What if you are not a Performance Parent but you have "THAT" kid?!

[PyongyangKipperbang]

On the back of the PP thread.
I have never been a PP but there was one time that I was probably thought of as one and I die at the memory.

I will preface this by saying that DD2 is/was officially gifted, she is an adult now and storming her way through her chosen career, she is just....yah know, clever! Very proud of her obviously but when she was a young child especially, she could be excrutiating to be the parent of! She is (Borg name) Three of Six, and she is the only one to do this to me!

We had been to France on holiday, nothing flash (saved for two years for a Keycamp job) but we all loved it. We arrived back at midnight and I took her and DD1 with me to Tesco next morning as we had bog all in. Both wanted to wear their Disney dresses (yes we did DLP but Parc Asterix was waaaaay better) and I had done all the driving in one day back from Paris, frankly I was too fucked to care. So me, Cinderella (10) and Snow White (5) are going around Tesco and Snow White decides she is only going to talk in French so it feels like we are still on holiday. Cute but frankly annoying, not least because she just seemd to pick up french easier than you or I can work out our new mobile phone. I played along as I speak French but really couldnt be arsed so tried to distract as you do "Who can find the baked beans first" and all that, DD1 played along as she was eye rolling too.

Then I think "Aha!!!!.....DD2, look some Pain au Chocolate like we had on holiday, shall we get some? You can get them and put them in the bag"

She said, top of her voice "OH NO MUMMY!!!!! THEY WONT BE ANYTHING LIKE THE ONES WE HAD IN PARIS!!!".

The ones we had in Paris were nice yes, but they were still from a fucking supermarket! And I only bought them because I got lost in the massive place and gave up as we were tight on parking!

Little arsehole got me side eye the whole fucking walk of shame to the checkout.

DD2 is now in her 20's and I have never thought that there is a decent way to not look like a dick parent in this scenario, apart from giving her a flick a thwart the earhole (Copyright Terry Pratchett) and tell her to stop being a twat!

Is there and I missed it?!

Should add that I adored her then and do now before anyone says I dont, and that this story is part of the family archive of "oh do you remember when" most of which relate to me!

I'm all for having a laugh at something that's actually funny. I must have missed the joke in the OP though, because I just didn't see what was amusing about it.

This is not an example of performance parenting 🤷🏻‍♀️

I agree with PPs - there is nothing remotely funny about this post. Just an OP desperately trying to brag about her ‘gifted’ DD saying things that any average 10 year old would come out with

Why were people "side eyeing" you because your kid loudly said something to you? Big deal.

This. I was smiling widely as I thought it was a cute memory. The mean-spirited comments got me confused. Glad to find someone who liked the post as I did 😁.

I am clearly not as clever as your gifted child, but I do not understand the point you are trying to make?
A pastry won't be as nice as one on France?? Is that it? Is it shopping in a costume? I am lost! Everything sounds plumb normal to me, except perhaps taking your kids shopping at midnight and they were a little loud (and annoying)

I thought it was funny OP, not so much the situation itself but your embarrassed reaction. What is even funnier, however, is the above username. Gave me a proper laugh so thank you Fluffyfanny.

I've had a few moments like this, DD loudly said 'It doesn't feel fair we have to wait a whole year for our next skiing holiday Mum!' and couldn't understand why I told her to be quiet! DS was extremely advanced, like OPs DD especially as a young child, he could read at 3, very fluently by 4. We got jaw dropped looks as we went through supermarkets and he would read every label out loud, or inappropriate newspaper headlines or magazine covers - 'Look Mum, it says my mother had a threesome with my boyfriend, what's that?' or whatever nonsense he read. It was actually a tricky time and I went from being embarrassed to really proud of him.

According to some threads on here it is.

I get you op. Can imagine the thread.

"mom walking around with her bloody princesses talking French at them and bragging about having pain au chocolate in Paris..."

It does sometimes seem that threads about performance parenting are just parents trying to get through the day.

When I'm patiently counting up and down to 20 and singing all the songs out loud and pointing out the colours of all the cars, I'm just trying to a. keep them still b. relatively quiet c. non-vomitous d. my temper because they're previously been Pita's

Well exactly. The child in question was 5, not 10.

