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

Honestly it won’t all change and there will be things you are planning you will absolutely stick to. There will also be things you will change your mind about or that you’ll give up on occasionally. I think it’s helpful to always remember that children are people, that some are more strong willed and determined and some are more passive and obedient regardless of how you parent and that being of the first type isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
It’s very easy to insist you just wouldn’t tolerate x/y/z from a theoretical child but it’s usually less easy in practice. I mean the idea kids will never interrupt in particular is a bit over optimistic (& I say that not just from experience of my own but from running a local cub group and volunteering in schools). They improve as they get older with loads of reminders but little kids just do interrupt a lot. They don’t have great impulse control and when they are excited about stuff they are tripping over themselves to tell you all about it, right now. It’s actually quite endearing how excited they are and you find yourself balancing teaching manners with not totally squashing their exuberance.

I've seen this post a little late but don't stress the lunchboxes, I started back in Reception with animal shaped sandwiches as I only had one kid then and I enjoyed it, now I hate making lunchboxes (except that I did get a note from my 8yo recently that said thank you for making her lunchboxes and did gush a lot). Now she gets a Dairylea dunker with mini sausages some days or crackers and a cheese triangle and knife to spread it herself (she's gone off sandwiches....). plus crisps, fruit and a little sweeter treat. I make two in a row but its nothing fancy.

This year's birthday party was just at our house, it was arts and crafts and then they all just played in the garden, supermarket cake.

Not sure where I read it but kids need to be bored and as my two have got older I so believe in that, my two don't stay bored for long, they do a lot of imaginary play and I think that comes from not allowing them to have too much done for them entertainment wise.

Also just to add ahead of Christmas...you don't need matching PJs, the kids don't need Christmas Eve boxes, chocolate coins are a fabulous stocking filler....

It's all hideous greed. Stop it.. Have the guts to say no.

One of my children was expecting a new Halloween costume this year - when they have one that fits and has only been worn once.

I'm not giving in. They tantrummed. They insisted they had to have it because they had already told their friends they would be wearing it. But ultimately, they can't order things off Amazon.

Matching pjs seems disgustingly wasteful. Shein must make a killing. These Christmas Eve boxes are just materialistic and greedy too.

No one said it would be easy!

True and in fairness lots of worthwhile things aren’t :)

@Americasfavouritefightingfrenchman Precisely. But, it seems to me, bringing children into this world and preparing them (eventually) to enter adulthood, is just about the most worthwhile and perhaps demanding thing any of us can do. It's not easy but saying "no" sometimes is just as important as saying "yes" sometimes, perhaps it's even more important but more difficult.