To think sometimes parenting is a joke?

[Keeva2017]

Just having myself a little pity party but then started to think, no, this shit is ridiculous sometimes.

After a 4.30am wake up call from my Baby who was a good sleeper, but has now sacked it off completely, Iv now been awake 22 hours.

My poor 3 year old is also victim to her sisters knobbish behaviour this morning and has therefore been a ratty little thing herself all day. Got a toy dyson in the face from that one albeit accidentally but tell that to my shiner. Also led to me having to abandon plans to get out and about and come home because she was playing up and some people’s eyes were rolling so hard I thought they would fall out.

Tried to do the Aldi big shop the other day but some fucker had put normal trolleys in front of the baby ones and after trying to get help/sort it out I had to abandon it and head to Lidl. Where I had to queue with baby outside followed by a rain shower that was not fucking forecast, which I know because I checked and put my washing out before I left.

My baby is still kicking off despite all my usual moves so no doubt the neighbours will be less than cheery with me.

Getting lectures from the HV about my 3 year old being a fussy eater and needing a more varied diet.... no shit, why haven’t I been googling every trick in the book just to get one fucking pea down her neck. Oh wait, I have.

I know people have it worse. I know there is a global pandemic and I should be happy to be alive. I am. But Christ almighty these examples are just this week. Is this just me? Aibu to think most parents have to put up with this shit? Or am I just an incompetent tosser whose kids are going to need a lot of therapeutic intervention to recover from my shit parenting?

For all of you:

For the OPs health visitor:

🖕

I hope I find some of you guys in real life. I thought I’d found one of us at one of my 3 year olds many activities. One measly joke about water boarding kids when they are naughty and it soon became apparent they were NOT one of us!

@Haditall

And may I add fuck you smug bitches to all those parents who have sleeping through from week one babies and look at you as if you have shit on your face when you describe your own living hell run by a tit sucking tyrant.

Yes! Bonus fuck you for smug bitches who managed to find time to put on makeup and do their hair.

I'm convinced these seemingly perfect women must be hiding some terrible secret.

It's the sheer relentlessness of it all. Especially with lockdown, every day seems the same cycle of feeding them, clearing up, entertaining them... getting them to sleep! When you look back you realise what the game changers were - when they can feed themselves, get their shoes on themselves, get in their car seats themselves, wash hands themselves, and best of all - entertain each other! (for 5 minutes before fighting)

It's the sheer relentlessness of it all. Especially with lockdown

This! I had a break booked with a friend of mine for Easter... we were going to a fabulous European city. It would have been my first time away from DS since he was born. I was going to sip americanos at my leisure and read a book and watch the world go by and linger over dinner.
Then... Covid.
Fucking bastard Covid.

@Ethelfleda

One of my happiest memories...
Took dd to the park...she ran off to play and stepped in dog shit which i had to clean off shoes...lovely.

This year's cheered me up a bit; you do forget the full extent of the horror and it's been a chance to appreciate how much easier it is once they can attend to their own toileting needs, make their own lunch, and let you have a quiet cuppa in the morning.

That said, I had to spend too much time today comforting a child who couldn't get over the rank injustice of being expected to choose whether to abandon her potatoes and with them all chance of pudding. Far too hard a decision for a child of her tender years, apparently. And I'm quite looking forward to the teenage years - apparently they cocoon themselves in their bedrooms and finally stop talking, which sounds heavenly!

I voted YABU accidentally! YA definitely not BU! My 2 year old is a delight in front of other people, the devil surfaces when we're alone... My baby gets up at 4.30am. Every. Day. And her naps are 20min, like clockwork. I have several elaborate fantasies about hotel rooms, huge beds, clean sheets, total silence, and unbroken 12+ hour sleeps... Sometimes I even include a solitary breakfast tomorrow the next morning - quiet, someone else clears up, no one tries to dip Weetabix in my coffee... I could go on....

Some idiot it might have been me got my 9 year old a new cool alarm clock in an effort to get her to learn to tell the time properly and stop her relying on her old groclock. Cue her waking me up several times last night to ask me what time it said on her bastarding clock. Then she managed to set the alarm for 6am (because that's what time she gets up obvs) waking up her younger brother as well. FML.

