To think personal responsibility no longer exists

[Wondermule]

I know this is going to be a controversial post, so I’ve got my hard hat on 🪖

It has really dawned on me how little personal responsibility people take now. Every other thread seems to be someone posting to offload their problems (financially dependant relationship, COVID worries due to high BMI, hellish mother in law among the most common) yet there is always an excuse about why they can’t the advice given, usually drip feeding something about anxiety or mental health. Please don’t see this as me making light of mental health issues (sufferer here myself), but it doesn’t change the fact only you can make changes to your life.

Also many posts citing ‘lack of support’ - this one inspired by the chocolate button debacle! - a mum feeding her 3 month old chocolate buttons just didn’t have the ‘support’ or ‘education’ to make healthy choices apparently. Never mind the healthy start vouchers for fruit and veg, maternity grant, free weaning courses at children’s centres, all the help available online... it’s all the state’s fault. I feel ‘lack of support’ will be cited until the government send someone to prepare all her meals and police her shopping trolley.

I feel in being too sympathetic, it is just providing excuses for people not to take responsibility for their own choices. Or am I wrong??

@Iggly

I’m saying people with problems that are completely within their power to change, should take responsibility for them and stop making excuses/blaming others

Unless you have a very clear understanding of their circumstances, I’d suggest you hold your counsel. You may think you know, but may not.

Better to be encouraging and supporting than a complete knob.

But it’s being overly supportive and encouraging that has led to this.

What’s to say affirming people have control over their own problems and have the power to change them isn’t a better tactic?

This said, I do agree we have become frightened of our children's negative emotions and afraid to see them go through challenge

Again, a sweeping statement 🤷🏻‍♀️ Some parents, yes absolutely. I’ve seen the fallout for that in peers. People who’ve had a “great” upbringing but actually were constantly jigged out of negative emotions. That’s not a recent phenomenon though.

Technology has a role to play in this. Remember the time when, if you left the house in the morning, you had to deal with whatever situations and difficulties you encountered without calling, texting, whatsapping anyone?

If it was something really important you could find a payphone, but instant communication has made everything really important.

“ What’s to say affirming people have control over their own problems and have the power to change them isn’t a better tactic?”

But I see this happening everywhere. What you’re saying isn’t extraordinary or not happening. It is. I work with those who are perceived as the most snowflakey of all, and what I can see on this thread is that people are full of assumptions but don’t actually have anything to do with any of it in a meaningful way so it’s easy to dismiss. Because then you don’t have to think about things in a complicated way and that is soothing. It’s just another way of not dealing with stuff.

There’s a really interesting book called The Dandelion and The Orchid. It’s about the differences between kids who are naturally resilient and can thrive anywhere (dandelions) and those who are more sensitive to their surroundings (orchids). Written by a psychologist in America who did lots of experiments with kids. It kind of explains that there are differences in how kids respond to adversity but also good parenting. Differences that are a mixture of genes and how you developed in the womb as a baby.

Yes but not quite in the way your post indentified - no one takes personal responsibility for the work they do (are meant to be doing). E.g. customer care, you ring because you need help as their customer, at the end of the call you assume your problem has been dealt with efficiently and correctly but how often is that just not the case. I have always started each transaction aiming to do my best for a customer but this seems to have fallen by the wayside. Yes there will always be difficult cases but the majority of the time do the best job you can - have some pride in yourself.

I do think children should be taught that life , in fact , isn’t always fair and if it doesn’t go their way to either accept it or find their own way around it.

I agree with this

I’ve noticed there seems to be this complete fear of children being upset.

Just as an example. I was at our yard the other day and caught a family feeding my horses. I asked them to stop - extremely politely, but ended up in a bit of an argument with the parents.

Their argument seemed to be that their children wanted to feed my horses and would be upset if they couldn’t

My argument was that I couldn’t give a shit if their kids were upset - they were most put out by that

I ended up talking to the children directly about how dangerous it was to feed other peoples horses. I called my old mare over to the gate and the kids got to make a fuss of her, she blew them some kisses, the kids thought it was great and went on their way happy as larry - with the parents still grumbling about how selfish I was.

