exactly a joy even when it's easy, so if you have a spare 2K hanging around why not?

OP, love the fact that you think people shouldn't swear at you simply because you wouldn't swear at them. I hope you realise that you can't really decide the extent to which people disagree with you and how they choose to express their disagreement in a chat forum.

For what it's worth, I totally agree with the poster - as a parent of a child of an invisible disability, it's more than just a little trying having to justify our parenting to people who appear all to keen to judge us. It's all very well saying it's ok for individuals with disabilities but not for other parents but how would you know if the parent in question or the child had an invisible disability so that you would know to stop your annoying judging?

Dc did the cycling proficiency type course the council runs last year. It was surprising how many of their friends didn't do it because they couldn't ride a bike aged 10. I guess we don't all play out in the street any more after school where these things are picked up. Dh taught ours, but I strongly suspect they wouldn't be able to ride a bike had it been just down to me. So on the whole I think why not if you don't have the time/inclination/health, pay somebody else to do it. I suppose it's no different to being taught tennis or swimming.

Well if I had a spare 2k and someone would potty train ds in a week I would pay it in a second. And I can't actually ride a bike. So if I didn't have dh that would be a problem that might be resolved by paying ......

RentANDBills would love to hear more of your stories, that sounds mad!

I was a nanny once for a family who saw their 2 toddlers for 5 hours on a Sunday. That was it. They would be in the same house as them lots of other times but it 'wasn't their time to have them'. I felt so sad for the children, the parents didn't do a thing for them or with them. Except buy them stuff.

Potty training is one of my most hated parts of parenting. If I were rich I'd have quite happily paid someone else to do it.

I did pay someone to teach my kids to ride bikes though. DS has SEN and goes to a special school, a brilliant teacher there ran a bike club to teach the kids to ride and I asked if my others could go and learn too. Much easier than doing it myself (and I had tried, and found it very frustrating!) That was only £2 per session though.

I'd have paid for a lot of things if I had the money - used to dream of paying someone to come in on a Friday teatime and look after them till Saturday lunchtime!

It would have left me with more time and energy to have fun with them after my lie in!

Dear god, OP.

I suspect your kids are quite small. I can assure you that once they get past 13 you really do not rest your relationship on whether or not you potty bloody trained them yourself or not. As it happens I did, but it wasn't exactly a Precious Moment. And paying someone else to do it wouldn't have been a big deal at all.

My CM effectively potty trained DD1. DNephew potty trained DD2 (same age but she watched him and copied). I can't take credit for either of them (and superbly trained too - don't remember any accidents with DD2 and only a couple with DD1).

I paid for swimming lessons because I'm a rotten swimmer and scared of water. I paid for driving lessons because I found driving difficult to learn and I'm still nervous as a passenger (so not good to be accompanying a learner!) I sent my DCs to school because I don't have the knowledge/skills/patience that professional teachers have.

As PPs have said - that's not why I had children. Unless you cater for your child's every single need then as a parent you will outsource some things.

I'd happily pay double that if I ever had to potty train again. I did not enjoy doing that at all!!

You can try potty training your own kids, but it becomes a lot less fun when the Parent police rock up and tell you you're going to give them a psychosexual complex for making a big deal of it and not letting them self-train in their own time, and then the nurseries and schools will start muttering what a lazy parent you are when they're NOT trained, so ultimately, a fear is created. A problem, in fact, and why do they create problems? So someone can sell you the solution.

Parents can't win. Too early, too soon, too much pressure... oh, wait, now it's too late, why isn't s/he trained yet, you lazy failure? The precise day of success should have been last Tuesday.

I'd have paid for a lot of things if I had the money - used to dream of paying someone to come in on a Friday teatime and look after them till Saturday lunchtime!

This definitely

I can't ride a bike, was never taught because none of my parents could ride either. As it happens DH taught my eldest to ride and is currently working on the youngest who isn't in any hurry to learn...otherwis I would happily have paid someone else to do it.

It never occurred to me to outsource potty training but I did buy a lot of book on the subject and reward charts and other chocolate incentives before we embarked on it so you could say we paid for it. In fact when I think of the hours and effort we invested, £2k actually sounds cheap!

I can see why you might raise an eyebrow at other people's parenting choices but it's worth remembering that not everyone's life or reality is the same as yours so go easy on the judging.