I’m so feeling this this morning. I asked the 4yo if he wanted cereal or yogurt for breakfast. He screams “I’m not hungry! I want mama!”, runs to his room and slams the door. Two minutes later he comes out and punches me in the dick while I’m making lunches.
I love hearing other parents have asshole kids, because it reminds me that I’m not alone.
My kid went through the same phase all kids do of refusing to go to bed.
So one night he’s grabbing on to the baby gate at the top of the stairs like a con in a prison movie, screaming and yelling. I’m at the bottom of the stairs trying to ignore him.
He fixed a stare directly at me, stopped screaming, and shit in his pants.
So yeah, 100% of parents have arsehole kids.
You are not; but they are not really assholes. They are optimising for some outcome that they want, with inferior tools/mechanisms. Depending on age, their brain runs on emotion most of the time, logic is a distant second place.
In saying all of that…they can seem like assholes in the moment!!!
Yeah, it’s funny. Sometimes my son, 4, he’ll talk to me, but his speech and communication are still in the very basics, and I’ll say, Buddy, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying, and he’ll get frustrated, which leads to anger, all because I don’t understand what he’s saying.
Turn the tables, I’m like, Dude, go to the bathroom, we’re getting in the car, you go to the bathroom before we drive, and he’ll say NO! And now I’m the one who’s frustrated and angry because he’s now the one who’s not understanding what I’m saying.
As always, communication is key, and breakdowns always cause problems. And so we’re all just along for the ride.
I mean, the dick punch was really unnecessary but I am glad that other families experience… Weirdness, I guess. And exclusion of a parent.
I can’t count how often I read and heard the advice to “just present your kid with two options to choose from”.
My kid, even before she became verbal, always wanted option C when presented with two options.
“Do you want this hat or this cap?” “Neither”
“Do you want this blue pants or these red sweatpants?” “I want… a green… dress” we don’t even have a green dress.
“Shall we go to the zoo today or do you want to go to the playground with Anna?” “I want to go on the trampoline” .
I present two options. If my kid doesn’t pick one of those two options, either by not responding or by requesting a third thing, I’m picking one of the two options for him. And I’m always picking what he’s least likely to want.
And I’m always picking what he’s least likely to want.
So parents can be assholes too.
I’m not a total asshole: After he’s had his “oh shit” moment I give him one more chance to choose. He’s usually a lot better at picking one of the two options on his second try.
I had to do a variant of this with my now wife. She never wanted to pick restaurants, so I’d suggest something i was okay with but knew she hated. She got a lot more willing to give her opinions after a few years. Now we can discuss it like equals instead of me making the decision all the time.
A friend of mine does that for group lunches. If everyone is humming and hawing about where to go, he’ll suggest McDonald’s. This reduces the threshold of making suggestions significantly for the others, because they no longer need to find a great place. They only need to come up with somewhere better than McDonald’s.
Yeah the first time I tried the two options for clothes on my then-two year old, he snatched both options out of my hands, threw them on the ground, and screamed NO CLOTHES
Bonus points for finally settling for one of the options, only to throw a tantrum afterwards, that the other option was the preferred one.
The problem with parenting advice is every kid is different. This becomes clear after raised a gaggle of them. Anyone with one child that is giving advice is clueless.
My suggestion is not to give that type of child options. Tell them what’s happening. Then do it. May that not work any better and ignores why you may have started giving them choices.
You didn’t specify an age but typically choices are best for later development. Toddlers are terrorists and one should never negotiate with a terrorist.
To respond to your firat paragraph: This episode of Bluey helped me understand as a first time parent. Though this is less about personality and more about development. The mom with 9 or whatever kids really puts things into perspective.
It’s funny because my own kid is literally Bluey. Super quick to do everything else, refuses to walk.
Your second and third paragraph: thank you for the advice, I’m anticipating that mine will become a terrorist. Already has learned to cry when told no, despite the fact that we’ve never caved in to it.
My wife was waiting for me by the exit of Target with my infant son, and a lady rushed up with her cart, a baby in the baby holder, said, “Here, watch him!” and ran in the rest room.
I walked up, and saw my wife with another baby, and said, “We can’t afford two, we’ll have to return one,” and she told me the story. I thought it was hilarious, and couldn’t wait to meet this woman when she came out of the bathroom.
She eventually emerged, and thanked my wife for the help, and I said “You weren’t worried about handing your daughter off to a stranger?” And she replied:
“No, she already had one, I knew she wasn’t about to steal ANOTHER one!”
