This is bonkers mummy behaviour

[constantnc]

At the pool. Waiting on kids in swim lesson.

There is a mummy walking/following her 2 year old around..
Both soaked from swimming,
are you choosing a cubicle? Which one do you want? Joe mummy wants to go home...I know you want to stay....why are you walking around the changing room, no treat now, come on go in there, let's go let's go....he's now wailing while mummy is narrating the whole thing while following him around the communal room.

Ffs pick him up and take him into a cubicle...aibu?

We are now on you are tired after your swimming lesson, I know, let's get changed now....still carrying the swim bags around the room 🫣

You really think this is a good way to bring up your kid as your best friend? Do you gentle parent?
Personally I couldn't give a shit how other people raise their kids, They are the ones having to deal with the shit storm that eventually comes along and society has to get on with it.

Hope you did some stretching before you made that massive reach, you might have pulled a muscle!

No wonder there are so many snowflakes out there.
Aand it’s only going to get worse …

She might be on edge worrying about avoiding a melt down for everyone’s sake. If you have a child with SEN then swimming pool changing rooms are THE WORST place for a meltdown. Confined cubicles, echoing surfaces, lots of chatter, smells… she’s probably treading on eggshells just waiting.

I eventually stopped taking my DD swimming because of the changing rooms.

But the OP and you have no idea how this woman raises her child, it was a snapshot….

She might well know that physically picking her child up and restraining them is the point they wrestle free and run for the exit (happened to me) or that it triggers such a bad melt down that it takes about 6 hours for everyone to recover afterwards!

My muscles are fine thanks for asking. 😉
Just have an opinion like everyone else on here including you.

Your child should not be your best friend. You are their parent. Quite a different relationship.

Gentle parenting should absolutely involve boundaries. Any fucking parenting should involve boundaries.

Lots of comments about gentle/permissive parenting, what will these kids grow up to be like as adults etc. I am around 50. Lots of people around me grew up with strict parenting and did what they were told at home.

Lots of them still grew up to be whinging, incompetent, bitter, angry and violent arseholes who can't handle criticism.

This isn't about snap shots of anything, no one took a photo.
I wasn't referring to the swim woman so some of you need to stop the fake not understanding.
I was talking about parents who follow 'my child is my best friend' is not the way to go if you are the adult the child isn't your best friend. Because as I said previously, best friends don't tell you when to go to bed, eat your veggies and tell you you can only have 1/2 hour screen time, but a parent will do those things.
Why is it so difficult to understand?

OK Alice calm down 😂

Oh sod off re the ADHD assessment comment.

🙄

Perhaps it is a parent who has seen the outcome of picking her son up and ushering him into a cubicle and is trying something different to see if it works. What was the end of the interaction with him?

My 3 kids are grown up now. I am often surprised when I look back and see a lack of correlation between annoying, stupid parenting and how the kids turned out. I had a friend who never said 'no' to her one precious perfect son: he is a very happy, hardworking, disciplined 30 year old now. Then there was my friend who put her children in full time day care at 6 weeks (in the US) and never took more than 2 weeks leave a year: 2 happy, well-adjusted, men in their late 20s who are close to one another and to their parents. Lots of other kids with other stories- the correlations are not clear.

The only thing that seems clear to me is that parents who are unable to be reasonably authoritative parents who are also kind, flexible, and clear-headed, tend not to have such a happy time when they are parents of young children (and their kids don't seem particularly settled and comfortable either). The kids often turn out wonderfully well in the end, though.

I'm fine thanks, just chilled, so nice randoms are asking about me😀

This choice thing has definitely gone too far! Children need a max of two options whenever they're offered a choice, especially 2 year olds! Both options should be palatable to the adult, eg orange or banana? Getting the F changed should not be optional. How each parent does this is up to them but nobody wants to hear their narration on little Daisy’s life. Children need them to take charge in a kind but firm way.

Giving children choices means - do you want to wear the red jumper or the blue one? Or what will we buy, spaghetti or macaroni? Or shall we go to play on the swings of feed the ducks?

Not walking them into Tesco and letting them dictate the entire shop, obviously. Or behaving like Joe's mum and not being a parent.

I don't know anyone who refers to a young child as their best friend. Isn't that usually something some people say about teens or young adult children?

I was a relatively gentle parent, but we still had boundaries and rules and, of course, some situations in which you just pick up the child and get on with it. And all three grown up to be fully functioning members of society and very nice people too. No issues in school or with teachers or peers.

If anything, it's the people I know who were overly strict authoritarian parents who ran into trouble in the teen years.

I tend to live and let live (unless someone is parenting in an obviously abusive way or harmful way).

God, I remember all the mistakes I made when the kids were small. All the judgement: too soft, too hard, need to get a job and not be a SAHM, need to work less, could never seem to get it right.

My kids are severely (and obviously) disabled and I still got given unsolicited advice or tuts, or insinuations I caused their severe intellectual disabilities with my very normal parenting ("have you tried talking to them more?"). I've seen at least one person on this thread has already joked how swimming pool child will be labelled SEN.

And after all that, I'm not even sure how much "parenting" influences how kids turn out anyway. My children are very close in age and completely different.

I obviously don't know Joe or his mother, but isn't it possible that she knows from previous experience that if she picks him up and takes him into a cubicle, he'll have a tantrum that will bring the walls down? I'd think that would be more annoying to other people.

I'd be hugely tempted to march up to Joe and say "right Joe, enough of this nonsense. Your mummy needs to get you changed and get you both home. I'll get very cross if you don't do as you're told this minute!"

No doubt mummy would lose her shit at me but 🤷

Didn't even see this comment - agree entirely. My kids aren't adults but I've already noticed this as per my comment. On a smaller scale, most of my friends have disabled children (all our kids go to a special school) and there's seeningly absolutely no way to predict which ones have violent challenging behaviour.

In a school setting gentle parenting and permissive parenting have precisely the same outcomes.

Six year olds who need a ten minute discussion about why they have to stop throwing the play doh around and parents who are furious that the need for a discussion wasn’t indulged.

This reminds me of living in London and at rush hour woman would let little oscar, the barely walking toddler swipe her oyster card and let him be out of the pram in rush hour on a very busy train...one morning the woman said ''come on oscar you're holding up the line'...I couldn't help myself to say 'no one thinks it's Oscars fault he's holding up the line'