To ask what’s the most toe curling OTT boast/showing off you’ve heard from a parent about their child?

[Rainbowb]

Just seen a FB post from a mum friend boasting about her 9yo daughter doing online dance and gym sessions via zoom and practising for her 11 plus complete with picture of said child sat at her desk and smiling for the camera. Hope the child gets time to chill out now and then! Mum obviously needs us all to believe her daughter is a high achiever! It was so cringy though and I wondered if anyone else out there was biting their lip at stuff like this?!

Anyway, we took a bag of kale to the park for the ducks (who hated it, by the way) and without thinking I turned to DC and said ‘don’t worry darling, it’s organic kale’. I must have sounded like a complete dick

"X is absolutely going to be prime minister one day!"

...said proudly by the mum while X pushes everyone out of the way by their faces at soft play and steps over the fallen like roadkill.

I think my face betrayed my thoughts before I could control it. That was six years ago and they've been pretty consistent ever since that day. Both the daughter and the mother.

A new neighbor earnestly explaining to another neighbor and I who both had older dc at the local primary that her child would have to go private because the primary couldn’t possibly cope with his sporting excellence. He was 3 😁. Friend and I had to not look at each but nodded along !

I once saw a mum of a toddler in a playground praising his ‘great problem solving skills’ for climbing up the steps to go down a slide.

@Stinkywizzleteets

What are parents allowed to say on their social media accounts about their kids? Just curious...

In my view - nothing.

It's the stealth, faux concern boasts that I enjoy the most. Eg. Facebook status:

"Does anyone else's toddler cry endlessly before bed if they don't get a chapter read from War and Peace? I'm just so exhausted from these meltdowns, starting to think some thing's wrong 😭 #imexhausted"

Of course everyone else chips in to say their dc are exactly the same, which makes it even better 😂

An artistic montage of her child's report (with comments visible) together with their award badge and a shot holding aforementioned items on the school drive.
Different person, son pictured behind an impressive array of swimming medals and cups, together with the same picture set-up from the year before entitled "he did it again".
In fairness, both mums are lovely but perhaps take a different approach to social media posts than me.

I know a woman who does the most cringy boastful posts about her adult daughters. They are 19 and 23, she posts pictures of them every single about how they are the most talented human beings ever. She posts videos of them cooking/dancing etc around the house. It’s sweet but way too much every day!

*every single day

Another parent once stopped me on the drive to tell me their son's intelligence was "off the scale..stratospheric". Without being too harsh, his results were very much average in the class.

Oh yes and my DD likes sushi another one where people think you are showing off. My DD hates beige food but I was the same.

DS1 doesn't like anything in breadcomes (eg, fishfingers, nuggets) but luckily likes all the other kids foods like pizza/pesto pasta/jacket potatoes

@LoveMyKidsAndCats

I know one of these! Constant boasting posts on Facebook. The last one was a parents evening one. Apparently her daughter is one of the nicest children her teacher has ever had the pleasure to meet.

I was a speech therapist.

Unless the child was an absolute bar-steward I used to say that to all the parents.

I was once in a doctors waiting room with dd who had peppa pig shoes on.

A woman was waiting with her son, who was around the same age as dd.

She asked me, ever so politely, for some advice, to which I replied "of course" then she said.

"How do you get your daughter to watch peppa pig? I have tried and tried with little Johnny* and he simply will not watch anything except David Attenborough documentries, he just isn't interested in anything else and I'm worried he will be too clever and nake no friends in nursery"

Followed by "tell the lady about David Attenborough" x100 and a disinterested kid who didn't care at all 🤣🤣 still makes me laugh.

Not a child but a woman in one of my birth groups, said that the midwife with nearly 40 years experience had never seen such an incredibly powerful woman give birth in such a powerful way before. Apparently she specifically asked this woman to start birthing groups because she was so amazing.
I still smell the bull even now.

Over the years there have been two women I had to stop socialising with because they just couldn't stop talking about their children being the most amazing human beings ever to walk the planet. Even though one of them had the shittiest little shit of a son I had ever met. Their lives were devoid of any meaning outside of having bred.

