To be booooooooored to death of smug PFB comments on MN. It's shite, you know it is.

[welliemum]

It's an old story. Someone posts an OP in which you can see that they?re being quite protective or concerned about their child ? maybe a bit too much so.

Within minutes, someone will ask, ?Is this your first child??

Then the floodgates open for a deluge of posts along the lines of ?Oh, you are a silly little thing - when you have TWO children and are as fabulously wise and experienced as I am, you will See The Error Of Your Ways? [virtual pat on head].

I just don?t get this. It?s like jeering at a learner driver for driving slowly. Would you want an 18 year old with a sparkly new licence to be barrelling down the motorway at 90 mph?

We live in a society where most of us have very little contact with babies until we have our own. IMO it?s absolutely right that new, inexperienced parents should have safety margins the size of Australia until they?ve sorted out what is truly risky and what isn?t. In fact I?d go further and say that that?s the ONLY sensible way to parent if you?re new to the game.

Far rather rush around madly sterilising than put your tiny baby in hospital on a drip because you were too cool to wash a bottle.

As far as I can see, PFB comments have nothing to do with giving helpful advice to a new parent, and everything to do with massaging the ego of the PFB-commentator.

SD - I have just burst out laughing.

Mine is only 6WO and he's here, in full view in his moses basket. I suppose even I'm hoping I'll have moved on by the time he's 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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that's worrying.

My mum irons everything for me, my sister and now my PFB...

I mean, she irons babygrows - why is this?

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Um been away from mn for some time,PFB?

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I must be really freaky because I don't think I have PFB syndrome ... (Precious First Born appyday)
and I don't iron either (anything)... and I think dirt is good? all those bacteria are good fr the immune system surely?
I didn't sterilise bottles after four months unless I was expressing b/m, as she was sucking her hands anyway, and starting to pick up stuff...

too too guilty.. actually I think I was too too tired...

Should I check my 4yo DD at nighttime? She gets up herself if she needs a wee. Frankly I'd be afraid of waking her up! I need my sleep me

Yes, actually I'm feeling a bit left out here... I had a lot of experience of children by the time dd1 was born so I never did the PFB thing, having already worked out my anxieties on other people's children!

With dd1 I had a lot of comments about how relaxed I was. Sometimes this was said with barely concealed disapproval, as if I couldn't possibly be a Proper Mother if I wasn't neurotic about the baby. So you can't win!

(In truth it was a very difficult time because I was battling to get breastfeeding going and I don't remember being relaxed AT ALL. Which only goes to show.)

There seems to be differing opinions on what is PFB-behaviour. I'm expecting my first this month and I'm prepared to accept that I may be an utter nightmare. I've already been told by some people (in RL not on MN) that I'm being PFB, because I've tried to avoid alcohol in pregnancy (). I declined to go round to a friend's house when their children were suffering from slapped cheek syndrome and I was 12 weeks - again, I ended up with a swarm of PFB comments. In cases like that, it wasn't particularly helpful and ended up making me more stressed because I worried that I was being precious. Even if I am being terribly precious, these are all people who were allowed the PFB learning curve so I'd like to be allowed to ease myself into parenting in the same way. Having said that, I'm very glad I've found MN. I'd be happy to be told if I was worrying about something which was completely unnecessary (which has happened once or twice already!).

I agree welliemum. In fact people are patronizing when you have just one child, not just on mumsnet but in real life. When your only child does something it's PFB, but if it is a child from a big family, then it's due to some other reason.
I am so looking forward to dc2, as I won't have to hear these smug comments(though if it is another girl, I'll probably have to put up with the "It's different with a boy brigade!"

I sort of accept that my ds is PFB - some things I have been flappity about and other times I have been strangely relaxed.

If I have asked for advice I don't percieve advice given by more experienced parents to be patronising especially not MN'ers. I used to get a bit wound up about random's giving me advice but now I just smile and say "thank you, I'll give it a try" and either do or don't.

With hindsight I was a bit oversensetive in the early days but it has gradually faded. A lot of the time, especially with older people, they are just trying to start conversations and it might be the only one they have all day.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet (though Sopabox touched on it) is that advanced stages of PFB syndrome (not of course the reasonable care exercised by Mumsnetters !) can be seriously inconveniencing for other people in RL.

