at the beach today listening to SO MUCH over-parenting

[GretchenWiener]

So there I am, lying with eyes shut with several families around. really nice day and lots of happy playing by lovely kids.

but OMG - parents give your kids a sodding break. Endless instructions issued, everything micromanaged to the Nth degree. Kids told the same thing three times in about two minutes when they are obviously doing something else first (all surf board related).
I really felt for them.

When I read how to talk ( the book) it said that we all do it. Today it seemed super true. Do you over instruct or question?

not instructing is often the best instruction

This is why I holiday in France before the English schools get out, french people may be over parenting but they sound adorable and tbh they are probs just taking about cheese and fags

tais toi Timothé

;)

they just get down and hit their kids, dont they, les francais/?

C'est normale

I did grin the other day when I was walking to school and overheard the dad behind me talking to his primary school aged son about the voting in the school talent contest. In terms of tactical voting, proportional representation and single-transferable votes.

Dunno, my French cousin is always on his phone while his toddler falls into flaming pit/ is eaten by crocodiles/abducted by aliens.

He would probably shrug too

Ummm just get down and hit their kids???... If you were making such generalisation about say Muslims, you would be called racist, but you are aware of that I'm sure?

We had Hugo on holiday last year.

Don't do that Hugo.
Do you want to swim Hugo?
Do you want an ice cream Hugo?
Clever boy Hugo! Look mummy, look how clever Hugo is! Oh yes Daddy, well done Hugo, you clever, clever poppet! Nanny did you see that?

It was endless and shouted from one side of the pool to the other! Hugo repaid us all on his last day but doing a massive shit in the swimming pool!

In our year 2 primary Eco-committee elections one parent DID A FUCKING POWERPOINT PRESENTATION FOR HER PFB

And yes she did get elected. I am arming dd2 with Haribo next year.

Tomsayer was your sense of humour extracted via your arse?

When he was 2 or 3 I taught my son to say "three fours are twelve" and encouraged him to repeat it in public. :o

I probably just have a very french sense of humour, and that must be why I find your comment extremely vulgar?

Just been relaying our tale of beach woe to DH, who was sadly working.

Family arrives with 3 UV tents, a parasol, 2 DDs approx 10 and 8. About 4pm so not super hot midday sun.

Dad sits inside a UV tent, with parasol in front of him, clothes on, hat, sunglasses. Mum inside the next UV tent, DD's white with sun cream, in hat, T Shirt, shouted at constantly to "get in the shade, don't get sand near the towels, watch out there's seaweed!" Even the poor children said "please Mum, can we just not be in the shade?" :(

Haha, some of these are brilliant. I need to go on a holiday so I can find an annoying set of parents and feel sorry for the kid.

Oh dear, I do a lot of nagging along the lines of "mind your head!" "don't jump off there!" "aargh look out for that shopping trolley" . DS is dyspraxic and dreamy and constantly crashing into things. Dd less so but if she does hurt herself even slightly she will scream her head off and have a huge drama. After a frazzled day or during the holidays, when I've had weeks of childcare, I do get a bit stressed and oversensitised and just don't want any more injuries and dramas.

Dd who is only 4 told me off for it the other day and she was right.

However it is only to do with safety - though I'm overcautious, I don't micromanage their projects or learning or sandcastle moats etc so some bits of this thread have made me feel slightly better.

I heard "Jonathan coño" for two hours on the beach yesterday. Poor bastard. I was tempted to look at the label inside his trunks just to check it wasn't actually his surname

We had to shuffle along the beach when DS started to.parrot it

(Coño means cunt, if you're wondering. Although it's about as strong as FGS in Spain)

Is that racist? I always see more slappage in France than here

Lol at trunks

Better than what I witnessed yesterday. On next beach next to us . Large group of nice middle class parents and 4 year olds etc.

One little one - no more than three wandered over to our beach. Totally out of sight of his parents or whoever was in charge of him. Came and sat with us. Chatting (well gurgling really) away. Very sweet but not once did anyone seem to check on him. We could have been anybody. The lad could have wandered into the sea or fallen off the breakwaters. But the parents all sounded terribly naice and doing their best not to over parent I guess.

Not really. It's the level of instruction. Not "not looking after your kids"

You can have kids and not do rapid fire orders

We saw a Nan version. She was with her daughter and two small grandsons and was so loud and awful in the hotel buffet that everyone around her would be wincing. One of the boys was just a baby of about a year old and was happily blowing the odd little raspberry in his high chair as babies do and she was screeching "that's disgusting! Why are you being so disgusting?" The baby also knocked a salt pot onto the floor and the waiter came to sweep it up, she practically had a tug of war with the man as she made a big loud performance about sweeping it up herself.

The poor 3 or 4 year old copped the worst of it, she dragged him round the buffet stopping at all the dishes and saying "do you want tomatoes?" "Do you want spaghetti?" "Do you want coleslaw?" "Do you want calamari?" Until the poor kid was so overwhelmed by the choices (plus heat and noise) that he had a meltdown and was crying "I WANT NUGGETS!" which then set her off shouting with "No! You must eat vegetables, if you don't eat your vegetables then you shan't have ice cream for the rest of the week"

This wasn't confined to mealtimes either, there was one particular scene by the pool where the boy had been bought a matchbox car in a souvenir shop...and she spent a good couple of hours going on and on at him "don't get the car wet! It's only a cheap car and it will rust. There's a puddle of water there, don't put the car near the puddle. It will rust. Your trunks are wet, don't put the car on your lap, it's a cheap car, it will rust!"

The boys mum just shuffled around looking totally haggard and brow-beaten, gawd knows what her own childhood holidays had been like. I saw her having fun with her boys in the evenings at the kids disco but the Nan was always sitting stony-faced on the sidelines, didn't even crack a smile when the kids got certificates or danced.

Our "Hugo/Katie" equivalent was a Thomas. On a campsite in France, being loudly parented all day by parents who went on to be just as loud and obnoxious once poor Thomas was in bed and they were drinking "a little kir, dahling?". The highlight was every morning when Thomas would attempt to escape, only to be recalled by his mother shrieking yelling "THOMAS! Eggy bread time, Thomas!" across the campsite.

Having Dutch neighbours on a campsite is just bleeding annoying, though, because you know damned well that they can understand every word of your arguments conversations and you can't understand a word of theirs

Urgh, there's a dad at my son's football club, these boys are 5/6 the bloke is a complete twat actually.

They had a tournament, and he was shouting instructions at this poor kid relentlessly. In the end the boy was just stood still, not knowing wether to look at his dad, the coach or the ball.

It took everything I had to not say... ffs shut up! It's supposed to be fun.

Really quite sad :(