I've had enough of clueless mothers

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m a mother. So I know it can be difficult. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect. But make a goddamn effort, will you? It’s not that complicated. Some object lessons from several different people, from just the past few weeks:

Don’t place a tissue used on your snotty kid on my couch. Accompanying this action with, “I’m just putting this here because it’s completely covered in snot, so I don’t want to put it back in my pocket,” does *not *help the situation, believe it or not!

When your two year old rampages around my house, literally tearing things down and knocking things over, stop what you’re doing, get up, and stop him! Clearly you have no history of thwarting him in any way, since when I calmly and firmly said, “Stop doing that,” he burst into tears like I’d smacked him upside the head.

When you’re in a gathering with other moms, and lots of tiny children, here’s an idea: keep tabs on your rambunctious preschooler, in hopes of stopping him before he pushes a metal chair over on a smaller kid, sneezes juicily into another child’s lunch, or leads a parade of toddlers out of the building.

Again, in the gathering of other moms and children, when everyone starts exclaiming, “Phew!” and checking their kids’ diapers for the offending substance, do not sit idly by, eventually admitting it’s your child, and then declare you’re not going to change him because the diapers are in the car. It’s bad enough that it is Not Good for kids to marinate in poo, but I guess that’s your call - however, please consider that people’s eyes are watering, and we’re on the verge of retching - once again your sucky parenting is having an impact on many others.

When you’re invited to a gathering, even one meant to discuss baby issues, and that gathering is at someone’s home, at night, and involves alcohol, this is a clue that your toddlers are not invited! You say that your kids don’t go to bed till midnight - well, that does explain a lot, but it is not sufficient reason to let them invade an adult event.

Please restrain your older kid from getting off the bus after a long day at the germ exchange depot - er, school - and pawing everything in sight, from newborn babies to communal food. The fact that you don’t even have soap in your downstairs bathroom only increases our concern!

Your three year old is potty training? Great. You have to have him in underpants to encourage things? Hey, many of us have been there. It is a little questionable to have him in non-waterproof underthings when you first visit a new friend’s (very clean and swanky) house. But maybe it was just a freak accident when he peed all over the carpet. OK, stuff happens. Letting him run around said house thereafter with no bottoms on at all, resulting in him peeing on the carpet again, though? Really? You need someone to tell you that was a bad decision?

UGH. Serenity NOW!

2

This made me laugh.:smiley:

3

You go girl! Sounds like you’ve got a friend who just doesn’t know what’s up.

4

You know that DOESNT work right? :slight_smile:

I like the marinating poo part best. Don’t get to see that on Top Chef!

5

You need (and deserve) to find a better class of friends.

6

My sympathies, this is one of my top pet peeves. Mind you that my usual offender is my BIL, who is, well, 28. You can always find him following the trail of wet wrinkled tissues. Ugh.
But I digress, it sounds like all this crap is coming from the same person, right? Then you know what the solution is. Never see them again. Not at your house, not at theirs, not at someone else’s. Never.

7

Actually, this is from three different people. And none of them is a friend, as such. The hard part is these are either neighborhood/school acquaintances or people in the same volunteer organization as me. They aren’t invited to my house anymore, but I can’t help encountering them and their hellspawn in doing things that are important to me.

The weird thing is that all three are in other ways nice, intelligent, good at what they do, generous, helpful, and so on. They are not all-around assholes, they just don’t notice their kids doing awful things, and seem uniformly immune to subtle social signals most of us notice and respond to.

8

A lot of people have failed to grasp what the role of parent is. It’s not a meeting of minds between equal partners. A child is going to do whatever it wants to unless there’s somebody setting the limits; that’s the parent’s job.

9

I had that happen at work once. Told a child who was trying to climb our security gates like a ladder, “Don’t do that, you might fall.” Kid reacted, like you say, like I had slapped him. It was immediately apparent to everyone in the vicinity that no one had ever said “no” to this child before.

It made me want to slap his mother.

10

Well, maybe the kid was afraid of you; he might not react that way if it had come from someone familiar.

