It’s all such bloody hard work

[Uggbootsforever]

It’s all just such hard work, the standards are so high. Yes I know you’ll say ‘it’s all optional’ but how optional is it when everyone else around you is doing things and you don’t want your child to be the odd one out?

Lunch boxes. My mum did a sandwich (honey, marmite or jam), an apple, and a penguin bar. Now you have to cut bloody veg sticks, have fresh sandwich fillings ready and available, constant healthy ‘snacks’ (I swear my mum never carried or offered me a snack?!).

Birthday parties. They used to be straightforward and fairly cheap and now they’re all about balloon arches, ‘wonderlands’, themes and elaborate commissioned cakes.

Kids don’t play out now. They hover round you 24/7 demanding things while you try in vain to do the 100 housework tasks that need doing.

I feel like slowly but surely our house has transformed into a place where everything is about the kids 24/7. My parents used to think nothing of sitting and watching a programme they wanted to see, while we played around them. I don’t think I have ever done this, whatever is on is always bloody CBeebies.

Every parent I know is still woken in the night by their 4/5/6 year old children who insist on sleeping in their bed (including me). I just want to sleep in my own bloody bed, to close my eyes at 11pm and open them at 6.30 with nobody crying or shouting me awake in between. Before becoming a parent it didn’t cross my mind I would still be being woken every night 6 years later.

I love my kids but, argh. Why are we doing this to ourselves. Ready to be told how unreasonable I am etc

YANBU but some of it you can control. For my sons birthday we said to pick 5 friends and an activity (bowling, trampolining etc) and that’s what we did. They got a McDonald’s afterwards. While they did the activity we had a cuppa.

It is so different to when i was a child 30 years ago.
We had enough and wanted for nothing, but my parents said ‘no’ to almost everything!
No extra sweets or cake, no to our tv programs, no parties, no pets, no sleepovers, no pocket money , no holidays with friends 🤣 It sounds miserly, but we didn’t know any different and we appreciated the things we did get a hell of a lot.
I remember clearly a time when my mum took me and my brother to the chippy and bought us chips and a can of pop each. Was like all my christmases had come at once! And I can’t describe the joy when we were allowed to rent a video from the video shop!

You can say no to children. It’s easier than you think.
My daughter wants a phone , her friends have one. I say no , look at the world around you like we did in the 90s! If she protests, I say I’m old school like her grandparents.
If mum friends suggest something to do I’m happy to tell them it’s too expensive. If DD wants to go to the Trafford Centre , she spends her pocket money and there’s no more pocket money for a month.

I’ve heard plenty of people the generation above saying they wouldn’t have kids in this world now. I don’t know what the answer but you can be firm but loving at the same time.

No, it is not martyring yourself to bring your own children on a holiday which is suitable for them. Neither is choosing a family friendly location for a holiday "forgoing your needs". Going to Patagonia is not a "need". Who do you propose should take responsibility for your children whilst you go on your extravagant holidays?

Its up to you whether you buy into all of the "extra" work

I had a party 20 years ago and ditched the party bag - then every party after that also ditched the party bag... its up to you whether you buy into it or not

OP your experience is totally different to mine . Don’t put those expectations on yourself.

Yeah we’re in agreement. It’s the OP and others who think you can’t take children on such trips. As someone who has been doing adventure travel for two decades, I have always seen families on these trips. Many hostels now even do ‘family’ rooms to accommodate this market - it’s not just the child-free who are backpacking and interrailing, that’s for sure.

I've brought up 3 children. My eldest is 35 and my youngest, 12. All the parties we've attended have been in the local village hall. No fuss. As for healthy food, i'm not sure why you'd be against that? Although I've not noticed anyone pressurising me to feed my kids a healthy diet.

People can do what they want.

For my part, we haven’t ventured abroad with ours yet (they are nearly five and two.) We may go next summer when they are five and a half and three. It’s a lot of money and when you have to navigate naps and heat and strange food and so on it isn’t always easy.

It is a shame this thread has turned into an (unjustified IMO) attack on the OPs parenting. The sarky ‘well you can say no.’ Yes, you can. At toddler group this morning I’m supposed to tell my two year old she’s not having a snack while literally every other child does? Things get normalised, is what the OP is saying.

Why are nurseries and schools saying that kids must "snack". Kids didn't used to have snacks. Nobody expected them and nobody passed out or wasted away. Anything between meals was a treat - and a pretty rare one at that. Surely this isn't informing healthy attitudes towards food?

It is about where you live, and who surrounds you.
My kids used to play out fine, and then we moved to an area which I actually thought would be better for playing out. But all that happened was that when they tried to call for friends they'd get invited in to watch telly/play the computer/mess on phones. In fact twice I got gifted an old phone from other parents because they thought it so sad mine didn't have them!

When it comes to assessing how much children should fit in to what you want to do, or how much you should fit in to what children want to do, there's this undercurrent of "is it worth it" and "what's the point".

Over the summer I went out with some friends to a think National Trust place - big estate with gardens and a house. Friends have reception and middle primary school age children. This was mostly an excursion to see a distant relative for the afternoon - that's mostly a nice for the adults thing to do, go for lunch and a walk around this estate. Would sound good to most 30+ year olds! The children saw it as why were they being made to go and traipse up and down hills in the countryside with this distant relative (stranger they'd never met before) why couldn't they go to the play area and spend all afternoon there. An ice cream bribe buys you about 15 mins of compliance and then it's further this is boring, I don't want to walk, I need to be carried, whining etc etc. That really sucks the fun out of things for the adults.

