About this mum in the coffee shop

[Sallygoroundthemoon]

I am currently in a coffee shop having a nice cup of tea and catching up on my emails. It is fairly buzzing with chat and so on but not the sort of place with thumping music if you see what I mean. All good and to be expected in a coffee shop. However, there is a mum the other side of the shop reading stories to her toddler at the top of her voice, complete with pauses and shouts to make the toddler jump, silly voices and so on.

Now I am all one for reading to little ones and am not adverse to silly voices but AIBU to think that a nice coffee shop is not the place to be doing this so loudly? I've now heard the same story several times and it is driving me up the wall, not to mention being on edge waiting for the dramatic shouts. It just reeks of 'look at me, I'm a parent don't you know and I don't give a shit about anyone else'.

Oh for fuck's sake. You must be on the windup with that pish @Neutrogena.

As a languages graduate, I have never heard of an expensive accent, and have certainly never heard of someone describing theirs as such.

Haven't RTFT (way too long) but I love that there's a name for it! "Performance Parenting"
Love the name, hate the mummies who do it.

@MSLehrerin

I guess you'd have to hear me speak to understand.

Honest question - when you do languages at a degree level, is the study of accents part of it? I thought that was more linguistics?

Linguistics was part of my degree @Neutrogena. The development of accents/dialects/various types of slang made up a fair amount of my study in each of the languages I studied as I did additional electives, given that my interest was more language based than literature. Hope this info is of use.

@MSLehrerin

Understood. Thanks.

@llangennith

You hate people that you think do it? Thats a bit strong isn't it? I can see one being peeved, but not full of hatred...

No Neutrogena not full of hate Just a figure of speech.

@llangennith Understood. My mistake. I sometimes take what people say tol literally

I think I met a twin sister of your "mum in the coffee shop", OP.
Had exactly the same experience today, when we visited a local Nero. The mother behind me was reading a children's book to her baby in a very loud voice, wavering in pitch, with artistic pauses and dramatic effects for the whole cafe to "enjoy". Even the baby wasn't impressed.

@sassolino

Are you sure she was doing it for your benefit?
Maybe she was (ignorantly) unaware of how loud she was being?

The word "ignorantly" is the operative word.

EXPENSIVE accent! You really are illiterate as well. An accent cannot be "expensive" because you have not purchased it - or perhaps you have. Lol

I don't get how people can say there's no such thing as performance parenting. There are show off braggy people in ALL walks of life and every demographic, but never parents?? can you explain that more. Because , as a parent, I've noticed how incredibly tied to personal ego parenting has become in modern society. The pressure and judgement may well be what drove some of these people to try and find that validation ,but it exists.

I don't even care about that part though, whether intentional or not it's the loudness.

Personally I haven't denied it exists - a couple of people on this thread have admitted to doing it. I just think that there are probably plenty of instances where it is falsely attributed. I also find it interesting that if it's the volume that's annoying as many people have said then why is the content of what is said so important? Why not get equally irate at people loudly proclaiming that their kids watched 5 straight hours of cbeebies today or whatever?

According to several posters on a somewhat similar thread on FWR there is absolutely no such thing as performance parenting and would have to be an egocentric monster to think so. (There is)

I don't doubt that attention seeking parents exist, as parents are just people with children, and some people are attention seekers. But I doubt that it's particularly common. I have known parents who are a bit forced in the way they speak to their kids, but I think they were 'performing' more for themselves than for others. Plenty of reasons why this would be the case - the role doesn't come naturally to them, they're not used to spending long periods of time with their kids and it's suddenly the summer holidays, they're finding it all challenging and are putting on a bit of a show of everything being fine because it's not the toddler's fault they have got on their parent's last nerve. And I know plenty of people who are just a bit loud and exuberant, rather than keen for everyone to hear them, and completely unaware that anyone can.

I do know a woman who seems to narrate everything her child does for the room, but she does this about everything else as well, so while she really irritates me, she would be just as annoying without children.

I find entertaining a baby or toddler takes enough energy - I try not to disturb others, as I would do generally, so I'll be checking I'm not getting on anyone's nerves, but I don't have any space in my head for trying to impress anyone with my parenting ability. Besides the fact that at not even 2, my daughter's good qualities are all her own, and not really anything to do with me.

And as for showing off - I found myself getting irate at show off parenting on facebook the other day and then gave myself a talking to - we are all guilty of image-crafting to a certain degree I guess, or we'd be totally uninterested in what clothes we or our children wear and all manner of other things. So who am I to judge those I think are too brash about it?

@BasketOfDeplorables, I so agree with you! I sometimes feel at the end of my tether when out with my DDs during the holidays, and my enthusiasm can be totally forced. I'm certainly not trying to impress a group of total strangers in a cafe, but pretending to my DDs that I'm having a great time when in reality I would rather be anywhere else lol!

PP definitely does exist, but may not be as prevalent as others think. I can be an inconsiderate knob, but I'm not behaving like that to impress others. I have been accused by people on this thread who don't know me as being a PP which is bizarre.
Loud, confident, silly - YES
Doing it for your benefit - NO

No you're right it's not necessarily any more obnoxious than any other form of image crafting UNLESS it's done in a way that puts down other people or becomes a thing where their child just turns into an accessory and extension of themselves
Tbf I see most of it on social media, same as every other kind

A few years ago I got the bus home after a long day at work. The bus was full of other tired, morose people, and fairly quiet. A woman got on with a pushchair. I surmise that she had just picked her baby up from nursery/childminder after work. He was under a year old so maybe she'd not long gone back from maternity leave, maybe she was bone tired/struggling with everything/suffering from a bit of PND or anxiety. With all these points in mind, I didn't say anything and nor did anyone else, but my god it was a long painful journey from that point on. She spent the whole time until they got off singing to the baby WITH ACTIONS. She was actually doing star jumps in front of the pushchair. I have to say the baby looked distinctly unimpressed.

Maybe you should thank her for saving you all from a trip of constant crying?

I wouldn't have minded that actually, and anyway in my pretty extensive experience on London buses it's quite rare for a baby to cry for long. A grown woman jumping up and down on a moving bus singing The Wheels on the Bus, not my cup of tea.

Sounds like she was stressed, not performance parenting. Being stressed can lead to you trying too hard.

I agree with you, though, that would be annoying. I've had my fill of nursery rhymes now and thankfully my DDs have grown out of singing them.

I'm not sure that someone looking around for people's reactions necessarily means that performance parenting is happening. I tend to look around a lot when chatting with my toddler in public, initially because I wanted to check that we weren't disturbing anyone, and more recently because having read a few of these threads I'm paranoid about being judged!