AIBU to ask what ‘parenting rules’ you had before your kids?

[VeraPink]

This is intended to be lighthearted!

I’m pregnant with my first baby and musing over all of the Dos and Don’ts I have planned for when the baby is here - and which will almost certainly fall by the wayside as soon as I am parenting in real life and not in my imagination

So far this list includes:

Exclusively reusable nappies and wipes
Breast feeding for at least a year

No dummies
No YouTube
No mismatched clothes
No baby food from jars or pouches

I thought it might be funny to check back on this thread in a year or so and see how quickly my good resolutions crumbled in the face of reality...

So AIBU to ask what your golden rules were before you had your kids, and whether they lasted once your kids were actually born?

I have stuck by everything on your list!! 🙂

No discussing nappy contents with others

No calling Hb 'daddy' but using his real name

Bloomin love co-sleeping cuddles tho

Mine were

• no tv/ipad etc until the age of 3: worked with the first child, but then the 2 kids started watching tv together when DS was 3 and DD was 2 (i think we did really good on that one though!)
• no food in the car: that one lasted until they were able to hold a cracker

Oh dear! Scrap the rules. I use reusable a but don't on holiday. I wanted to breastfeed and couldn't. The dummy is a lifesaver especially at night. After a few weeks you won't care about what he wears as long as it isn't wet. I haven't got to baby food yet. My only was was no I pad but I'm sure that will fail!!!

I've just remembered another.
No chocolate ever. Not even a sniff of it.
The powers of a chocolate button shoved into the mouth when they open it to cry as their jabs are given is amazing 😂

I wouldn't worry about dummies if it makes life easier! As long as you start to wean them off early enough they shouldn't cause problems.
I was going to avoid screen them for her until she was older than she is now. Needless to say that failed miserably! I dont give her my phone to watch YouTube on but I do sometimes put nursery thyme videos on the TV YouTube. And we also watch a lot of hey duggee...

PS/Xbox weren't around when mine were born.
By the time we succumbed ( my son was 11) I vowed to not allow them to be played on a school night. We managed to keep that up.

Vowed to cook my children's food from scratch which ( annoyingly) meant that they wouldn't accept jars/tins/packets of food , which would have helped enormously at times.

Breastfeeding was curtailed due to medical intervention with both of my babies, much to my disappointment.

No tablets. Oh I was so young and naive

After a month at nursery I went to Primemark and picked up some t shirts and leggings. I didn't care when they got wreaked.
They did have some really nice clothes but pointless as just got ruined anyway 😂

I had the no dummies rule, DD is now 8 and sucks her finger when she's tired, no amount of coaxing, telling, foul tasting stuff, gloves or plasters stops her.

How I wish I just gave her an easily removable dummy

I once did childminding for a woman who had an A4 binder full of rules. There were some crackers in there:

1. An hour of silence every day.
2. An hour of classical music every music every day.
3. An hour of Irish every day (this from someone who spoke none to the child themselves)
4. Specifics on what kind of play child should do, when and for how long each day.

She was nice but this was for a child under 2, bonkers. I often wonder how she's getting along now. Hopefully the hour of silence is done away with at least

No YouTube

Take that off the list. No chance will you keep that rule.

All this no co sleeping? God I love it, 13 week old ds starts in his next to me but usually joins me around the 2am feed. I'm lazy, feed laid down and get the most sleep this way.

Ds1 is 4.5 and has free rein of Netflix and iplayer and has so far not discovered YouTube. I intend to keep it that way.

Cloth nappies - stuck to this, but we aren't martyrs and will use disposables for holidays and when grandparents are looking after her

Cloth wipes - not used a wet wipe yet

Attachment style sling use, contact naps etc - dodgy hip from pregnancy put paid to the sling and I love having a break during naps

Go with the flow - yeah routine really worked for my kid and we are still a slave to the sleep routine, but anything to safeguard a good nights sleep

No pouches / jars / purées - stuck to this, but wasn't overly rigid on the 'never spoon feed' mantra, porridge is messy and time is short

Breastfeeding - didn't work out sadly, I tried so bloody hard, but she was fully formula by 5 months. And thriving!