You can't force the children to enjoy themselves walking around a NT country estate. If they're hot and tired and the 5yo doesn't want to walk anymore, there's only so much you can do with look at that bird, do you think there's treasure buried here, race you to the top and so on. While his older brother just wishes he was home playing Minecraft. So do you resign yourself to we won't go on these sorts of outings with the children? Or take them and put up with the whining and carry them? Or take them and do the authoritarian telling them off if they complain so they at least sulk quietly? (the latter being what my parents would have done in the 90s!)

It’s absolute nonsense claiming ‘kids didn’t used to snack.’ I remember going to a playgroup with my mum where we had milk and biscuits mid morning and that must have been circa 1983.

It is true snacks have increasingly replaced meals but at nursery and at school it’s just a piece of fruit or veg sticks.

With the best will in the world, 730 to 12 is a long time to go without anything to eat for a toddler.

Mine aren’t huge snackers because DS in particular was a very poor eater until he was about three and a half (he devours everything now) and so I always fretted about spoiling his appetite. But as much as I tried to stick to that I wasn’t going to make us miserable by insisting he doesn’t have a biscuit when literally every other kid does!

I do agree that parenting is a lot more intense now and expectations huge. I relate a lot to your post! It’s as if we have created our own new (and worse problems). I wonder what our DC will do when they have their own DC? As you say we played out and were not under our parents feet constantly expecting to be entertained and/or fed.

I don’t relate to this as it wasn’t my experience (albeit DS is 19). He had to stay in his own room until I said he could get up and we had a baby gate to enforce it. Luckily my cats adored him and would go in and play or cuddle up to him and that kept him amused until it was a reasonable hour. Plus I told him reading aloud was very good for the cats and made them
more intelligent so he used to do that in the mornings as well

He didn’t play out as our road wasn’t safe but after school he was with grandparents so had the benefit of the cousins on either side to play with.

And while we loved world book day, we’d plan it in advance and always round stuff we already had in the house. One year he went as Bilbo Baggins dressed in rough clothes, a stick from the garden and his dads wedding ring on a necklace - no cost to that at all.

We did pay for parties but they were small groups of friends doing stuff like go karting - I’ve never seen a balloon arch outside of a wedding!

Definitely put your foot down on sleep. And I also used to say that I only dealt with emergencies while I had my coat on and if it wasn’t an emergency he’d have to amuse himself (I think I got that frown here). Mind you DS thinks my stories of an 80s childhood are shocking. I said we’d have to strip our beds and being the sheets down every Friday morning otherwise we didn’t get breakfast and DS very seriously considered that to be child abuse!

Thank you! I expected the attacks - virtually every thread on here is angrily responded to by people who clearly haven’t read the post properly 😖

You. Are. Not. A. Parent.

Don’t you feel embarrassed making such grandiose statements given you have zero experience of parenthood?

My youngest DD is hopefully off to uni next year and I have been outraged on Facebook recently at suggestions from companies that I should be buying her a £900 kit to make her uni-ready - including luxury bedding, all brand new kitchen equipment etc.

What happened to get some bits together from home, things on offer, a few charity shop bits? And how is all this brand new luxury stuff going to fare in shared kitchens etc, with the arse burned out off pans when they forget they're cooking something? I remember thinking at uni in the 80's, I'd better get a decent job so I've got somewhere nice to live with nice things!

Your post has brought back lovely memories of a beach holiday in Wales spent with my child plus my sister and her two. They played so happily on the beach every day with buckets and spades, eating a picnic and having an ice cream on the way home. No theme park, just a little beach shop and a cafe. They built dams, sand castles, paddled and explored rock pools. We had one rainy day so took them to the cinema. I sometimes wonder if children get overstimulated with so much choice and need a bit of simple imagination led play.

I don't recognise any of what you're saying, aside from maybe the playing outside thing.

My kids are 16 and 14, so not old. I also live in a very deprived area, so the parents and children I know just aren't in a position to indulge every whim.

My sister's children however are ten years younger than mine. I suspect she'd resonate with your OP.

Mine love this too. We live near a beach so luckily they can do this until their hearts content, weather permitting (I await the PUDDLESUITS! comments)

There’s been quite big changes in short spaces of time.

Hahaha, patronising much.

I and others have commented that we see plenty of families on the kinds of holidays some people on this thread have claimed are not possible / would be a complete nightmare with kids. Indeed some of the people commenting are parents who have done such trips with their children. This was all in response to the poster who said she judges parents for taking their children on extravagant holidays.

Anyway, you seem to be rattled so I’ll leave you to it. Maybe go out for some fresh air or something.

🤣

This all gets worse around Christmas too. I have spent today manically clamouring to buy some sort of Christmas grotto tickets for my DC, which all seem to be sold out round here even though it’s still SEPTEMBER. Also I just want a cheap garden centre Santa and for the kids to get a little teddy or something, was hoping to pay maybe £5-10 a ticket but oh no, the only ones I can find are £16 per child including for my one year old (!) for a 5 min Santa visit. Because it’s at a farm park you also have to pay full price entry for everyone so an afternoon out to see Santa and some reindeer is coming to £98 for everyone. I refuse to pay that so now I am still searching for something suitable locally. We have already booked Panto at £26 a ticket, and even if I get a grotto somewhere I will still probably feel like I haven’t done enough for Xmas entertainment. Social media has a lot to answer for.

Yes but I am and plenty of others are too…who do these things with their children.
My DF did a part of the Camino last month and when he came back he was telling me about a lovely Japanese woman he met who was walking with her 4yr old. It’s.not.that.hard.