Well most of times you can differentiate frustration screaming and fear/danger screaming on toddlers
I can’t even differentiate the screams of play time from those of being brutally murdered that the kids I hear playing around my apartment complex make…
I don’t know why, but “stealing him” is such a funny way of saying that.
How would you call dissapropriating someones children for recreational or other purposes?
Kidnap?
Yes they do.
Kid no nap. Kidscream.
My son(11) will say, “you can’t do that, I’ll call the police and they will arrest you”. I say, great maybe I’ll get some peace and quiet. He doesn’t know I won’t, so it works. Lol.
I think it’s time. you gotta sacrifice the strategy because 11 is old enough to know acab
Kinda reminds me of when I was using dating apps, and women would ask how they knew I wasn’t a serial killer. “If I was a serial killer, it would be pretty stupid to leave a bunch of digital records of me being the last person my victim talked to, I’d get caught immediately.”
I’ve been reading some variation of this joke since the early 80s.
I am confident it can be found somewhere in Shakespeare’s plays and perhaps on clay tablets hidden deep in the Mesopotamian valley.
This thread has reminded me of why I don’t want kids.
So this one time I was like three and being too quiet. I don’t remember this. Apparently I had climbed up the upright grand piano and gotten scared of heights. I pressed myself against the wall and was whispering “help” over and over. Not too loud, because I was worried I’d get in trouble for climbing on the piano, but I needed help.
I was a high energy child. I learned to stop my bicycle at first by jumping off it onto grass hopefully and letting the bike crash. It must have been a nightmare for my parents to watch. So any extended silence was suspicious.
This very much could have been my husband about a decade ago. The last tantrum my middle child ever threw, with lots of screaming and running and destroying things like a fucking tornado in the middle of a Target. Spouse carried them kicking and screaming out to the car while I finished checking out and by the time I got there they were buckled in their car seat, completely calm and composed, like a switch flipped. (As far as I know) it wasn’t any sort of punishment or shining moment of parenting, the kid just decided, I’m done now.
And they haven’t thrown a fit since.
… but if you were to call the cops on me at least it would be a brief yet welcome reprieve from parenting while they come to the inevitable conclusion that he is mine and they don’t want him around either
My first kid was a perfect baby, she’d sleep 10 hours straight, she was quiet and never bratty, we would take her to restaurants with all our adult friends and she was always well behaved and didn’t need a tablet and would interact with everyone. We used to silently judge leash kid’s parents with the wife.
Then we had our second, an autistic boy with the energy of a thousand suns. Now I know, the leash isnt for me, it’s for all of you! The tablet at the restaurant makes sense now, and I don’t judge parents anymore
When me and my brother were coming up there were no tablets. The only thing to distract kids back then was McDonald’s colouring books.
Imagine my parents relief when the game boy was invented.
My son fought me getting in the high chair in a restaurant yesterday. Wife had to hold him while I held his legs straight to get in. I feel that
How TF are they so strong!? I also noticed a difference in physical strength between boys and girls - while expected I did not anticipate it being so much different. I really have to use a muscle on my son sometimes and he’s not even 2 yo.
Same for kids and pets… They’re not really strong, it’s just that:
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You’re trying not to hurt them or yourself, they don’t really care. This really levels the playing field.
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You’re trying to accomplish a goal, they’re trying to do anything but that.this gives them a huge advantage.
You’re right on with pets, had a lil’ doggo that did NOT want his medicine, lil’ pooch would eat around it in his food, squirm in six dimensions if you tried to force him, and yes one time he even used teeth!
Needless to say I was, in fact, not using teeth.Our current doggo tho, eats her food with or without medicine. One time we forgot to give her her pill when she was on medication for something, I just told her it was a biscuit and she ate it, no questions asked. This is a blessing.
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I don’t think the apple falls very far from the tree
Found the childless one who knows better. Always at least one of you.
Hard to tell from so little info. You can make a kid act like that by being a shitty parent, but they can also have issues unbidden that stretch you past your breaking point.
In any case, they don’t seem to have a healthy relationship.
10:1 odds that neither of you currently have a toddler.
Nah, that’s a fools bet lol.
There is a reason for declining child birth numbers… it has everything to do with more people knowing what they are really getting into.
And that everyone’s too damn poor. Babysitter? Not on average wages! No one wants to give up all of their time and money for kids they might not be able to provide for.
I don’t really follow your train of thought. People would have been just as aware (if not more, due to the prevalence of multigenerational households) of this in the past as they are now, no?
In the past people didn’t have access to a device with endless information about how rough it is the raise kids. Instead they had other local parents as a source, and those parents just wanted company in thier misery.
