Are you a ‘disney’ mum?

[Caterpillarmama]

I’m not sure if that’s the right expression but there’s numerous mums online who portray themselves as the most perfect mothers/families! Everything their child eats is homemade, they give out little homemade brownies tied in paper with string ‘just because’, they don’t watch tv, they never shout, always spending quality time together.

On Instagram/youtube, I see posts and reels of people letting their children help them peel the veg to prep Sunday lunch, baking a cake for pudding and spending wholesome days together picking flowers and walking through meadows etc. I know online is not real life but is there anyone who genuinely lives like this?

Not saying we don’t do those things, but that would be a tiny part of our day and wouldn’t fill a whole day. They never mention the children arguing, making a mess, irritating their parents, whining etc. Letting them prep dinner would be a nightmare and take hours and we’re already pushed for time!

YABU: yes this is how we live
YANBU: we have elements of this but this isn’t our daily life.

If you genuinely live like this and hold down a full time job etc, raising your children, how do you do it? Especially as a single parent! Tips welcome.

Guys, we've found one.

It's bullshit. It's a smokescreen designed to make normal people feel like shit.

My kids help me cook sometimes, and we do go for nice walks. But also sometimes they fight like wolves and I want to put the three of them in the bin.

Also they really love 39p noodles that come with a sachet of chicken flavouring which is probably 90% salt. I should whack that on IG and take cover 🤣

I agree. I think a worse kind of ‘mum influencer’ is the one who over shares about their DC’s behaviour and ‘meltdowns’ etc.

No one lives like this 100% of the time but lots of people incorporate aspects of this in their life.
I could have been a “Disney” mum today if I showed you my highlights today. There was a whole lot of sitting around, gaming, some shouting about tidying up and telling off about being rude.
If you were going to make a video of your day, I’m sure you’d include “Disney mum” activities. This is what they’re doing - stuff that looks good on film.

I don't mind an hour or so of TV across a weekend but otherwise yeah, my kids eat home made food, we go out and do things together every day, the 4 year old helps me cook (the 2 year old is a maniac and would kill us all so she doesn't). I don't have social media aside Mumsnet/whatsapp so I don't pit our lives online; it's a horrible damaging waste of time.

Are you suggesting children spontaneously learn how to bake and cook by themselves? Sew on a button, etc?

Of course children need alone time, but they don't just magically learn how to do things without being shown.

I do make all our food from scratch because I love cooking but not even remotely close to a Disney mum. My life is a dumpster fire I'm constantly trying to fight 🤣

Sort of. There’s a lot of that going on in my house and I think I could easily pull together some pretty impressive instagram reels if I were inclined. I like cooking and baking; my kids like being near me so they get handed veg to peel and bowls to stir. Some days, they (and dh) seem to want to offload every passing thought or pull me in to watch them play a video game, or watch a you tube clip, or read out the funny part in whatever book they’re reading.

What you wouldn’t see as an onlooker is that my autistic eldest has been suicidal twice this school year, and it’s created an attention imbalance- so I’ve accidentally got myself into a situation where I feel like I can’t say no or push any of them off without feeling massive guilt and it’s burning me out.

I don’t give out much, because I have to pick my battles and keeping the level of demand low for ds is the trade off for getting him to school as he needs to decompress and safely unmask. And I drop the demand level a fair bit for dd too because she’s already expected to do/manage/act at a higher level.

It would make great social media but it’s not normal. Oh and we’re all spending too much time on screens because I need a break.

I think you need to step away from.social.media if you are.struggling to separate it from reality.
Honestly, people generally just post the best bits on SM. The reality is a mixture. I think we all know this, no?
My life is a real mix of idyllic super mum moments, lazy tv moments and shouty impatient moments. Chill out, be kind to yourself and find the time to add in some of the more magical 'making memories' type of stuff periodically.

I don't know about being a Disney mum but I'm the "mum wot does it all". Our life is not Instagrammable but I am blessed (cursed?) with two very active, perhaps hyperactive, kids who are into everything, want to do everything, pull things out of cupboards, touch everything, explore everything and egg each other on. Their enthusiasm for life is boundless. They find endless joy and amusement in the little things in life - walking on brick walls, trying to climb empty supermarket shelves, swinging off rails in buses, popping bubble wrap with sharp scissors, hitting each other with sticks, turning their duvets into sledges to toboggan down the stairs. It is difficult to describe what it is like parenting children like this to people who don't have them. I am amazed everyday by their ingenuity and capacity to make mess and attract attention.

