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!

Ergh. I was doing the mums race at the preschool sports day and got purposely tripped up by performance Mummy, who then proceeded to do an extra lap Cheering!
Then there was little ‘Timmys’ Mummy, who trilled Loudly every time he got 10/10 in his spellings. ‘AGAIN darling, you are so clever’ whilst ensuring the whole playground was staring at her.
I was Thrilled when my son got 10/10. Mainly so I could take the piss. Funnily enough after I shouted Again darling in a hooting loud voice, she stopped doing it. Weird!

@LittleDoritt this was my favourite

I turned up to a sports day once to find every other parent in their sports gear and me just in jeans! They took it very seriously...

Mind you, they were lucky it was me, an earlier one, DP did the parents' race, and took out 2 other parents during the turn at the far end (by mistake - he's just big and clumsy). His red face at the finish line was embarrassment, not being puffed out.

Hilarious twatty behaviour!

I think the biggest attention seeking display ever tho was the mum who once came to the school gates with a baby alpaca on a lead.

She deserves all the attention that’s AMAZING!

Haha sounds like my dad! He's even worse with my daughter now. I just think what a twat, but he is my dad thankfully, I didn't inherit his assholery

There was a performance grandmother in our local Lidl yesterday..driving the trolley as if it was a car, beeping and swerving in the aisles and talking to a very bored looking child in a baby voice..

Most tedious...😏

What a twat. Some of these are hilarious. Just had a baby and looking forward to experiencing this twaterry first hand.

That is hilarious! I would have died laughing.

Also - slightly jealous of the alpaca mum

Our school have stopped the parents race at sports day after one of the dad's dislocated his shoulder. So disappointing.

Brilliant performance parenting at library the other day.
Child, about 18 months old toddling round and bouncing off the walls. Occasionally grunting at things he liked the look of.
Mum was following him round while constantly spurting a stream of drivel.
“Oh look! It’s a dinosaur! Can you say dinosaur? How many dinosaurs let’s count them!”
Blah, blah, blah never gave the poor kid a chance to look at anything or walk anywhere by himself.
Expected him to turn round to her and say in a Stewie Griffin from family guy voice “will you kindly give that insipid drivel a rest mother.”

Oh I wish I'd been there. I would've made a really sarcastic comment

Love it. I bet Mike felt a right knob.

Wot a dick head

Shameless place mark

The men’s race at the primary school I taught at once was the tennis ball and spoon race. Always won by same man. The Headmaster! I saw he had his finger on his ball to stop it falling so I called out “Mr Headmaster had his finger on his ball!” Several Teachers turned on me in horror and told me to be quiet. They all conspired to let him win. Arrested development?

School gates with a baby alpaca on a lead.
Shame some kids didn’t start screaming and running away.
We had a woman with a donkey. Not as good.

Brilliant! What a twat - I'm seriously hoping to come across a clip on fb of this ridiculous behaviour.

The worst is when the kid internalizes the performance parenting. We had a family at playgroup whose mother constantly made bitchy comments about other children, to her daughter, in the guise of praising her daughter's brilliance. The daughter is actually extremely advanced for someone now only just 3, but she's also been turned into a smug little pain in the backside by her mother.

"Oh I can climb on the boxes and jump off/ write my name/ do painting/ build this tower/etc because MY mother taught me when I was little. Your mother didn't, did he [DSname]? That's a shame. She isn't teaching you to do things. AND you cry all the time because you're scared of everything."

DS has ASD. The kid's mother is an utter bitch. But karma is going to bite that kid on the backside when she gets to school...

Oh and another one is the performance parenting over empathy done by the bitchy parents who think ASD might be catching so constantly want to differentiate their darlings from my son.

"oh look, isn't it sweet. My Henry knows that he needs to give another child a hug when they're sad. He's so kind, such an empathetically advanced little boy. You must feel so helpless watching [DSname], knowing he might never have any empathy at all..." [Henry dutifully gives crying child a hug. Then stands back and punches crying child in the face, for the third time that day... mother says nothing other than to criticize crying child for always crying...]

He picked an audience of parents, babies and toddlers......you can bet he wouldn't even think of being such an uber show-off in a gym full of guys like him.

They'd either laugh him down or throw him out for being a total twat.

Where can I get a baby alpaca? Asking for a friend.

These are brilliant but clearly two types of parent here - the ones who want to show off what great parents they are + how wonderful/ advanced their children are; and the ones (mainly Dads?) who use their children as props for their look-at-me-everybody show-offery.

I very much enjoyed laughing at a Dad in the second category who played the piano in a National Trust house for a good 20 minutes. All the while he and the Mum kept telling the children that “Daddy would play now / Daddy’s going to do that really hard piece now / we’ll go to the playground soon but you want to hear Daddy play some more don’t you?” And yes, Daddy referred to himself in the third person throughout while the poor bored kids fidgeted and twitched with longing to escape outside from embarrassing Daddy.

I’m reading this and thinking... well everyone here is like this! The guy sounds pretty extreme to be doing push up and comical, embarrassing for him.

Your presence is the biggest gift you can give your children, but if you are going to give it then not just for show. I actually wish everyone was as invested in private as they are in public.

I think if my husband had been there he would have had to join in out of sheer piss-takery, however, he doesn't quite have the toned physique he had ten years ago, but he would have wobbled his beer belly and shouted 'COME ON WIFEY, FEED ME! FEED ME!'
lol, I wish I could have seen this numpty.