To be in awe at what a show off this dad was

[Driveamazdashopatasda]

I'm just back from taking my youngest to the paddling pool/splash park at the leisure centre. It's for under eights, so the morning session is full of the usual assortment of parents with babies and toddlers

This very muscled, tattooed dad was there with his toddler son. He was definitely performance parenting, chucking the child around, hooraying all over the place, and quite obviously looking round to check that everyone else was watching him. He was being a bit of a pain, to be honest, perching on top of the giant mushroom spouting water thing, jumping off, making huge waves which caused a mini tsunami to hit the babies in their floaty things, that sort of nonsense. I could see a few of the other mums rolling their eyes. The pool is not huge and is really not the place for that sort of bouncing around.

Imagine our surprise when this idiot then dropped to the ground in the shallowest end of the splash pool and started doing press ups complete with loud grunting and hand claps, and yells of "come on, Child's Name! Time me, time me! Huh! Huh! Huh!" I think he got to about twenty

Child in question was sitting under a stream of water looking utterly baffled.

Everyone was like this

Bloody press ups in the paddling pool!

We had a performance granny at a very small art class. Her two granddaughters about 6 and 8 obviously mortified. “Look at these flowers girls much like the ones in granny’s garden” “ write it in FRENCH Antonia you know French after all you are at (name of local private school” )on and on very loudly. When they started doing calligraphy dd2 turned to me and said “I think I will do my calligraphy in mandarin this time mummy” performance granny silenced by performance child. Oh how we laughed on the way home.

We must do put best to come up with excellent seemingly innocent put downs in words and actions that OP can casually spill out at him next time he is at the pool.

I'd go for a nice head tilt and a sympathetic stage-whispered "I'm not sure [child] can count yet, would you like me to time you?"

Nice strong arms performance Daddy, nice strong arms!

He sounds silly.
I don't get performance parenting though as a thing. I'm naturally loud and enjoy being silly with ds, couldn't care less what anyone else thinks. I'm likley to be loud and splashy with ds of 11mths as he finds it hilarious and giggles constantly.
Maybe the dad was trying to keep the child entertained?
The press ups sound well mental though!!!

I was in the park at the weekend with DC and DC's friends. Just ahead of us a small boy (approx 5) had fallen off his bike and was crying uncontrollably. I and one of my boys rushed over to him, and then the Dad came over, in full lycra, so we left him to it and started playing.

A few minutes later I asked the dad if his DS was ok, he said he was fine, but he didn't normally cry so it was unusual, but he and his DW had just split up, and this was his first time out with his DC, so that may be playing a part.

Next thing I know the Dad's shouting to his other DS (approx 7) saying "film me, film me" as he's on his very swish bike doing jumps over a bump in the ground. He kept saying "did you get the jump, did I look good?" making him film again and again until he had a video that he deemed good enough. He spent all his time there being filmed doing these jumps, whilst the elder DC just had to record it, and the smallest one was ignored.

I wonder why he and his DW separated??

If it weren't for the tattoos this could be my ex. It was mortifying going to the park with him as he would start using the play equipment to exercise. And yes, ask DD to cheer him on

I get some PP via social media all about how a friend's kid is going to "smash reception" when they start in September. I'm not sure there's anything to "smash" at that age?

He used to do this in the club on a Saturday night, now he’s forced to ‘perform’ to Mothers during a baby swimming session- poor guy .

I wonder if Pool Press-Ups Superdad is self employed as a "life coach"? I can imagine him dabbling in Performance Living if he Performance Parents with that much pizzazz!

Maybe he won't come back, you were all clearly too unappreciative an audience for him to bestow his presence on again.

But if he does have a rerun, I'd find it hard not to slyly say something caustic loud enough for him to hear. Or slow handclap.