I have found that our time does go more smoothly if I redirect their attention and energy into activities I've set up in advance. So (and I'm sure people will roll their eyes at this) if we're at home all day due to weekends or holidays, I do often set up a few quick activities on the table or in the corner, like kinetic sand, stickers or a big piece of paper taped to the floor to draw on, and have found the "invitation to play" content on Instagram quite useful in the past for ideas.

Yes, we live like that. Both work FT, make homemade dinner every night and roast every Sunday. Kids are well behaved and watch limited amount of tv. Don’t have tablets and we encourage reading instead. We don't have social media, both don’t care about that. We know it’s fake and have no interest in doing performative parenting just so I can post it online to people I don’t know or care about. I find it all very superficial and vapid.

YABU meaning that it is time to delete social media (or maybe just having a break)
It is not real.
Yes, it makes me feel so bad sometimes.

”Let’s bake a cake with my toddler”
”Here is how I make some healthy lunch from scratch that my 2 year old loooves”
”Today I went for a run for the first time after I had my baby, I managed a 5k!”

Aargh

Only in the sense that I spent 20 years waking up each morning determined to be Mary Poppins, only to have morphed into Cruella de Vil by 8am? Does that count?

I walk past a restaurant and a cafe every day that are very popular on social media. People queue for ages in the cold, they then sit under a heat lamp and wait for quite a while for a harassed waiter to bring them their photogenic order. They then spend a long time photoing each other with the food and then presumably they eat it after it has gone cold. Before they became social media sensations I ate in these places a couple of times. They were fine but not great.

My conclusion from this is that your life has to quite rubbish in order to make posting lifestyle stuff on social media worth bothering with.

Cautious, you’ve won Mumsnet today. 🏆

What was the name of that American, Kelle Something? A ‘momfluencer’ whose daughter had Down Syndrome, but who was always generating cutesy content from all three of her children — all crafting and bunting-hung bedrooms, and gambolling in leaves in carefully-curated outfits and kits for road trips. Only she lived in Florida, so she had a friend further north send her boxes of autumn leaves to throw around decoratively. The one blogpost I remember had an entire kitchen dresser for some reason dragged into a clearing in woods for some folksy photos of woodland fun…

One of the daughter was called Lainey Love. Big therapy bills loom in poor Lainey’s future.

It was like picking a scab. Compellingly awful.

This ⬆️

They never mention the children arguing, making a mess, irritating their parents, whining etc.

in fairness... WHY should they mention it?
You are talking about complete strangers on the internet, selling a certain image.
How unattractive would it be to see all the gory family details. How intrusive too.

I hope the poster was being sarcastic, because that Sunday sounds like the most boring day I can think of 😂

Poor kids, and poor mum.

You do realise social media is not real life don't you?

Most moms in Disney movies are dead.

I cook dinner from scratch most nights. I bake brownies or cookies pretty frequently. I don't buy sweets, so if I want something sweet I have to make it. The byproduct is that is that my kids also get a treat. Nobody sees my doing any of these things though. It's just what my mother did, who it's what I do.

And not only social media is not real life, or pretending to be,

but people seem to quickly forget that there is some work involved. It's not a mum just posting random pics with a tinkly laugh, it's researched, posed, heavily edited. Pointless or not, it's another debate, but it's so far from a candid snapshot of their life.

Every single one of the photos and videos released by the royal family and Will and Kate are completely staged and filtered. Why would you think anyone else on social media is any different?

Most moms in Disney movies are dead.
😂😂

true

Yeah, Walt Disney had a real vendetta against mothers for some reason.

My kids rarely eat anything that’s not home made and don’t watch any tv but I work full time and they are in nursery so I only have 2.5 hrs with them each evening inc getting ready for bed. If I let them watch a film that would be most of our time together used up and I’d rather make the most of the time iv got. At weekends we are always doing family stuff as it’s the only time we have. I try and get my kids involved in cooking, they are only toddlers so mixing and pouring! We don’t have social media. Still have the same problems that every other family has.