@Cathy31

I voted YABU accidentally! YA definitely not BU! My 2 year old is a delight in front of other people, the devil surfaces when we're alone... My baby gets up at 4.30am. Every. Day. And her naps are 20min, like clockwork. I have several elaborate fantasies about hotel rooms, huge beds, clean sheets, total silence, and unbroken 12+ hour sleeps... Sometimes I even include a solitary breakfast tomorrow the next morning - quiet, someone else clears up, no one tries to dip Weetabix in my coffee... I could go on....

4.30am... how do you survive?!

Social media is annoying - sack it off, they’re just pretending with all this #makingmemories guff. The struggle is real, the struggle is REALLY real.

When I see a cute baby out and about and I get that twitchy hormonal glow in my overies, I have to mutter to myself "Toddlers, they mutate into toddlers"

At 7 and 9 we are in some kind of oasis of a golden age where they can mindlessly engross themselves in Minecraft or Pokémon for everyone's sanity. They certainly have their moments, but at least I now know that DS1 has ASD, and knowledge is power.

With a two year age gap and DS1 being in the full blown might of the terrible twos from 18m to 5yo (a bit of a reprieve at 6) and a regression at 7 thanks to SATs (which lead to te referral and eventual diagnosis 18m later). 18m/3 was a particular low point with bolter and tantrumer. So was pregnant and on crutches from SPD and the world's stroppiest toddler. It was better to sprint after bolter, knowing that tantrumer would still be lying there screaming and polishing the floor when I got back My saving grace was a few years of returning to teaching teenagers for a bit of a rest!

DS2 is the child that does mishaps with style. At the point that he began to go dry in the night when he was 5, he had a sleepwalking phase. I heard the sound of gushing water, sprung up to investigate, got to the bottom of the stairs and there was DS2, totally vacant peeing down the entire flight of stairs, finishes, puts himself away and shambles off to bed. He did not have a clue.

They are funny, adorable and I would not send them back (not even because of the substantial damage they each did on their entry into the world )

If you have sleep phobic infants or toddlers, hang on in there, it really does get better, even if it's just because they get to school for some light relief

It makes me laugh when parents are saying how their children need to get their children back to school after months of educational neglect, and some smart arse pops up to say parents only want to send them back to school to get rid offtheir offspring... and that's supposed to be a bad thing? Hell yeah we need a break from each other. In every other generation, children would have been chucked out into the streets/ fields/ woods to play, not expected to play happy families 24/7!

@sociallydistained haha, I'm in bed by 9.30, DH gets up with her a couple of mornings a week, and I drink a lot of coffee. And tell myself over and over, it's a phase

@Comtesse totally agree. I got rid of Facebook recently, so liberating!

I think the sheer number of responses on this thread shows that everyone goes through their struggles! It’s taboo to say these things just randomly but if someone asks and shares their struggles then it doesn’t take long for the flood gates to open....
When my 2 were younger I always wanted to know if other people found it hard too but it’s a bit of a no-no to just come out and ask, which is what makes this kind of thread so great!

@Keeva2017  they definitely know where the Achilles heel is!!

I had to google "can you break your vagina" whilst thinking what has my life become.

@Cathy31 I'm sorry to say I'm pissing myself at And tell myself over and over, it's a phase this is me during every never ending "phase" so far. I thought 5.30 wake up was bad but 4.30 is inhumane!!!!

My 2yo shat in the bath last night.
I was so tired I didn't even notice he'd done it until he was proudly holding the turd aloft
above his head like some sort of putrescent trophy, which he then refused to relinquish. Cue DH arriving home to the sound of me shouting "Let go of the poo!! Give Mummy the poo!! No, don't fucking eat it!! GIVE IT TO MEEEE!"
By the time I managed to prize the aforementioned turd out of his chubby little hands I was covered in shit and bubbles and DS had learned a few interesting new words. #making memories!

Sudocrem massaged copiously into the carpet and up the walls #making memories 😂

20 month old had a major strop because I wouldn’t let her have ‘bic bics’ for lunch (biscuits). I put CBeebies on in the kitchen to keep her in her high chair long enough to eat something. She is currently animatedly redistributing everything on her plate yet consuming none of it.

Now googling how much damage can be done by allowing a toddler to eat most of their meals with the tv on....

(Am thinking it’s a fair bit of damage, given the fact that she’s just sung the Waffle theme tune with alarming accuracy)

welcometohell
The delivery of that post has made you my new favourite poster on MN

@ Keeva2017

I'm with you

Every time I told my DC's they weren't too old to be adopted, I'd get the horrified stares, despite both my kids laughing and saying 'you wish !'