I see it quite a lot and I don’t think it helps. I don’t want my kids upset, but it’s a perfectly normal thing to experience and not something to be avoided at all costs.

As if to highlight my point, there is a thread running at the moment where OP’s mother in law wants to plan a fun family day at the zoo when restrictions lift so they can all finally spend some time together with OP’s baby. OP is objecting to this, saying the zoo is a ‘first’ that she doesn’t want to share with her husbands family, and of course ‘anxiety’ has made an appearance.

@Springersrock

I do think children should be taught that life , in fact , isn’t always fair and if it doesn’t go their way to either accept it or find their own way around it.

I agree with this

I’ve noticed there seems to be this complete fear of children being upset.

Just as an example. I was at our yard the other day and caught a family feeding my horses. I asked them to stop - extremely politely, but ended up in a bit of an argument with the parents.

Their argument seemed to be that their children wanted to feed my horses and would be upset if they couldn’t

My argument was that I couldn’t give a shit if their kids were upset - they were most put out by that

I ended up talking to the children directly about how dangerous it was to feed other peoples horses. I called my old mare over to the gate and the kids got to make a fuss of her, she blew them some kisses, the kids thought it was great and went on their way happy as larry - with the parents still grumbling about how selfish I was.

I see it quite a lot and I don’t think it helps. I don’t want my kids upset, but it’s a perfectly normal thing to experience and not something to be avoided at all costs.

That’s so bloody entitled, good for you for standing your ground.

As if to highlight my point, there is a thread running at the moment where OP’s mother in law wants to plan a fun family day at the zoo when restrictions lift so they can all finally spend some time together with OP’s baby. OP is objecting to this, saying the zoo is a ‘first’ that she doesn’t want to share with her husbands family, and of course ‘anxiety’ has made an appearance

That does not mean it’s a wide spread phenomenon 😂🤷🏻‍♀️ People do not post about a lot of things, they tend to list problems or gripes so you get a skewed view of the world.

And maybe there’s something underpinning that worry. When people are anxious - it’s can be misplaced and they’re projecting a worry of one thing onto the situation of another.

@DemolitionBarbie

So when problems like obesity occur, it's because people have en masse become lazy and feckless, with no structural root cause like supermarkets deliberately getting people to overbuy unhealthy food?

Kids these days are born into a caged existence, supervised massively more than previous generations, way more exam pressure, student debt, impossibility of finding a steady job and affordable home let alone anything like a balanced family life. No wonder they're dependent. We made them that way because it suited us.

How can it be the supermarkets fault? Take a shopping list and just buy whatever's on it, surely that's not too hard to do? It's what I do and it's only rarely that I get swayed by something that's on offer. I was overweight and took action last year, loosing 2.5 stone. I was overweight because I ate too much and didn't exercise enough. No one else's fault but mine. Again, it's about taking responsibility for your actions. Just because something is on offer, it doesn't mean you have to buy it. For the majority of people (obviously not all) obesity is eating too much and not moving enough. At work the other day we were talking about meal planning. A colleague was talking about what she eats in a day, she's trying to lose weight. Turns out she's eating 2500/3000 calories a day, by choosing the wrong foods. She knows what she should be eating but chooses not to. The nutritional information is out there for everyone to see yet people still blame adverts, supermarkets, time of the month etc etc.

@Iggly

As if to highlight my point, there is a thread running at the moment where OP’s mother in law wants to plan a fun family day at the zoo when restrictions lift so they can all finally spend some time together with OP’s baby. OP is objecting to this, saying the zoo is a ‘first’ that she doesn’t want to share with her husbands family, and of course ‘anxiety’ has made an appearance

That does not mean it’s a wide spread phenomenon 😂🤷🏻‍♀️ People do not post about a lot of things, they tend to list problems or gripes so you get a skewed view of the world.

And maybe there’s something underpinning that worry. When people are anxious - it’s can be misplaced and they’re projecting a worry of one thing onto the situation of another.

