What has Mumsnet taught you you've been doing wrong all of your adult life without realising?!

[harriethoyle]

Inspired by a recent thread, in which I read multiple posters saying you shouldn't wear mascara on your bottom lashes (which I have been doing for the last 30 years 😂) what has Mumsnet told or taught you you've been doing wrong?

The irritating thing is then I made one eye up as usual and made one up without mascara on the bottom lashes and DH preferred the without eye! Don't even get me started on my inability to make a chicken last a week...

Nooooooo

That I shouldn't even attempt to lose weight until a year PP or I will end up saggy and awful lol such nonsense think a lot of people have never heard of toning up and using weights

When I was a teen/young woman flushing tampons was the accepted way of disposing of them. I don't recall our household ever having a blocked loo and don't recall it happening at work either.

I've never flushed the other objects you mention, surely that's just common sense.

Well, no, you really don’t need to say ‘needs done’ why would you if it isn’t what you would say in the region you come from? Where I’m from it’s natural to say it 🤷🏼‍♀️ but then, I apparently don’t say ‘baby daddy/mummy’ ‘caught feelings’ for someone or ‘super’ when I mean really/very.

I must admit I'd never heard the phrase 'needs done' till now and had no idea it might be dialect. I'm not sure about the other phrases either apart from 'super' when people mean 'very' or 'extremely'. I freely admit I'm a bit of a geek with the written word.🙁No intention to offend.

Ive never experienced 'napkin cake' not happen.

So what happens in your experience, do they just sit and eat it there? (seems a waste of time, surely they would rather play)

What do you give them as a sign that its time to bugger off now?

On the birthday party thing though I learned mumsnet is rife with at home birthday parties for kids. In my whole life (my childhood and my 3 kids) I have only ever encountered ONE home birthday which was just basically a sleep over in primary school of me, my best friend and her other friend. It was weird and stressful (and I was not even an anxious kid) worrying about the rules of someone else's home at a party and I ended up asking to go home early.

This I’ve been blessed in the In law department. I’ve joked with OH that if we ever split (and obviously we will because based on MN advice I have no choice but to leave him next time he pisses me off) I’m keeping his family 🤣.

surely that's just common sense.

so is tampons though... thats the ENTIRE point of the conversation we are having. If anything I would say it should be less common knowledge not to put kitchen roll or wipes down a toilet (something designed for a similar purpose to toilet paper) than to not put a tampon (something designed to absorb liquid and swell up) down.

Toilets definitely did block up all the time, it was a rife problem in my teens.

So what happens in your experience, do they just sit and eat it there? (seems a waste of time, surely they would rather play)

Yes. Everyone sits down and eats the cake and other treats. After they've eaten they back to play. I'm not from the UK so I've only been to few British kids parties so experience is limited. However I told my (British) partner about napkin cake and that is the first he had heard of it. So we are very excited to explore the culture of napking cake outside MN.

Well I shall continue to call it life admin and continue to find it time consuming, stressful and have to work myself up to get round to it!

I need a PA.

The part about SAHM doing life admin is strange as that IS part of their job. For mom’s who work outside the home they have to do it on top of a full time job and childcare hence of course they find it more exhausting.

I'm not using the word hyperbole nearly enough

This!

They shouldn't be expected to do anything until 18 but also should have 20 chores by the time they are 8 and at 18 they should be kicked out of the house but anything they do before 25 is because their adult brain hasn't yet kicked in...

That when me and my DH have a night out, we’re actually having a ‘date!’

@MartinCrieffsLemon I remember seeing a thread, a little while ago, that was on this topic.

I'm not sure if the thread was slowly degenerating into competitive 'something', but posters were then saying that their young children (8 y/o) were regularly making their own dinner.

Sounds a bit hyperbolic, if you ask me. 😉

I doubt their shoes would all be caked in dogshit.

So you are happy to pop your food into a trolley which you think may have been sprayed in Rat piss?

I suppose in this situation if you are worried about germs then - the trolley bags that you put your produce in once you have scanned it would be a good option for you.

This isn’t from Mumsnet but I was shocked when I went to university and met so many young adults with zero life skills. As in could not boil and egg, needed me to show them how to turn on the machine and do laundry.

And was shocked later discussing that with people and them finding it normal to be an adult and have zero life skills. As one girl told me “why would you know any of that if you had a mom?”

Wild!

@Bellaboo01

I don't actually believe a single word of my own post - I was merely answering a PP's question about why MN gets in a froth about children standing in trollies.

I don't need a "good option" as I am a rational adult and don't spend a second of my life fretting about such nonsense.

Parents who work full time outside the home have someone else to do the childcare - they don't don't both childcare and work simultaneously.

Full time childcare is a job. The reminders about life admin (which is absolutely a thing when you are doing it for everyone, not just yourself) mostly arise on threads where the "SAHM" triggers and expectation for 24*7 work covering every job a household needs on top of childcare hours.

Any women who has the temerity to be a SAHM should be on her knees in gratitude to the mighty male who does a real job which earns £££ and therefore should do nothing in the home beyond collecting his pipe and slippers at the door. No expectation on him to provide scad loads of unpaid labour outside of office hours.

The SAHM bashing on here beggars belief at times. Ditto handmaiden threads where posters happily throw other women under the bus because they don't think they will ever need protections put in place for all women. The patriarchy is alive and well in 2024 and still has women competing with each other all too often when we should be supporting each other.

Actually, I think doing it like that, and being snarky about other people doing it like you do but daring to call it a different name that you've decided is somehow over-dramatic is actually peak Mumsnet. So don't worry - being infuriated by inoffensive and commonly-used words and phrases is actually doing it right by MN standards.

The problem with washing machines is they’re all different. I’ve been using washing machines for years but didn’t know how to use my mum’s and had to ask her. 😖

Boiling an egg is quite a skill, unless you just want it hard boiled. I bet everyone has cracked open an egg where the white hasn’t cooked enough or the yolk isn’t runny 😬

I admit I probably have ‘mothered’ too much but luckily they seemed to work these things out themselves. 😁

I’ve seen it all over Facebook groups in my local area where it is most definitely not part of the dialect!

I’m really surprised that anyone hadn’t experienced napkin birthday cake throughout a British childhood! I mean, it’s definitely not the only way, but it was very, very common when I was a child, and I’ve also seen it loads as a parent. Maybe it’s a regional thing?! I’m in the Midlands.

It is where I am…