To hate it when people "help" me with the pram

[willywallaby]

Ugh, just a rant! I get my pram on and off buses every day, I know how to do it. People help me without even asking, all the time. Like I've wheeled the back of it onto the street and someone will take the front and lift it down for me but it's always a surprise and I lose my footing. Quite often they don't put it down gently so baby gets SLAMMED down. Today I had wheeled the back wheels off of the bus, and a man lifted the front end so we were hovering in the air and I didn't know how to continue. So for the first time ever I said please can you put my pram down, I don't need help. And I had to insist a couple of times because he was so confused I didn't want help!

Yeah I also wish people offered to help me more! Offered being the key word.

Precious first born OP?
You will come across much bigger issues than this! Time to grow up perhaps.....

Second. I hated it with my first as well

You seem to have spent quite a bit of time of both maternity leaves feeling pissed off

🤣🤣🤣

Do you know what, at first I was in the YABU camp but thinking about it I always ask/say 'let me help you with that' before grabbing someone's pram. You just do, don't you? Some people don't like it.

You are right , people should offer first.

I offered to help someone with a massive rucksack recently but she hit the roof, she clearly didn't want anyone touching her stuff, so I let it be.

A world in which this kind of help is offered and accepted or declined graciously is a better world. This is what being part of a society/community means OP. The alternative is much shitter.

Agree that this is about people offering rather than just inserting themselves where they aren’t needed and cause problems.

The OP isn’t being a bitch at all. Imagine if someone just grabbed your bags of shopping without a by-your-leave, knocking you off balance and dumping them down in the ground. Bet you’d be pretty pissed off then.

You missed the bit where this isn’t offered. That’s the OP’s point.

yabu! I remember the utter relief when someone would offer to help me with my pram. I’m a weakling (😂) and would find it really difficult and stressful when the pram would need picking up.

I remember once the lift was broken and I had to take a huge lift down to the ground floor. a lovely lady asked if I needed help and took the pram collapsed, whilst I held DD. I still think of how kind she was bless her!

surely a “no thanks, I’ve got this’ is sufficient if you don’t need the help. Can’t see why you’re worked up about it.

Jeez, I often do it without really 'seeking consent' because it's automatic when I see someone about to struggle getting on or off a bus/train and lifting the front of a buggy gently onto the floor for them seems like a no-brainer. There's rarely time or noise levels for asking in a busy station - I just assumed that people like the help, as I did.

I'm not going to stand around having a conversation asking people for help because people ALWAYS say 'no I'm fine' - it's just our reflexes isn't it? I didn't realise this was so problemmatic.

Another thing I'll just ignore in future!

Offering help- great

Ploughing in without consultation/ consent- not cool.

In 2020 there was an older lady struggling to get her shopping trolley up some awkwardly angled steps. I asked her if she would like me to lift it up for her and she accepted the offer. There's many reasons why she might have wanted the chance to decline- pride/ self esteem, fear of theft or damage or anxiety about a stranger touching her possessions (hence 2020 being relevant) and it would have been rude to just pick it up and do it.

@BatchCookBabe

<forty-odd lines of irritated backstory snipped>

Some people just love to bash and berate!!!

...gosh, ain't that the truth?

I'm with you. Theys soon moan if someone picked up their shopping and walked it off the bus for them or insisted on taking their elbow and walking them off the bus.
I think the attitude is linked to the general hostility towards prams in general

But you were grateful after someone ASKED and offered help. If someone had walked over, picked DD up and told you to get the pram, would you have been ok?

And the "oh well I'll never help anyone ever again then" people. Grow up and ask "you need help?". If they want it, they can say yes. It takes seconds. Where on earth is so noisy you can't ask that?

If I see you on the bus and just grab your elbow to help you off the bus I assume you're grown up enough to let me and thank me profusely? Or if I pick up your bags and drop them down in the bus stop. What about if you're carrying your child and I just wrestle them off you because I can do it better?

So you do it without asking, because if you asked you know they would say no?
That sounds....nice.

It just seems really obvious to me that if a woman is getting off a tube train/train with a child in a buggy that someone needs to lift the front strap down onto the station for her. It wouldn't occur to me that this is a problem.

But you know they would say no if you asked, so you do know it's a problem.
Stop grabbing people's prams without asking, it's weird!

Pretty much everyone British says no if you ask to help...

Don't worry, I won't do it in future!

I agree with you. People want to feel kind and helpful but do need to check out first whether that person actually would like their help.

I get really fucked off with people (always men) ‘helping’ me to manoeuvre my car when I have eyes, wing mirrors, and an accurate sense of my car’a dimensions.

Drop it from a height

😂

Not at all unreasonable, people should ask before they intervene.
I had a horrible experience where someone grabebd the back of my pushchair to 'help' but actually pulled a lever which changed the recline on the seat and it slammed forward crushing my 4 month old, who has beside herself.

I think sometimes it's as much motivated by 'getting you out of the way' as helping.

I despair for humanity reading this. Your poor child.