Because op was saying she thought others would think she was performance parenting talking to the kids on French etc. it's fine to say "no op, I wouldn't have thought that was performance parenting, we do that all the time / happens all the time here" etc but people seem to want to belabour the point that op is posting pointless waffle and they've wasted their lives having to read it and comment.

But it's OP who made it all dramatic and overblown in the first place.
I have never thought that there is a decent way to not look like a dick parent in this scenario
It's baffling to most of us why she thinks her child saying one thing about being in Paris is significant at all, let alone making her look like a duck. It's such a non-event.

Haha why is everyone so scared of so called performance parenting. I mean I'm talking to my kids, my favourite people on the planet - it definitely isn't for them approval of some random person hovering in the vicinity.

Talking to child. Appreciating culture together , fostering curiosity is all a good thing.

That’s a lovely post and very funny.

I remember my Dd wanting to do Stage Coach (sort of amateur dramatics for kids).

As per usual after a couple of times she didn’t want to go any more. It was only 6 weeks and she only had two more weeks with the last week being The Show, so I made her keep going.

On the last week all the proud mummies and daddies were there to watch their little angels in The Show.

I watched her and could see she was giving it all and big smiling at the audiance. I actually heard a couple of other parents mention her stage presence. Oooh what a proud mummy I was!

After the show I commented how happy she looked and was she sure she didn’t want to do the next term?

She replied “I was only looking happy because I knew that was the last time I had to do that, come on, I want to go now”.

Perhaps OP was hoping the peasants in Tesco might have been thinking "Paris, what's that?!?" rather than, you know, a completely normal place to have been on holiday too?

There's a special type of class humblebragging which assumes their completely normal lifestyle is embarrassingly posh. Like when Jess Phillips (the millennial daughter of a head teacher and a senior NHS exec) pretended to think that olives are fancy, rather than something you can get in Wetherspoons and Aldi nationwide.

Well I, for one, am very glad the OP made this post because I never knew there was an Asterix theme park and now I know where I want to go if I ever get to France. Bloody love Asterix.

Agree! I like the OP's writing, I can picture the situation perfectly (and it sounds adorable!) I don't think the OP is showing off at all - she's made a light-hearted post on the back of a thread where people definitely would have accused her of 'performance parenting'...

Performamce parenting would be saying "Pareee" in your best maurice chevallier voice if your DD had said "Pariss" etc, what you had was a normal conversation surely? I doubt anyone was side eyeing you.

I absolutely get your point! I can almost hear her saying it 😂😂😂

The first response often sets the tone of the thread and gives others the green light to be nasty. Some of the replies are even worse than the OP.

’you sound provincial’ ‘did your dd go to university early’.

All desperate to sound superior while having a good old pile on. Loads of threads on here are humble brags, show insecurity etc.

If you don’t want to interact then don’t?

I will go off at a tangent a bit to speak about one thing you mention about language aquistion in young children. We stayed in a friends gite in France and my 3 year old got bad D &V and spent nearly a whole week lying on the sofa watching cartoons in French and never even realised they we in another language,!! Over the next few days we noticed French vocabulry creeping into his play when playing with French kids on the beach.

Quite a lot of grumpybums out today. I get it, OP, and you write engagingly.

I did the same to my mum on the no.30 bus in Dublin. I was 6 and a little old lady was chatting to me. We passed a train station and she asked me if I'd ever been on a train. I said, loudly apparently, "yes, from Mombasa to Nairobi".

Killed all further chat.

I don’t get the grumps - I got the point of the post and thought it was funny.

I also have one of Those children. I once bought smoked salmon trimmings in Aldi because it was cheaper than ham. 3yo DS loved them and said VERY LOUDLY on the way out of (a SureStart!) playgroup “oh mummy PLEASE can I have smoked salmon sandwiches for lunch?”. I definitely wasn’t imagining the side eyes I got on that occasion.

I thought it was funny too

Is OP Caitlin Moran?

What is the opposite of performance parenting? Because I have that kid.

We never swore in front of her. But one time when we were in the car on the way to Tesco, some twat nearly caused an accident on a roundabout. Normally placid DH shouted "Fucking idiot!" after slamming on the brakes. We thought 2-year-old Little Ears in the back hadn't noticed. We were wrong.

"Is that the fucking milk, mummy?"
"Is that the fucking bread?"
Etc.

All around the supermarket in her outside voice.