I am fed up of being made to feel like a bad mother...

[fedupofgoody2shoes]

on MN. Most of the time I oove it but recently there have been far too many gasps and rolling eyes (well if we could see each others eyes that is).

Yes - I breastfed and will do again
I use disposable nappies
I used a mixture of homemade food and jars when weaning
I have a freezer with readymeals in it as well as home made meals
My kids have crisps and biscuits

I will never use washable nappies (I have a life)
I will never breastfeed and my bottle fed kids are healthier than some kids I know who were breastfed until they were 2.5. My kids have no allergies at all and that includes ezcema, asthma etc.

Please - give us mums who choose alternative ways a break and stop all this goody 2 shoes attitude with people. there is no need to look down your noses. Not everyone has time to spend washing nappies and cooking all day. Some of us have full time jobs, school runs, house to keep, dancing and swimming lessons, and some people don't take to breastfeeding. If powder milk was so bad they wouldn't sell it!

Please stop making people feel so judged (not all of MN is like this but there are a select few!)

I've read your mate Marcus just recently LGJ.... is this the quote you mean?

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment -- Marcus Aurelius

Quite Marcus old bean.

god don't you hate it when you have been flippant and then you actually have something to say?
I can honestly say thatn I have NEVER been made to feel like a bad mother from reading anything on here.

how could I? because, you know what, I am a good mother. I am a grown up and I make my own choices. If those choices are pretty limited by circumstance - hey ho, they are still my choices.

I am genuinely very interested in other people's choices and their points of view, and if they are different from mine I might reassess mine and change. or not.

If I was to feel particularly sensitive about a particular choice then I wouldn't post it. nad if I did post it then I wouldn't expect anyone ON HERE to soothe me about my decision e.g. to bf my toddler into early adolescence.

a little gentle p**s taking makes the world go round, right? as Pruni says, so many other parenting sites, and PARENTS, can be a bit round shouldered about the business of parenting. not this one, thank god.

Very good buffy...spot on.

me too, buffy.

I was rather riled by the fedup and logic's posts tbh. But as HMC has pointed out, perhaps I should have said "show me a recent thread where crisp eating was denounced as evil"

Perhaps there are some and I just didn't notice because actually I DON´T CARE what other people think is evil. If I did I would have to go and live in a hole in the ground.

But anyway.

bottles, curry and lentils are evil and you're all bitches.

I posted this on another thread but it was so damn good i had to post here as well (not really, just thought it was relevant for this one as well, in fact probably more relevant thant the thread i origanly posted it on )

Doesn't everyone do some bad stuff and some good stuff anyway?

For instance i'm 23 (that alone is enough to make some rl people mutter under their breath) and i didn't breatsfeed. Age? no.I did try but I had mastitis, bleeding nipples (i still have scars) a breast abcess, pus in my milk and i wasn't eating because i was pretty miserable when dd was born so my milk supply dried up the moment i tried expressing. I would have hung upside dpwn and swung from a tree if it would have helped!
I put DD in front of Cbeebies if i have large amounts of ironing etc to do, hey she enjoys it and i have peace! BUT i also take her out to the park and soft play centres etc, and i read to her.
Sometimes she won't eat at all and i resort to giving her anything at all that may tempt her- after a week of trying homemade food i resorted to alphabites , babybells and even the odd turkey dinasaur! She ate it which was wonderful and stopped me pulling my hair out, and saved my sanity when i was making homecooked food for 1 hour and a half which then went straight in the bin! Now she is eating better i am cooking loads of stuff for her and giving her fruit but even now if i have no time she will have stuff that isn't organic, additve free, sugar free and salt free
Basicaly we are all human and we all do stuff that isn't great and stuff that is!
None of this makes us bad or good parents! it makes us doing the best for out kids and, also for ourselves which is imprortant too.

Live and let live! Can't we all just...get along?

SS - and i'm still blinded by the dangling sore boobed lady image

get it out of my head, get it out of my head!

Merryberry- i lied you're reason i posted it twice, just in case you thought you could get away from it

a little piss take - on this thread - i may concede. i did post the book thing - it wasn't taking the piss out of the poster but taking the piss out of the "perfect" ideology.

am Glad that your a strong person serendipity. however some people arn't as strong as you - and they are grown up too.

if your peers say - smoking is bad - then after time not smoking is the thing to do.

if your peers say breastfeeding is good, then after time breastfeeding is seen as the thing to do

if your peers say boden - then you look

some epople are strong - however some people are not. i am of the i am not variety. i look on mumsnet as a source of help and advice, i have some drinking buddies on here. and on more than one occasion your advice has stopped me from being rash or over sensative. you have advised me as teachers and as healthcare professionals. you have advised me as mothers and daughters. I cannot dissmiss all this support - becuase you are faceless at te end of a computer screen - i take it. the same as if another thread made to mock the original poster - i feel rubbish for the poster. i think its been taken to far. its like throwing rotten fruit at someone who wanted to discuss something. its mockery. its like 15 year olds sniggering at your shoes becuase they arethe werong shade of black.

this poster is being told to shrug off comments by other people. yet mnetters are starting another thread - why start this thread if this is your argument.

its just too much of a juxtaposition for me. i take your advice, your comments good and bad and your advice has shaped decisions i make in real life - so your not just faceless people. your mumsnet.

i feel this could have been debated rationally. i feel the lentil weavers have a point - why should they apologise for making lentil jumpers? of course we shouldn't have to apologise for our lifestyles.

there was a premise for a good debate. which is where the grown up bit comes in. thats where it comes in ..here...having a reasoned debate to come to a decision.