Co-sleeping - I'm happy to do this but sadly my child has always seen this as an invitation to recreate a play gym / boxing ring

@Wibblypiggly

I’ve managed to stick to mine so far! But I didn’t make many.

No bed sharing. Didn’t need that.
Wasn’t bothered about dummies but if I did use one I’d like it gone by 12 weeks, which we managed.
No Jumperoo. It’s massive and rank and the dog will be all up in it. The kid doesn’t no what it’s missing and long may that last!

I also get them ‘properly dressed’ ie out of sleep suits every day. But I’m blessed with a minimal vommer.

I think the best rules are probably no rules except safety ones. Just go with it, don’t add stress, you’ll have that by the bucketload.

How do you put your baby down if you don't have a jumperoo? I had two they were the greatest blessing I could finally shower and stuff!

They’ll eat what I put on the table or go hungry - never in my Wildest dreams did I imagine I’d have a child that would actually prefer to go hungry 🤣🤣🤣

No TV’s in bedrooms - that didn’t last!

My biggest mistake was thinking I could choose how to parent and the baby would just go along with it. That difficult babies were because of incompetent parenting. Ha, ha, ha!

DD was a high needs baby. How I would look on enviously at the other mums, with their sleeping babies in the prams, with their dummies in whilst jiggling my pram-refusing and dummy refusing screaming baby in the sling. No-one tells you how stressful hearing your baby’s cry is.

My no-nos were: co-sleeping- lasted to about 9 months and I was dying of exhaustion. Couldn’t cope with the screaming and shit sleep so we embraced it.

Dummies- tried one around 4 months, wouldn’t take it. Bottle refuser too.

I was pretty laid back about BF or FF, wasn’t fussed if BF didn’t work out but it worked a charm for my high-needs DD and we’re still going at nearly 3.

@VeraPink

This is intended to be lighthearted!

I’m pregnant with my first baby and musing over all of the Dos and Don’ts I have planned for when the baby is here - and which will almost certainly fall by the wayside as soon as I am parenting in real life and not in my imagination

So far this list includes:

Exclusively reusable nappies and wipes
Breast feeding for at least a year

No dummies
No YouTube
No mismatched clothes
No baby food from jars or pouches

I thought it might be funny to check back on this thread in a year or so and see how quickly my good resolutions crumbled in the face of reality...

So AIBU to ask what your golden rules were before you had your kids, and whether they lasted once your kids were actually born?

My rules were breastfeeding for 2 years Limited baby pouches -mostly baby led No youtube Lots of reading Lots of baby classes / softplay

I have achieved all of them, 9 nearly 10 months on, except the baby classes / softplay as my DS was only old enough to go when Covid started. Instead I took him to playgrounds from 5 months and he became the youngest swing addict there lol.

Mine were

Talk to them in real voices, not baby talk
Explain to them what is happening around them
Try and get them to be calm and appreciate the small things

I think I did ok.
Ds didnt work out how to turn tv on until he was 9 . He had no interest in it. He preferred to be climbing his tree or building his lego.
Dd declared "we need nanas thing. Nana thing (tv) has pictures in it"
Offered ds fizzy drinks every so often, at parties . He hated them.
Dd was trying to mug people for coke from 2. (Tried and failed)
Matching outfit? Ds is lucky to find matching socks.
And most of his are plain black
Dd has lost that many of hers (messy bedroom) that I have a large pile of odd ones and she gets sent to find more.
Someone gave them both a noisy plastic thing when they were little. Ds ignored his. It didnt have wheels.
Dd was totally freaked out by hers and screamed for ages.
Retrospective rules.

1. Remember, kids haven't read the rule book.

No co-sleeping - kept so far, 3 months in, because I'm paranoid about SIDS and DD was low birth weight so the Lullaby Trust say not to co-sleep. (I might have broken this one if there hadn't been a SIDS case in the wider family.)

No TV under 2, preferably 3.
No mobile phone until at least a teenager.
Will see how we go on those two!