DD is 9 and under assessment for autism. Sleep has always been an utter nightmare. Had to cosleep every night until she was eight, breastfeed her during the night, every night, until she was SIX. Just to get some sleep myself. Bought second double bed to push up against the existing one so giant DH has one 'half' and I have the other, and DD can join me. Bought DD a double bed so I can join her as necessary. Desperately want to get my 'half' of the giant bed to myself at least some of the night, but it's still a very rare occurrence. Lockdown and my own no-spoons-left-no-fucks-left-to-give parenting has meant that her usually-late bedtime has become inhumane. Last night I tucked her in at 11.30pm and walked out, having spent an hour trying and failing to help her sleep. I was knackered and just needed to get to sleep, so I could get up for work the next morning. Heard her scoot downstairs to DH and thought, 'Well that's not good but I guess he'll bring her up when she's finally tired and sit with her until she's asleep'. Nope. I've been asleep for around 40 minutes when, at 12.30am, all hell breaks loose with her flat out refusing to sleep and him panicking and tell me he can't cope. Drag myself out of bed and into hers. She's not talking to me and is in a huff because I 'abandoned' her at 11.30pm having tucked her in with a kiss. Eventually falls asleep around 1.30am. I wake at 4am needing a wee and crawl into my own bed for a few hours, struggling to fall asleep for ages because I'm also a crap sleeper and because the cat wanted to come and shout at me and walk over my head. Alarm goes off at 7.30am and I could have cheerfully smothered myself with a pillow just to make the tiredness go away.

DD wakes up at 9.00am bright as a button and perfectly happy. I am 50% glad about this, and 50% massively pissed off because why can't she suffer from lack of sleep like I do?! We will perform the whole fucking charade again tonight. The only thing that will work will be returning to school, in which case she'll be tired enough to - maybe - fall asleep around 10.30pm. If I'm lucky.

Oh and she's literally never eaten a vegetable, lives on junk, can't/won't wipe her own arse (has a panic attack about even trying it 99 times out of 100), begs to have her friend sleep over i.e. 24+ hour visit (which I find unbelievably stressful) but flat out refuses to ever go to the friend's house - even for a short play date.

All of which is perhaps 10% the autism, and 90% me being autistic myself and utterly failing to get any of it right.

Never realised that parenting would be this fucking hard!

Since my 3 year old sounds like I’m actually torturing her every time I wash her hair, a few jokes about waterboarding is totally fine. (If she didn’t insist she had to have a facecloth over her eyes and face while I rinsed her hair it wouldn’t look so much like I was actually trying to waterboarding her)

@welcometohell

My 2yo shat in the bath last night. I was so tired I didn't even notice he'd done it until he was proudly holding the turd aloft above his head like some sort of putrescent trophy, which he then refused to relinquish. Cue DH arriving home to the sound of me shouting "Let go of the poo!! Give Mummy the poo!! No, don't fucking eat it!! GIVE IT TO MEEEE!" By the time I managed to prize the aforementioned turd out of his chubby little hands I was covered in shit and bubbles and DS had learned a few interesting new words. #making memories!

OMG I nearly shat myself - and I'm reading this in the bath! - laughing at this. Thank you for the best laugh I've had in ages. (And also the closest-to-soiling-myself moment in ages.)

Oh thank fuck for this thread.

I am 30 weeks pregnant (no fucking idea why I let that happen) and have an almost 2 year old boy. No childcare over the summer (I'm a teacher), anywhere decent still closed or like a military operation to get into, and we have our kitchen and dining room being redone.

It's hard to count the many ways this brings me joy .

The other day DS had a meltdown because he wanted bastarding bubbles. We were out of bubbles because, you know, the universe wants to see me cry. So I wrestle the toddler (with a bump this is not fun) inyo the pushchair to go and get some of the fuckers. I had to SPELL OUT 'BUBBLES' in the shop because I knew he would go again if he heard it.

I found them. You'd have thought I'd found the Dead Sea Scrolls by my reaction. I proudly undo the lid to be met with the world's most confounding cover. I was literally chewing it at in the street whilst DS had another meltdown. I got them open. Hurrah. I demonstrate the bubbly loveliness.

Is this enough? Oh no. He wants to hold the fucking bottle. Wont take no for an answer. So I give it to him.

If you watched carefully, you could see my soul splash down onto the pavement along with the entire arsing bottle of bubbles.

And then it was 10am.