11

Maybe it’s time to stop being quite so subtle. When they leave nasty things around, give them firm directions to the garbage can. When they’ve left the diapers in the car, offer them one of yours and suggest a place to go to change the child. I’ll admit, it would probably take more guts than I have, but I do think it’s a good idea, even if I’m a coward.

12

Maybe. Or maybe they’re just shocked if they hear it from someone who means it. After seeing a mother, whose idea of getting her toddler son under control on a transAtlantic flight was to weakly call his name, allow her son to rip up airplane headsets and magazines, play in the aisle when elderly passengers were trying to get to the washroom, etc., we were getting annoyed. So when I went to the washroom and he turned in his seat and stretched out a food-covered hand towards my stitching, my husband gave a firm but not loud “no!” The kid’s eyes turned into saucers, and he backed off.

Sometimes parents really don’t say no, or do it in such a wishy-washy fashion that kids know it doesn’t actually mean that.

13

I find if you grab em by the throat, throw em to the ground, yell NO,and hold em there until they they realize YOU are the pack leader you’ll get positive results. :slight_smile:

Works for overly aggressive dogs too.

Advice brought to you by the Rugrat Wisperer

14

Well, there you go. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. It’s called some crazy word like Fatwa or Dogma or something.

But seriously, as a new parent I’m not looking forward to seeing other people screw up something that I try to do well.

15

Good, I host a BBQ at the farm here every year. I have in excess of 100 people, various family and friends. The kids and the parents love me for one simple reason, they alway know where they stand with me. I explain to the new families that there is a 12 foot circle around me that is a “no whine zone”. The parents are usually intrigued how that works, the kids are puzzled, but at the first sound of whining I remind them of the zone. They do one of 2 things, they stop, or run to mommy, either one works for me. I have always organized a ton of games for the kids as well as the adults, so the kids always get on board pretty damn quick, parents too, or else they just don’t come back.

You forgot the submission hold! You throw them to the ground, then pin them until they stop moving, then they have submitted and they know you are boss!

Farmerchick, Level II Small Creature Roundup Queen!

16

FarmerChick, only a Level 2? Sounds more like you’ve got a Prestige Class in Small Creature Roundup!

17

I’ve had times where my kids have acted like little assy dictators and been embarrassed. I’ve had times when I thought that if I really read my kids the riot act in public I’d be hauled off to CPS so I didn’t and instead I resorted to bribing or whining myself. I was pretty prepared to tell you to suck it unless you’ve been there (which I see you have). However, it doesn’t sound like these people you are talking about - these people are fucking pigs!

I want to shake people sometimes and tell them that there is a side of the “cult of the child” and a side of “self-absorbed asshole that doesn’t want to get off her lazy ass and parent” and it ain’t a fine line! So just get off your ass and do it and at the very least have your children act like semi-human people in public even if they do swing from the light fixtures when you are home alone with them.

I’m a pretty lax mom. I get upset with my kids and probably do the wrong thing (last night I read my 7 y/o the riot act over the constant 2y/o level whining and refusal to do any work and getting sent to the principal’s office). I do the wrong thing sometimes - probably a lot. But by god we will not be peeing on other people’s stuff or running around with shit in our pants or throwing a fit when another parent catches us doing something we shouldn’t. I’m working on the constant fart jokes. Give me a minute on that one…

Finally, a toast to my parent (and some non-parent) friends - who are just as comfortable calling my kid out of something as they are me calling their kid out on bad behavior and everyone knows where they stand. It makes for a much more pleasant gathering!

18

In regards to the lady who didn’t change the diaper because the diapers were in the car, a solution to that seems to me to offer her a diaper and some wipes. That makes it harder to get out of.

19

I’m gonna go home and hug my dogs, just for being who they are. :slight_smile:

20

This is one of my biggest peeves. Anytime there is a gathering with plates of food and young children they have to touch every item within reach with their grimy, booger-digging digits, and I lose my appetite. If you’re taking your child anywhere where there is community food teach them basic manners. If they are too young ro understand then watch them and don’t let them touch everything.