Opening up to nct friends only to be met with bragging

[greycover]

I opened up slightly to a couple of nct mates last night about my son that had some speech therapy and will be starting again after a break because of covid.

One mate responded saying her daughter has made some good progress recently despite not saying much in March - fine but didn't ask anything about my son. Pretty self-centred reply but I can get out it.

The second mate responded saying how her daughter has the speaking skills of a 3-4 year old blah blah blah....

Just fuck off! This is why I don't really open up about stuff, it seems to open the door for disappointment.

Isnt this fairly usual?

Looks like it from this thread, but it shouldn't be!

@greycover no it shouldn't. I think people think that the milestones are some reflection of their parenting. In reality, it makes little difference and has very little bearing on how they end up. One of my well educated friends couldn't speak until they were 4 and went to Salt.

My husband did say 'yeah let's have this conversation in 40 years time and see how they're all getting on then!'

One slept through from birth apparently! But was also dropping percentiles so not sure how well advised the sleeping through actually was!

Wow. Judgy much?

My issue was with how 'facts were stated' in an insensitive manner.

This was a response to a different poster. Hence the use of the quote.

Think it can be hard to get parenting support from current parents funnily enough. See it on here all the time, poster will be saying 'daughter is 3 and can't read' and among the helpful posts saying 'she's 3 she's ok!' will be 'my 3 are under 3 and reading Plato and brag brag brag-so can't really help but just wanted to say I'm really sympathetic'

Yes I findfriends with older children are more helpful. Perhaps they're more confident because they've been through it and know it generally works out in the end.

Much like I would be if someone was worried about their baby not walking or something.

Some people just genuinely don’t stop and think about whether their responses are insensitive/inappropriate. Quite a lot of people actually. It’s bad enough in ‘real life’ when it’s easy to just blurt out whatever’s in your head, but even worse on WhatsApp etc as people do then have the chance to quickly read through and have a think about what they’ve said. Makes me so cross - I feel like the art of conversation has been totally lost and more often than not people (even generally nice ones) are just showing off when they speak!
My (gorgeous, wonderful, totally worth it) boys were terrible sleepers - we were insane with sleep deprivation for about five years! - and SO many people responded when I opened up about this with surprise and comments about what good sleepers their kids were (“it’s just about being in a good routine” - riiiiiiight, too bad we never thought of that I guess?! or “I guess we’ve just been lucky with little Cressida” - WRONG FUCKING AUDIENCE MATE!!)
Anyway. I hope your LO’s speech therapy goes well and that you manage not to worry too much! All children are different and develop at different rates - yours is perfect just the way he or she is. Hopefully the ST will be helpful.

Same here @greycover - better perspective all round and able to be supportive without worrying about their own children's progress. I think parents in the thick of it so to speak are often reassuring themselves when they respond in this way to someone else like 'phew I don't need to worry about that because...' it happens so much on here I think it's almost subconscious/reactive response.

I cannot believe that there are people who feel that the best response to this thread is to tell OP how advanced their own child is.

I cannot believe that there are people who feel that the best response to this thread is to tell OP how advanced their own child is.

Nobody has done that in response to the OP.