There are Mums out there (and Dads) whose precious baby's routines and little ways become so important that they cannot see the needs of other people- or those of other people's babies. I have come across such people; indeed, I have lived close to one of them. Everybody accepts that the parents of a tiny baby are going to focus their needs around same baby- but when the same baby gets to 3 years old and then to 5, and any a activity has to be structured around the child's needs to be home for exactly the right time to eat the exact tea that they're used to in their own house...well, it does get a little tiring, particularly if there are other children involved. (hasten to add that SN is a very different matter and I would only have sympathy)

Or parents who steam into the school once a week and demand to have control over everything, from the way their child is taught to read to whom he plays with at breaktime.

Or parents who believe every word their child says despite plentiful evidence to the contrary. Always the other child's fault, never their own child's.

Or parents who entertain other parents with tales of my child the genius. And refuse to listen to anything at all concerning another child.

But such instances are rare- they really are! Most parents do learn to relax after the first few emtional months (and we all need to do those!) and I know plenty of single children who are parented in a perfectly sensible and no-nonsense way. And I am sure the vast majority of MNs would never behave in the way mentioned above.

So I think it would be silly to take up a default position of First child=Precious parent. I know some people who fuss more over the third than other, more relaxed, Mums over their first and only.

There does often seem to be an element of competitive relaxed parenting, who can be the least PFB, e.g. "I'm just so easy going, little Jonny just hangs from the light fittings, it's good for him to explore his boundaries..."

Cory thats a very interesting way of looking at it. It leads us back to the debate about whether we are now too "child centric" I guess.

Never did PFB. I think it came from a sort of Pollyannaish feeling that it would be all right so I winged it completely. And guess what I was right When I see mothers angsting over the petty stuff I do feel a desire to tell them to step back, take a deep breath and get some perspective. I don't - well I don't think I do but it's very tempting. I genuinely don't understand why some posters get so worked up over things that wouldn't even occur to me to turn a hair - so I've started staying off threads like that. 'Don't worry about it, it'll be OK' isn't particuarly constructive advice even if well meant. And if someone asked me 'do I need to sterilise X, Y and Z' I genuinely couldn't remember.

There are plenty of things that do worry me about which I have asked for help and advice atm. Having tiny babies and toddlers just never was one of those things.

I agree cory. But one of the biggest steamers into school round here is a mother of 5!

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yeah well i chuck my 14mo out of the door after breakfast and tell him to be home as it gets dark

Heffa- that's normal - not PFB behaviour. I wouldn't go knowingly near a child with slapped cheek at 12 weeks pregnant and I have 3 kids (2 unvaccinated, one severely disabled in part from the effects of a virus). I think the opposite ('my child puked this morning, but needs to get out and play so I'm going to bring him or her to toddler group with no regard to the fact that he'll infect the whole lot of you' is far more precious and irritating).

I agree with cory and soapbox- being protective of your child is normal and fair enough, but expecting the world to revolve around them is not. And if PFB behaviour starts affecting/upsetting others then I do think it's going to be pointed out by someone.....

i was, and still am, a PFB, my mum tells me how she used to sterilise my toys once a week but then let the dog lick my face and share my ice cream
I seem to remember getting completely puzzled by tog ratings - if it's only half covering him, do i halve the tog rating???

It's not about having an only child though is it, it's a style of parenting. I do avoid parents that I see as over-precious because I just find them irritating, but it's not related to how many children they have.

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A classic example of my PFB v Neglected Subsequent Child is:

1. PFB DS1 wore only new clothes
2. DS2 had all DS1s clothes from the loft, freshly washed in preparation
3. DD had the clothes from the loft. Hey, they were washed before they were put up there 5 years previously...

Anyway, as someone else pointed out further down, even the medical professions recognise PFB syndrome when they don't treat second+ timers as being quite so neurotic as first time parents.

Pretty much the whole PFB things rests on the simple fact that second time round you realise they're not quite as fragile as you thought they were. If they were that fragile, the human race would probably have died out by now and the world would be run by squirrels.

It's really no different to anything else. once you've done it once, each subsequent time is generally easier.