It’s a day at the bloody zoo! Must everything be overanalysed?!

Agree with you about the zoo thread:)

I’ve had a baby in the last year and if there is anything likely to make someone anxious it’s having your firstborn during a pandemic. I’ve got away lightly on that score.

Your not wrong OP. Mental health has become an excuse for reckless behavior. No one ever does anything wrong, everyone just has bad mental health. What this actually does is it makes people skeptical about someone having mental health.
Women leaving abusive relationships to have more children with feckless men is another example. Countless tales of women coming on here to talk about how their new partner with whom they have children is good for nothing. They also children from previous relationship and walked straight into having more children. So basically they learnt nothing.
So many parents complaining their child’s behaviors and everyone is SEN apparently. Yet the same parents will undermine the other parent, teachers, grandparents when they try and discipline the children.

Yeah these threads really do bring the nasty fuckers to the fore don’t they, was that your intention OP?

Turns out that just like any other thread about the subject, it's really all about generalisations, bias,prejudice and expressing a barely held contempt for people some people consider less than (children , young people,women, etc).

The hypocrisy of moaning about over diagnosis, setting people on the wrong path, pathologising (is that a word?!?) normal feelings etc and then dismissing whole groups of people as weak,snowflakes,lazy, lacking resilience etc. They're both sides of the same coin.

The zoo thread... it doesn’t really help your argument because no one who isn’t anxious, who is self assured and confident etc, would post that - it’s self selecting. They would either say to family “back off you’re crowding us” or to themselves “it’s fine, they’re just excited, we’ll have a busy day, might feel a bit overwhelmed, but we’ll get through it” or similar. You can’t really go by MN threads because you’re getting the ones who need reassurance by definition

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

Turns out that just like any other thread about the subject, it's really all about generalisations, bias,prejudice and expressing a barely held contempt for people some people consider less than (children , young people,women, etc).

The hypocrisy of moaning about over diagnosis, setting people on the wrong path, pathologising (is that a word?!?) normal feelings etc and then dismissing whole groups of people as weak,snowflakes,lazy, lacking resilience etc. They're both sides of the same coin.

Completely agree. People think they’re being edgy and “controversial opinion” but it’s just the same old prejudice that’s been around for decades

@HereComesATractor

Yeah these threads really do bring the nasty fuckers to the fore don’t they, was that your intention OP?

Whenever anyone says ‘nasty fucker’ or ‘goady’ I just think, obviously hit a nerve...

I completely agree OP. It drives me nuts, and I'm a millenial with a 3mo DS. I won't be allowing him to have the level of entitlement that so many have today. I think technology had created it in part as people have become accustomed to getting more for less effort, but at some point people need to realise that the world isn't going to do them any favours because they feel it should.

Resilience is key. I too had a very difficult childhood, but I worked hard, got a degree and made my way up a career ladder by putting in hours.

I'm tired of hearing some of my friends whinge that I'm 'so lucky' and that this, that or the other is the reason for their troubles. In fact, I've had to tell one friend that I'm not providing support anymore as we are just going around in conversational circles because he is unwilling to put in any effort to resolve the issues in his life.

@HereComesATractor

The zoo thread... it doesn’t really help your argument because no one who isn’t anxious, who is self assured and confident etc, would post that - it’s self selecting. They would either say to family “back off you’re crowding us” or to themselves “it’s fine, they’re just excited, we’ll have a busy day, might feel a bit overwhelmed, but we’ll get through it” or similar. You can’t really go by MN threads because you’re getting the ones who need reassurance by definition

Of course they would. My personal suspicion is that OP just doesn’t want to share her baby with her in laws, and is taking the ‘anxiety’ route as she knows she will instantly be absolved of blame in terms of being controlling and precious.

@HereComesATractor

Yeah these threads really do bring the nasty fuckers to the fore don’t they, was that your intention OP?

Does it not match your narrative. Is it triggering?

Not really hit a nerve, but I can understand why it might help you to think that

@HereComesATractor

Not really hit a nerve, but I can understand why it might help you to think that

😂😂😂