to be shocked at a mother feeding her 7 and 4 year old DS's yoghurt with a spoon?

[Anna8888]

Franco-American mother I know a little - her DSs are at the same school as my daughter. They were having a picnic lunch in the park yesterday and she fed them each a yoghurt (in its entirety) with a spoon.

I love an AIBU op who can't admit when they are BU, despite the overwhelming evidence.

Keep going, it's all good value stuff.

cory - why isn't enough that I say (as I did, very early on) that I know the child is not SN?

All threads on MN that judge parenting don't start off on the premise that we first have to provide evidence that children don't have SN. The premise is that children are NT unless proved otherwise .

can i just come in at this late stage and say maybe there was absolutely nothing the matter with these kids. maybe they were completely nt and just mucky buggers who are know by their mother to make a right mess with yoghurt? maybe it was just a 'i'll feed you it to save your clothes geting covered in dairy based snack when we have to still get home from the park?'

i've done that before now.

tmmj - perhaps.

Actually, when I started the thread, I was very sure that I believe that 7 year olds ought not to be spoonfed by their mothers (and particularly not in public) but four year olds? I wasn't sure. Hence the question.

Anna8888 on Thu 03-Jul-08 09:47:23
"cory - why isn't enough that I say (as I did, very early on) that I know the child is not SN?

All threads on MN that judge parenting don't start off on the premise that we first have to provide evidence that children don't have SN. The premise is that children are NT unless proved otherwise . "

Lots of people say they know things on the AIBU forum- and they invariably get challenged to prove how they know. That is part of what the AIBU forum does. "I know because I know" simply isn't good enough for us mumsnetters! If you don't want to be challenged- don't post here!

I might add that the default position that every child is NT until proved otherwise makes life very difficult for those of us who have children with invisible (not to mention as yet undiagnosed) SN.

cory - yes I'm sure the default position is hard for parents of SN children. But SN isn't the only difference people contend with in life, you know . Many of us are "different" from the norm. But we accept that there is a norm for the purpose of discussion.

Anna, I agree that spoonfeeding an NT 7 year old is odd, but less odd for a 4 year old who could still be needing to be 'babied'.

I wholeheartedly disagree that on mn there is a 'norm' that forms of basis of discussion. The one thing I like about mn is that there IS NO NORM. I can say something I assume to be gospel in my limited life experience, only to be contradicted by scores of mnetters. I learn from this. If you cannot accept Cory's right to point out SN invisibility and challenge your view that the children do not have SN, then I think you are wearing blinkers.

BTW, there are differences and there are differences. SN is one of those that is right up there in terms of challenging for parents and almost impossible for an outsider to understand who does not have first hand 24/7 experience of caring for such a child.

My mum used to occasionally spoonfeed us up until we were 7 or 8. This was because we were skinny children with no interest in food and would have eaten half of nothing all day if we could have got away with it. So sometimes she used to spoon a bit of something nutritious into us to avoid a half hour battle over making us do it ourselves. I do think 7 is a bit old for that kind of thing and of course you'd hope your children would have more sense than I did at that age, just saying you don't necessarily know the reasoning behind it and it might be more sensible than it seems.

blueshoes - I think there is a norm and that that is why MN provides topics (for SN, overseas living, multicultural families, stepparenting... etc etc etc) so that specific parenting challenges can be discussed in context

I spoonfeed ds quite a lot of the time because otherwise he takes 1 mouthful and considers the hunger "dealt with" then legs it. If I want him to finish his food I have to help. Just the way he is at the moment. OK he's 3, but Lucicle's point is spot on, perhaps that's the reason.

I am sure it was because she didn't have any wipes.

But you are on AIBU. Should someone with an SN child not have equal right to comment on an AIBU thread as someone with an NT child?

I would like to know what the norm is. Is there a norm for race, nationality, ability, intelligence, religion, body shape, eating habits, dress sense, family set up, marital status, working status, health, wealth, sanity. What about all the differences you allude to.

The simple fact is that SN is one area which presents particular difficulty for judgey people on AIBU threads.

Assuming the child hasn't got SN - and there are all sorts of possibilities apart from SN, 7 may be considered a little old BUT maybe it was a rare occurrence. Who knows? As I said before, I think it's more unreasonable to get exercised about it. Furthermore, on balance I'd rather be a kid with a Mother who fed me once in a while than a kid with a Mum who seemed happy to expend a lot of precious energy judging others. Hmm, time for me to leave this thread, methinks!

WELL I THINK I WOULD HAVE BEEN SHOCKED, BUT SOUND LIKE I MIGHT BE THE ONLY 1.
SHOCKED AS TO WHAT WOULD ANY BODY WANT TO FEED THERE 7 YEAR OLD FOR? PERSONALLY ONCE I KNEW MY SON WAS CAPABLE THEN HE DID IT HIM SELF, WETHER IT WAS WALKING, TALKING, FEEDING, THE TOILET. IMO I SEE IT AS KEEPING THEM DEPENDANT ON YOU, AND WHERE DOES THAT GET THEM?

Gosh Jord Tyler. You're a bit shouty. Is your real name Owen Meany or is your keyboard stuck?

Lol Iorek
Keyboard stuck, I think. She is screaming all over MN

jesus what does it matter, i am sure the boys ARE quite capable of feeding themselves, phaps she only had one spoon, maybe she thought it would be quicker, easier and less messy to do it that way?

whatever it doesnt matter and isnt really any of your business.

fwiw, i occasionally feed my ds2 (who is 6 today) not because he cant feed himself but because he sometimes gets tired and cant make the effort to do it himself, he is also underwieght for his height so i would rather feed him a couple of extra spoon/forkfulls of his dinner myself to make sure he gets a few extra calories, its no big deal, he can and does feed himself the majority of the time.

who cares!!!!!!!

i think it does matter in so far as children are staying reliant on their parents for longer and longer.. they have lost so much of their freedom and independence already (ie parents insisting on driving their teenage kids everywhere because they're so afraid of the outside world, 26 being the new 18, 30 being the new 21, i could go on). I'm not saying this is caused by mums feeding their able bodied 7 year olds yoghurts. but it is symptomatic of the problem.

we have to let our kids get messy. we have to let them make mistakes, or they'll all be hanging on to our apron strings at 45.

"jesus what does it matter" actually that could be the response to any number of threads - should we have a new acronym JWDIM?

not that we have apron strings anymore necessarily, but yknwim.

Oh .

Is this still going on?

Really?

JWDIM!

"And having seen at first hand how children with Asperger's fail to thrive in multilingual educational settings in my own childhood, I understand the policy."

How many children with AS/ASD do you actually know?

Ds1 (ASD), despite being late to start talking, has turned out to have a real gift for languages.

IME the only thing that all children with AS have in common is that they have the triad of impairments that is necessary for a diagnosis.

KEYBOARD STUCK SEE. didn't realise i shoutin sorry. no shouting intended.

coppertop - there were quite a few ASD children at my school (3000 pupils, non-selective intake) where all children had to study at least three modern languages (mother tongue plus two others), including taking subjects in a language other than their mother-tongue - which is the situation in my daughter's school.

They all had a hard time with the baccalaureate. It was just one of those things.

So based on that experience - I understand where bilingual/multilingual schools' policies come from.