I remember a mum calling out loudly at a local small zoo to her child “ Well done for recognising it’s a Marmoset not just a monkey

Ah fuck, this might have been me. Was it over half term just gone? It wasn't meant to sound wanky. DS is autistic and has difficulty with reading. He was a bit overwhelmed and tends to shutdown so I was worrying he wasn't enjoying the day. He mumbled "monkey" at the marmosets then read the sign and very excitedly said "marmosets!" I was just happy that he was happy and that he had read the sign

He also loves sushi and hates pizza, will inhale chicken dippers though.

Dh had a university acquaintance who is friends with his friends so we sometimes used to see who always had to be the absolute best at everything. If she ever didn’t get a job or audition it was because the panel were “jealous”. I kind of admired her tbh.

When she had her first baby we pulled up outside a party she was at and dh said “she will either have had the best birth in the world or the worst” we walked in to hear her booming voice exclaiming “Addenbrookes said it was the worst birth they had ever had to deal with” dh was 🙄🙄

Open day at a Major Public School. Q&A about admissions. The woman in front of me put up her hand and said that she was concerned that her son's prep school didn't always appreciate or acknowledge his talents or achievements and might not fully describe them in the reference. Should she, therefore, just make sure that they were properly described on his personal website?

Even in a room of pretty pushy parents this caused an almost audible collective titter. Delicious.

@MsTSwift

A new neighbor earnestly explaining to another neighbor and I who both had older dc at the local primary that her child would have to go private because the primary couldn’t possibly cope with his sporting excellence. He was 3 😁. Friend and I had to not look at each but nodded along !

I think I know this woman. She only applied for a further away school and in the "any comments we should take into account" section pointed out his football prowess because the school she wanted is apparently a very sporty school. Age 3.

But I wouldn't call that stealth boasting so much as crazy PFB behaviour!

People can say whatever they like about their kids. Literally nothing is physically preventing them.

What they can't do is control what other people think about what they say. 🤷‍♀️

@Gancanny

I remember a mum calling out loudly at a local small zoo to her child “ Well done for recognising it’s a Marmoset not just a monkey

Ah fuck, this might have been me. Was it over half term just gone? It wasn't meant to sound wanky. DS is autistic and has difficulty with reading. He was a bit overwhelmed and tends to shutdown so I was worrying he wasn't enjoying the day. He mumbled "monkey" at the marmosets then read the sign and very excitedly said "marmosets!" I was just happy that he was happy and that he had read the sign

Love this! Because @Gancanny when I read that post I actually did think that it could easily be someone who'd been doing some tedious home learning project with their children and was now feeling vindicated that the child had actually absorbed some of this information. Your story is even better!

Of course a child might prefer sushi over pizza, my DS1 probably would have.

I don't mind the brags on social media, but I can't stand competitive parents that do a double whammy brag but put your child down simultaneously.

Years ago when my youngest child was a baby I met up with a woman a few times, from a meet a mum type online forum, who had a baby a week older than DS.

She was probably the rudest, most competitive parent I've ever come across. Literally every time she opened her mouth there was a sting in the tail about my DS, or about my older DCs. Everything they did was apparently so much better/cleverer/more advanced/more classy than anything my kids did.

There are so many examples of things she said, and they were all tiny things but they just all added up together to make a load of competitive poison really. I remember once she asked me about a drama club my eldest child attended and I said they were doing a performance of a certain play and she did a really nasty laugh and said 'Oh the drama club my older DCs go to would never perform that play, but then their club is so expensive '

Also nasty comments about baby DS, said passive aggressively to him 'Oooh does mummy not like you today, making you wear those trousers?' and 'Oooh goodness me, look at you with a biscuit, little Daniel (her kid, not his real name obvs) is wondering what on earth you're eating as he only likes his organic vegetables as snacks'

Vile bitch!

@Hesnotlocal

The worst example of parental boasting etc I've seen recently was during lockdown. A child in DS class has parents who are utterly convinced that their children are exceptional and should win every award possible (they been known to complain if she doesn't but that's another thread). The school uses a communication app that lets teachers post messages and parents can comment for the whole class to see. Every single school day for about 2 months the parent posted comments (usually irrelevant to the teacher's post) offering to send anyone who wants it a link to a set of Youtube videos she her DD was making to explain that week's school work for the benefit of the rest of the class and show examples of her work as inspiration. Not a single person ever responded and the school did not take up the offer of posting them on their website. Yet she still plugged it every day for weeks.

This is 😱 how thick skinned must she be. That child will turn out to be really unpleasant (if they aren't already!)