That cracked me up

What a total melt

This reminds me of a tiny little fellow at soft play once. He looked really young - around 18 months probably - and Performance Mummy's USP was that Jonny Is Already Potty Training. Performance Mummy was running around, two steps behind him for about two hours, constantly shrieking "Does Jonny need wee-wee? Does Jonny need poo-poo?" I remember muttering to DH at one point that if Jonny didn't have a fucking wee-wee in the next five minutes I was going to frogmarch them into the loos myself. Anyway eventually Jonny did need a wee-wee. The floodgates opened and the floor of the soft play was well and truly awash. Performance Mummy grabbed Jonny with shrieks of "I TOLD Jonny he needed wee-wee..." whilst bundling him at top speed off to the loos. Poor Jonny, he didn't get much of a chance to enjoy the soft play at all!

I remember a dad at a baby group suddenly fell forwards (deliberately) and landed into a push up pose onto the baby rug/playmate and started doing push ups. It was really weird.

Ha! I had to check back in on these stories today; some of them are comedy gold. Love SlightlyJaded's story, which packs an even greater punch thanks to it all being written in dialogue.

I think this thread should be a contender for Mumset Classics!

The best performance parenting I've come across was on a train recently. We were sat behind a man with a son who wasn't quite 2. The man read the gruffalo very loudly, first in English, then in French. He then put on music "Shall we listen to Frank Sinatra, DS?" To which the boy replied "New York!"
Later on, they were video calling (loudly) the boy's (I think) mother and the conversation turned to Aristotle.

There was a woman opposite them with a boy a similar age who lent them one of her books (likely just wanting them to SHUT UP. The man took it, looked at the cover and said "That's a very post-modern book, isn't it DS?"
It was a long train journey.

I find these kind of people annoying but I feel like I might come across as a twat at times too when out and about with my 4 year old. they love to do sums and ask me to give them numbers to add and as a lot of questions which I try to answer. We both i.e my child and I are talkative and have naturally loud voices. We don't have the intention to put on a show for others and are quite engrossed in what we are doing but it might seem to others that we are showing off

I may come across as a performance parent because my DS has HF ASD and gets little obsessions- I.e. wanting me to read signs, explain words, count, recall events, talk about history etc. He's very very advanced speech wise and never stops talking. I have to give him little 'challenges' otherwise he'll be running about causing a riot. He needs constant attention and stimulation.

But I couldnt care less what others think of my parenting. I'm not doing it to look like mum of the year. I'm doing it to make my life easier. So not all parents who appear to be performing are actually twatish. Some of us are just trying to engage our kids to manage their behaviour.

He then put on music "Shall we listen to Frank Sinatra, DS?" To which the boy replied "New York!"

Aw, I find that rather sweet. Though they should have had headphones.

You're not performance parenting if you're not glancing round to check who's watching, don't worry. The whole point is that it's for the benefit of the audience, not for the child. If you're just engaging with your child, while it might be annoying if it's really loud, it's not performance parenting.

A dad used to come to parents evenings and other events in his police uniform complete with stab vest , radio etc etc he'd walk around and pose trying to look important and sexy. He only managed to get to prat in how I look ranks

Or his team may have found themselves short staffed yet again so rather than taking time off to attend parents evening, he was allowed to nip across between jobs. Or been landed with compulsory overtime, again. Radio needed in case a job comes in.

Unlikely he was wearing full kit just for the fun of it. Plus there aren’t enough radios for someone to take one home for a bit of performance parenting. He will have been on active duty.

Yuk.
If he was a bar of chocolate, he'd eat himself.

I went to a friend's daughter's sports day at nursery. There was a very muscly man sidling up to us, warming up, flexing etc. His son came over to him and the man said "do you remember how many push ups daddy did last night? I think it was 200 wasn't it?" and gave me and my friend a sexy side eye.

His son skipped a couple of beats and went "Daddy, I finks I pooped myself"

Genuinely one of the best moments of my actual life.

Just spat water across the living room. What a cock!

Could it have been this dude