Dummies are now recommended by many midwives etc. As the sucking can regulate breathing.

One of my friends had a no secondhand rule but then she got in with quite a trendy group through a baby class in a posh suburb who were all about sustainability, plastic free etc and in order to ‘keep up’ she started charity shop thrifting and buying used on eBay, bizarre how trends for living change !

I’m responding before reading further as mine are all popping into my head right away!

My non negotiable rules were:

• exclusively breastfeeding, until child self weaned
• never give a bottle or formula
• never give jar food
• baby led weaning only
• cloth nappies and wipes
• organic fair trade clothing only
• fair trade open ended wooden toys only
• no tv/YouTube
• baby wearing and limited pram use
• extended rear facing to age 6
• Montessori nursery only
• gentle/attachment parenting, never shout

Here’s how that went for me (DS is now 3)

• exclusively breastfeeding, until child self weaned despite months of research, going to classes, watching videos, interrogating everyone I knew who breastfed, lactation consultants and overwhelming support from the infant feeding team, breastfeeding was a fucking disaster. Put DS in hospital and gave me sepsis. EBF for 3 weeks, pumped and formula for a further 3 weeks, then fully formula when he was 6 weeks old due to shit dietician (or I’d have continued pumping)

• never give a bottle or formula see above - he also turned out to have CMPA (talking about kicked when down!) so was allergic to formula, and went on special allergy milk at 10 weeks old

• never give jar food sometimes shit hits the fan when you’re out, and a babease pouch from boots is your only choice

• baby led weaning only I did largely stick to this (aside from occasional pouch, see above). DS is an incredible eater with varied tastes now, but I could also just be lucky and it’s sod all to do with how he was weaned. He also bloody loves cake, and I’m sure I also had a no sugar rule for a while (though I do limit it)

• cloth nappies and wipes cloth nappies - poo knife. Enough said. Never ever again. They also gave him the most horrific nappy rash which he still has scars from, constantly leaked and I tried every brand going. I spent around £600 on different nappies and solutions. Love cloth wipes though

• organic fair trade clothing only i tend to buy organic fair trade when finances allow, but have found some high street stuff that lasts just as well, and is cute

• fair trade open ended wooden toys only i stuck to this religiously when he was little, and he barely played with toys. Not how all the fancy pictures on Insta show (you know, the ones that are totes not stages at alllll!) he got into paw patrol and my mum picked him up some bits in Asda - he sat and played for HOURS. He now has a real mix of both wooden open ended stuff, and character stuff. He plays with both loads, I can’t say the character toys have limited his brain as I feared - he uses them for all sorts and makes up his own games and stories, often nothing to do with the show they’re from

• no tv/YouTube well, he got into paw patrol. Enough said 😂 once they’re a toddler and you’re at home all day with them, it gets VERY hard to fill the time. And sometimes I just want to sit down for 10 minutes uninterrupted - cue, le TV. I do avoid YouTube though because the kids stuff does my tits in. I think I’d actually twat blippi given the chance. It’s banned in our house

• baby wearing and limited pram use he bloody adores the pram, hated the carrier. And I tried ALOT of carriers and lived at the sling library

• extended rear facing to age 6 mostly sticking to this, although I expect he will go forward facing in both grand mums cars when his 18kg rear facing seats are outgrown (approx 4y3m for him). He will be staying rear facing in our car and FILs though and has a 25kg erf seat in each

• Montessori nursery only we have a Montessori nursery locally, and I HATED it when I viewed it. No idea how it’s considered one. As it were, I changed my job so we never needed a nursery in the end

• gentle/attachment parenting, never shout im not sure I’d label how I parent now - it’s quite a constrictive thing to do really. I try and be child led, explain things if he shouldn’t do something etc. However I have shouted on occasion, mostly when his safety is at risk

I’m now expecting baby 2 in April, and have absolutely zero expectations. I have a loose plan of exclusively pumping and bottle feeding, but we will see what happens 😊

@flappityflippers1 erm I’m sorry, poo knife you say ?