To not like other people's kids, even nephews and nieces?

[Pettv]

Maybe not necessarily an aibu, but I'm interested to see if anyone else feels similar or I am just an awful person.

Before I had kids I loved children. I always baby sat and child minded. I worked in a school for a bit, and always paid attention to people's babies and kids. Spoiled my nieces and nephews (only had two at the time).

Now I have two kids under 4, and I find parenting full on. I love my kids and enjoy them, but I just cannot deal with other peoples kids. Friends and family seem fond of mine in a way I am not fond of theirs. It sounds so awful written down.

I just find most of the kids annoying, also have lots of nieces and nephews now and my kids are in no way perfect but I find I just don't have the energy for other kids bad (or normal young kid) behaviour.

Not sure what my aibu is but does anyone else feel this way?

Children are like farts.

People like their own. Other people’s feel intrusive and annoying.

My nephews are all irritating as hell. I love them, I think, but don’t necessarily like them. I don’t think I’d particularly like my own DD if she wasn’t mine because obviously I love her to bits and think she is wonderful, but she’s objectively also quite annoying. As most children are. I didn’t like children before I had her either though.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon that's hilarious 😂 I actually could have just put that as my post and it would have summed up how I feel.

I think you might have something here. I am childfree and I love my friends and families children. Im happy to look at photos of colleagues children and listen to their stories. Children in restaurants etc don’t annoy me, I wave and talk back to them etc. I babysit and buy presents and ask how the children are.

However all my friends, family and colleagues who have children do talk about how irritating/annoying/horrible etc children are and they hate it if a child talks to them in public or waves or something and if we are somewhere eating and children come in they kind of groan ‘oh god, please don’t sit over here’ under their breath and stuff. The one with school aged children also hate having to have play dates, parties and sleepovers because other peoples children have to be involved 😂

I've never been massively into other people's children, not even my own nephews.
I adore my own children and I like other children a lot more than I used to, but I definitely don't like friends' children as much as they seem to like mine!

I don't particularly like other people's children. I mean, some of my dd's friends are lovely (she's 10, so we're not talking toddlers, more like pre-teens), but I wouldn't go out of my way to interact with them. Any younger and I definitely avoid. Frankly, I avoid my own too if I can, but I can't always do that as need to be around to make sure they are still alive.

Tbh, the people who I find have the most energy for interacting with my dc are people who don't have children themselves. We used to have several neighbours who were amazing with them: would happily watch them do cartwheels for 20 minutes if they asked, would take them to have a look at their chickens or let them feed the dog, etc. Or my BIL and his partner are fantastic, will play games with them, take them out on walks, etc. I would never voluntarily do any of that with someone else's child. I actually told our old neighbours this once and their response was that it was because they didn't have children and they could easily muster 20 minutes of enthusiasm for cartwheels because then they knew they could get back to their day without having to deal with any more children. Obviously, if you are a parent, you're on all the time pretty much.

I faked it reasonably well when mine were little but when my kids were very hard work (thinking about the stage when they were 3 and 1 especially), I just didn't have spare capacity to care about other people's kids. As mine have got less demanding, I feel that starting to change

I find other people’s children extremely annoying. Probably top of the list are the chatty stranger ones who come over to tell you about the swing set they have in their garden / what the dream about etc etc and the parents sit there with stars in their eyes watching adoringly as their child chats to you

No thanks. Go away pls and thank u

Try harder, otherwise you are just being nasty and boring!

I suppose it's entirely possible that you're raising your children to be less annoying than their cousins, in which case, you're being reasonable.
Quite how you negotiate that difficulty with your family is another matter entirely.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not sure why we all go about pretending kids are amazing and adorable, when they patently aren't.

I wonder if your tolerance for kids just disappears over time after having kids? I don't mind children aged 8+ but seem to have zero tolerance for toddlers and pre-schoolers these days and actively avoid them. I walked into a Pizza Express with revolving doors for lunch the other day and was hit by a wall of toddler screams and and I just kept inside the revolving door and swiftly exited. Didn't even have to think about it.

Hopefully I will feel differently if I ever have grandchildren?

It’s probably an evolutionary thing, like before we have kids we think they are cute, so we then go and have our own, then it makes evolutionary sense to only want to invest time and energy into our own offspring, so we are programmed to reject other kids that aren’t ours. Don’t beat yourself up about it, it’s natural and probably how you ended up being born.

This is perfectly normal, or at least, I felt like it.

Your DC are at an age when you just don’t have the bandwidth to tolerate other people’s children.

I still don’t really care that much about other people’s children, but I have thawed a bit.

When my good friends come over, they always hug my DC - who are lovely and receptive to it, but I absolutely cannot bring myself to do that in return to theirs.

Interestingly, I really, really did not like my best friend’s DD as she was growing up - she ruled the roost, and while that was less her fault and more her parents’ fault, I found her really hard to like, and even had a couple of stand-offs with her because I didn’t find her behaviour OK in front of my DC.

Anyway, she’s 13 now, and I do genuinely like her. She turned out just fine. She has a high needs younger brother, and she deals with so much in such an accepting way, and I’ve grown to really love her.

So you never know what’s around the corner as they get older, their characters come through and you get to know them as their own people.

I find the idea of 'liking children' as a whole as weird as the idea of liking all adults. Children are just adults who haven't grown up yet, not some kind of Borg hive mind. Some will be delightful, some will be horrors, just like the adults they will eventually become.

These answers are both validating and really interesting!
@Suggestionbox this is how I was, really interested in kids and loved to chat and spoil them, interact with them.
I think maybe it adds to the 'it takes a village' scenario and maybe that's something that's missing these days. I remember my mum saying that when she was a child when someone on the street had a baby the teenage girls/tween girls would go around and push the pram, give them mum a break or play with the toddlers in the street. As a teenager I loved babies and toddlers so much, I was desperate for my own kids!

@Spaghetti201 really interesting point re evolution and makes perfect sense when you think about it.

I'm glad I'm not the only one pretending to be interested in friends kids. But then, is everyone pretending..?

I don’t like other people kids

absolutely fine with my own.

My mum always says that your own kids aren't as annoying as someone else's, so I think you're not alone. And some kids are awful.

I dunno @DrunkenBoat they all seem pretty generic

Yes, I think most people are pretending - or at least amping up how they feel. It's part of the social game isn't it?

The only thing more annoying than other peoples kids are other people endlessly talking about them and don’t get me started on grandchildren. I have no interest at all.

Yes!

I think it's weirdly reductive. I think I respect children's unique individuality by thinking some of them are uniquely individual twats.

Op I could have absolutely wrote this and the pp sums it up so well with the fart antidote, it's all true! I've got 3 dc and work with young children and i just couldn't be less interested in my friends/family dc, they bore me to death and I have no desire to see them/spend time with them. I also find kids generally very irritating and definitely not cute. Before I had my own I was the babysitter for everyone and loved babies, would swoon over them and want to hold new born's etc, now I look and people who are pregnant/new parents and shudder inwardly, thankful that's not me in the new baby stage again. Doesn't mean I don't love my own, they are my
entire world, I just don't love other people's.

Oh totally! You could be me!

I adore my children, they are my world.

But other people's? No way.

My nephew (while i do love him and wish him well) is turning into his dad!! Superior, spoilt etc...!! My other neice and nephew are just weird and snotty. My son's friends are all odd little people who like coughing and spluttering all over the house and giving us bugs!!

Aaaaaahhhhh feel much better now! Could never say that I'm real life!

I am a nice person usually!!

I do like children well most of them but I have found since having my own I never hold
People's babies anymore I'm just not interested .