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

DD has never been one for big parties but the party we all remember the most is her eighth, where we hired the village hall, borrowed some decs from a Halloween mad friend, invited the whole (quite small) class, and just did hot dogs, squash and cake. (late October birthday luckily - so fancy dress was very straightforward!)
My young adult kids organised lots of running and chasing games and we all had a fab time. DH had been really poorly and self employed so things were very tight indeed but we all remember it with great fondness. We are very rural though, I wonder if there is less pressure for expensive events.

You’re replying to a fictional post. My OP wasn’t ‘why is it illegal to take your kids in long haul holidays?’

Happy to see the votes indicate I’m not such a hapless parent after all 😉

You are nicer than me. I said mummy is too busy with you two to deal with anyone else making a mess 😂

A lot of the time when I see those ‘something that never gets talked about’ posts I think ‘actually that gets talked about a lot!’

Bur one thing that really DOESN’T get talked about enough is the way you get trapped in child land with very little children.

There is no way I can take my two year old to a museum, a book store and browse myself, go shopping and wander round followed by a leisurely coffee, etc.

Before the critiques of my parenting start, she’s actually very good. I can nip to the shops and maybe have a maximum of three shops before she gets restless. I can have a coffee but I can’t just sit and veg out.

Last week she went to a theatre production and sat beautifully but it was one for toddlers.

When I’m home with them they never stop demanding my attention, mummy mummy mummy, do you like this, watch this, listen to this. It’s exhausting and relentless. It’s one reason I’m not a massive fan of the early years. I don’t think it’s a societal thing in my case, just toddlers.

No I’m replying to your last post…anyway it doesn’t matter. I gave my opinions/suggestions on your initial post too. It’s not a one size fits all approach this parenting malarkey…personally I think it’s entirely down to “capacity and capability ” and it’s all but too late by the time most people realise they don’t have the capacity etc. so the choices are to change things to suit you and your family.

Precisely. This isn’t about ‘good versus naughty’. Even the best behaved 3 year old will kick off on a long shopping trip, or a trip to a silent art gallery - because they’re 3!!!!!!!!

My Gran is in her 80s and had 6 children, she also looked after us when we were little. I remember her saying ‘All my friends now swear their children didn’t tantrum. They ALL tantrummed. I just have a much better memory’. She hates it when ladies with adult children claim they never cried, slept through from 2 weeks old, never got ill etc

Where did I mention holidays and feeling unable to hike the Inka trail?

Do you talk to other parents? Do they all feel the same? Sounds boring and exhausting.

I actually just like stuff like this. I think we did craft and art activities with the kids and their friends from when the eldest was about 3. Everyone has their things they enjoy and often the trick is just figuring out how you do those things with your kids so it’s fun for everybody

You. Are. Not. A. Parent.
Don’t you feel embarrassed making such grandiose statements given you have zero experience of parenthood

I was replying to this…calm down

Really? It's only been three years since my youngest was in primary school.

Maybe I'm just better at saying no.

Thoroughly agree with it being incredibly hard work and absolutely bloody relentless.
everything is better after a good nights sleep and you feel much more resilient and able to have the battles and assert yourself over your offspring, but how to get that sleep in the first place (whisky on the gums? Piriton? Benalyn?)
Plus the whole peer pressure thing. I’d hoped once I’d left school it would be over but turns out you get it vicariously through your children

Sorry - my post seems dismissive now I read it back.

It is hard and relentless, I agree, but I guess my "hard and relentless" was not the same as yours.

I think the spectacular holiday thing, as someone else mentioned, is setting up really high expectations for kids at too young an age. My childhood holidays were brown tent with flowery curtains in Wales/ Cornwall/ North Yorkshire…my own kids holidays were similar.

My teen kids friends were forever getting taken to Thailand/ Greece/ Italy. When my children complained they never got those kind of holidays I said “ ah but think how exciting it will be when you get to save up and explore the world when you get older”.
Like, go to New York when you are 21, not 10. You want to be able to order a cocktail!

That’s just passive aggressive. Just say ‘I’m a better parent than you appear to be.’

i think that most good, excellent parents can and do say no but recognise that constantly doing so is detrimental to their relationship so don’t sweat the small stuff.

No good parent has a day that’s about them. No good parents drag the children on an adult holiday and expect them to suffer in silence. Good parents do activities and things that their children enjoy even if they personally find them tedious.

Yes, you can get some common ground. I love being outside so we have a lot of walks, seeing the ducks, and so on. We read a lot as I love that. But obviously they are five and two, they aren’t going to be into Shakespeare yet

Sometimes children have to go along with adults. There’s no way to avoid that. But doing it all the time is just selfish and people who want an adult life have no business having children at all IMO.

Oh, and it all goes so damn quick OP in the end. In Spring I’m going on holiday with my boyfriend, no kids, for the first time in years, and I can’t wait!

Absolutely. I’m not a martyr - if there’s something I don’t like, we don’t do it. I don’t like soft play so we tend to go to parks instead as I like being outside. But there’s zero chance of my toddler sitting nicely through a long, dull museum trip, and it hasn’t escaped my attention that everyone claiming he should either don’t have children, or had children 30+ years ago.

I was saying to DH the other day that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a newborn already, even though my youngest is 2. People’s memories are very short.

Hope you have a great time!

😆 you’re certainly better at pass agg messages, that’s for sure!

Given the number of children who have choked I don't mind the extra fuss about lunchboxes.

I agree about parties though. Local function room, a homemade buffet, a few balloons tossed about to play keepy uppy. Some pre-mixed party music on a CD or cassette. That was the dream.

Do you have a career as well as all this?
It's bloody ridiculous this country.

I know it's tough but children are egos on legs. They think tat and parties and screaming makes them happy. Some of them are exhausted after the stupid demands made by school.
TRy to be firm, you should have a life.

Parenting does seem to have gone nuts! By today's standards, I had a neglected childhood 😁 but that was just the norm, and I don't feel hard done by.

My niece's first birthday took place in a village hall with streamers and showers of gifts. My mum commented "What's wrong with pushing the pram out into the garden?" I think my earliest happy memory is of lying in my pram, looking peacefully up at the trees. (My birthday is in the summer!)

How can a 1-year-old possibly understand and enjoy all this commotion? Worse still, what sort of expectations does it set?

I blame marketing and social media for creating ludicrous aspirations that have nothing to do with a contented childhood, quite the opposite. Children are often overstimulated and brought up to want expensive things, hmmmm I wonder who that benefits? 🤔

gifts for attending parties ridiculous too. It’s about £50 per child at the school my DC attend. I used to put a £10 in a card until I noticed all the expensive clothes and gifts getting handed out parties. Then my DC had a party and all gifts were around £50. One parent gave my dc an expensive tracksuit, a doll and an M&S gift card. It never ends.

utterly tedious and I find parenting so utterly boring.

Yes I suppose you can draw similarities with things like hen/stag dos - just everything is on a bigger scale and more expensive. And you feel you have to go along with it. My best friend’s hen cost me £500. 3 people posted straight talking ‘I can’t afford this, sorry I’m out’ messages in the WhatsApp group and yet the organiser didn’t get the hint and booked more activities.