Please, please, please put away your phones...

[User63859]

Just witnessed a mother (and father) totally ignore their 18 month old (ish) child on the tube. Both of them totally engrossed in their phones. The baby was sat up in a buggy, awake (at 11pm but that's another issue) and had moments of trying to get their mother's attention. At one point the child leaned out of the buggy and buried its head in its mother's lap.

Not even a flinch from the mother. So concerned with scrolling (looking at a fashion website fwiw), she literally didn't even make eye contact.

It was heartbreaking. What are we doing to our children? Before all the late night trolls start piling in I'm not saying I'm a perfect parent, we all have our weaknesses, but witnessing this has literally made me so so sad. I think what made me even sadder is the fact the baby just seemed to accept it. They tried to get the smallest acknowledgment from their mother, failed so just sat there staring into space. Oh, and watching their mother prioritise a bit of metal over them.

Please, for the love of whatever, put away your phones. We all like a scroll and a moan on mumsnet but do it when your kids are in bed. I'm so tired of seeing all this shit parenting and worrying about what a messed up world my son is going to grow up in.

To those that are guilty of this, one day you will long for these days back again and by then it will be too late and you'll be wondering why your kids need so much therapy.

Be better, please.

I haven't read everything but I don't see how that poster is claiming she's absolutely perfect. I also think you calling her a horrible person is bang out of order.

She says she'll judge people for being so emotionally immature that they take a minute to distract themselves from a bad situation by glancing blindly at their emails. So obviously she's perfect and has never had to distract herself in anyway and never put a foot wrong in bad situations or whilst looking after her children.

She's judged parents she doesn't know for having their child out and awake at 11pm. She doesn't know why they were up and about at that time. Or why the kid was awake.

So yeah, she's coming across horrible. Bang out of order for me to say so, but not for her to judge people for their ways or comments? Grand.

Also just want to add that OP judged a couples parenting by one half an hour out of context she'd seen on a train so likely not their norm. Came online to complain about and put down terrible parents she knew nothing about. Loads of people piled onto said parents they know even less about than OP.

A couple of us said none of us are perfect parents, have examples, also got piled on. OP came back outright said she was judging me but I'm the one that's out of order because I said that made her horrible. And I'm being told this by someone saying they haven't read everything, so they're judging based on my retaliation to someone.

OP also said she judges online bullies, despite it being a comment on a thread she created to bash complete strangers.

This entire thread is made to put mums down. It's not how mum's should behave towards one another. It is horrible.

I once picked my child up at crèche (first ever 1 hour session). I arrived five minutes early as a nervous first time mum to find her with a phone propped up playing Baby bloody Shark. They were not all in a group dancing to it or anything like that. She was on her own. At this point, she didn’t even know what it was and had never been given my phone. She was only just turned one and I wanted to introduce her to a weekly or twice weekly crèche session to help with her socialisation etc. 🙄 I didn’t bother afterwards and stuck to the play groups, classes and activities we’d done up to that point. I was pretty disappointed it’d happen in a (supposedly good) childcare setting on the very first session and it wasn’t to pacify her. There were apparently no tears.

Then probably don’t pick up their dog’s 💩

I just hope that the next time someone who’s fixed on their bloody phone steps off the pavement without looking, while shoving their buggy in front of them, has a car driver who can stop as fast as I had to this morning. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me.
It appalls me that a generation of children who it seems apare being raised by adults who have no idea how to interact with small children and who can’t go anywhere without be glued to their screen 🤬

@Zippedydodah yes but just make sure you don’t criticise someone’s parenting based on a “snapshot”🙄

Yep. In 10 years time that kid will be at school with attachment behaviour issues and apparently it will be up to the school’s SEN department to sort it because it definitely, absolutely, 100% has nothing to do with how the kid was interacted with growing up. They were obviously just born with issues. 🙄

Oh.

And here's me reading this while ignoring my 20 month old. She'll be fine.

You've taken one small snapshot of a day and applied it to a person's whole life! Yes its not great but sometimes any of us can "check out" for a while. My grandma used to pop into the kitchen neck what she called her double V- valium and vodka becoming completely useless for the next twelve hours to her four children. My mum at 7 could prepare a full meal.So no I'm not judging a woman on a tube looking at her phone. We need to be eachothers cheerleaders not each others demise.

I don't really understand the point you're wanting to make. Your grandma neglected her children really badly. So in comparison you think a mum mindlessly scrolling their phone instead of conversing with their child isn't so bad? Or are you suggesting that that mum may have been even more neglected herself so she wouldn't have had a good parenting role model?

I mean that is proper neglect not some poor woman looking at her phone.

Was watching similar the other day from a cafe. Parents in front, kid about 3, trailing behind on a bike crossing the road, just avoided being hit. Did the same coming back, paying zero attention to the child