You've entirely missed the point of the thread, custy. I am not asking the lentil weavers to apologise for their lifestyles. I couldn't care less how they bring up their kids. I am simply fed up of them deciding that anyone else's lifestyle is bad just because it is not their's. It's human nature to be judgemental and we are all guilty of it but they seem to take it to a (IMO) very aggressive and unpleasant extent. Someone will post about something quite innocent that they are worried about and and get 'bad mummy' mud flung at them when no-one is perfect at this parenting game. No-one.

I am fair-to-middling and that is good enough for me.

Bollarks to anyone else.

I personally am shocked at these mothers that brag about home made jam, does noone think of the sugar content?

Of course it's not on to say that crisp feeding is child abuse (I shall remember to just think it next time ). But I don't see that the hippy types are more guilty of sticking their oar in than anyone else. In my opinion, the division we're talking about here should not be between the crisp feeders and the lentil weavers (wtf are we all talking about here? ), but between polite or humourous posters, and rude, interfering, judgemental ones. But the lentil weavers keep on copping the flak, it seems.

And despite appearances to the contrary, I am not averse to a little gentle piss taking. It just that it goes on and on and on sometimes, and in my opinion is not always kindly meant.

Once again agree with Hellmouth...and with lentil weaving (or whatever the nomenclature is) frannykenstein...and that's despite being a 'crisp feeder'

I can't be arsed with all this.

People should live their lives however they wish and not look down on others just cause they do things differently. It works the other way too, inverted snobbery. I don't partake in jam making, but don't gat my knickers in a knot about mothers who do.

oh franny I didn't mean you! I was going to say that you perhaps felt you copped a lot of flak because you were so weak from the lack of animal protein...
now I know that wouldn't offend you...
ps did you really say that about crisp feeders or did you just want to ?

I agree that the original poster has been pretty much ripped apart by the hyenas on this one!

Much debate has been given to the fact that she said "stop making people feel so judged", how do you make someone feel anything? Well the same way that if you take the piss too much out of someone you "make" them feel like shit. Don't tell me no-one here has been "made" to feel inadequate or guity by what others have said? It was a stupid point to make just to rub it in even further.

I wouldn't be on Mumsnet if I didn't need a little help and advice myself.

I didn't start the other thread specifically to be vile or snide to the original poster on this thread, although the timing was inspired by it, it has to be said.

It was as a response to what seems to be people taking a real lack of responsibility for their actions - obviously MN is about support as much as it's about banter, etc. but there seems to be an overwhelming turn towards saying posters saying they did or are going to do something, then getting pissed off when other people post to disagree, however softly, softly.

There have been loads of times I've seen people say that other people have made them feel a certain way about what they've chosen to do - I started a thread about it on a more specific topic ages ago.

It seems that at one end of the spectrum, people are confident in their decisions, know they're right for them, and would do the same again, and at the other, they had their choices made for them and feel rotten about it. In the middle are people who usually do things the way they want to, but sometimes don't, either through choice, or simply not knowing there's another way to do something.

Any one of these people can be helpful, sanctimonious, judgemental, supportive, etc - often it will depend on the subject. Or it will depend on the "mood" of MN at the time - often a jokey thread will look like a vindictive piece of shit in the cold light of day, when you haven't read the ones leading up to it.

logic thats not what am saying at all. its been suggested that the original poster takes mumsnet too seriously and how can mumsnet influence how they feel ( see pisstake other thread)

i think you have misconstrude my post - this has happened twice on different threads - maybe am just not articulate enough. i certainly feel like am not getting accross what i mean to.

am just suggesting that it could have been a good discussion instead of what its turned into.

i am also suggesting that mumsnet has quite an influence on some poeople. me included i think your a well considered lot on the whole.

am not a lentil weaver am more of a burger and chip off the pegger. i do however see the lentil weavers POV. but thats not my point - at all - its not my main point - in fact its a teeny weeny point in my last post. my point was around all the piss take.

there seems to me to be two sides. those who think that they are entitled to lentil weaving and that mumsnet is a source of entertainment rather than a community of advice.

and those burger and chip off the peggers.

somehow i seemed to have pissed off both - am not sure how i did that.

i agree hunker there are a contingent who ask " wqhy is it wrong to give my son bisuits2 then get arsey when they get a reply. i agree with that point

Hellmouth- no you're wrong! i'm not a strong person at all. I've had my confidence knocked for 6 by rl people who have made very rude comments about my age, and lately someone who told me i was "abusing" my dog by training him. Put me in this situation an my mind goes completly blank, i can't think of a thing to say to them and spend the rest of the day analizing my parenting/dog training methods!
But i have always, always tried my upmost not to judge anyone else and not to form an opinion until i really know a person (this is mainly down to my mother who is the complete oppisite, and also being bullied at school for being a "snob" because i didn't have the regonal accent) I also spent the last 17 months with terrible PND trying every single day to tell myself i am doing the right thing by my dd. I'm sure hundreds of people, with or without PND spend a looooong time telling themselves the same thing.
Whatever desicion a parent or anyone else for that matter makes, is up to them and should be respected as such!

I apologise serendipity for my assumtion - it made an ass out of me alone

OK I'm going to plead guilty, for me, Mumsnet is a source of entertainment as much as an advice and venting forum.

Especially after 8PM with a glass of wine in my hand!

No, it's fine i can see how my post came across
It's just bravado though! this is just how i wish the world worked and how i try to live my life, if you were standing in front of me i doubt very much i would be able to actualy say any of this!

caligula i agree it isn't one or the other its both