4.) Name a pet peeve you have about how other parents raise their kids.
I became a parent and decided my baby didn’t need to wear socks. I figured if my kid was going to spend as much energy kicking socks off as I was putting them back on, that I just wasn’t going to fight that battle.
Off they came.
The only things I could successfully keep on my baby were slippers…and often times those were kicked off as well.
My sister came over one day to visit my new bundle and as she was cooing in her baby voice she started telling my baby that her feet were cold and she needed socks on. But she was cooing it to her, “Oh wooky here…you don’t hab any socks on your wittle baby feet! Tell Mommy your feet are bery cold and you need some wittle socks on dem! You tell her!”
I stood there feeling quite puzzled.
Clearly my baby could not speak or coo or even remotely comprehend what my sister was saying. So…was my sister talking to me? Why wasn’t she asking me directly why my baby had bare feet? Was I supposed to answer her directly or was I supposed to coo my answer back through the baby the way she had cooed the question?
“Ohhhh, you tell your Aunty how you kick dose wittle socks off your wittle feet all day wong! Tell her how you don’t wike dem!”
This was all very awkward. But it didn’t end there. It was my first taste at what has turned out to be a seriously obnoxious interaction between grown (usually) women and my small children. I will never understand why people pose questions and/or statements to my children that are clearly directed at me.
“Why are you eating cookies for dinner? Doesn’t your Mom know you don’t get dessert until you finish your dinner?”
“Looks like someone needs his shirt washed doesn’t he…did mommy forget to wash your shirt?”
“Oh sweetie, is your Mom letting you play with knives again? Doesn’t she know you can hurt yourself?”
It’s just plain annoying.
And in retrospect I suppose doesn’t answer the prompt at all. I guess my pet peeve has less to do with how other parents raise their kids and more to do with how other parents talk to my kids.
The only thing that peeves me about how other people parent their children is how they raise them to be so much more annoying than mine.
Now it’s your turn!
Choose a prompt, post it on your blog, and come back to add your name to the link list below. Be sure to sign up with the actual post URL and not just your basic blog URL (click on the title of your post for that URL). For good comment karma try to comment on the three blogs above your name!!
The Prompts:
1.) Describe a memorable first date.
2.) Write about a child you find inspiring.
3.) What do you find most challenging about blogging?
4.) Name a pet peeve you have about how other parents raise their kids. Go on…stir the pot.
5.) We often spend time and energy talking about people in our lives we don’t see enough of. Describe a person in your life you are in contact with often. What does he/she mean to you?
6.) If you could thank your mom for anything, what would it be? Create a video thanking her for something.
{ 52 comments… read them below or add one }
The baby voice is ANNOYING. When anyone does it. And I get what you’re saying. How about we just be adults and ask what’s going on?
My mom does that to me all the time!
I would post mine….but blogger SUCKS!
I swear, some people are Baby Sock Nazis. I once had a guy ask me where my baby’s socks were, in JULY, in Florida. And he was an infant, it’s not like he was walking around!
Cracking up at this post!!! I totally do that, to my husband, or to people that annoy me. I call it “Ventrilikidism” – Using your kids as puppets to say what you really want to say. I did a vlog about it (of course). http://www.mamamaryshow.com/2010/03/monday-momsense-23-ventrilikidism/
Can you and I do a follow up vlog about how annoying it is when other people do it? It annoys the crap out of me when other moms or my in laws do it.
Oh, and please don’t kick me out of your #WW for always re-posting/linking a previous post. I wrote a post last year about my best worst first day. It involves pot and steak. Awesome!
Baby voice = Annoying! And the socks? Ugh. I had people ask me that All.The.Time.
Ha! that is so true and so annoying!!
I once even got that from my son’s preschool teacher…
we had dared to be a few minutes early and the door was locked. My two year old started knocking on the door, as did I and the other kids waiting there – thinking they couldn’t hear us.
Next thing I know the teacher is opening the door and growling at my kid – “Don’t you know we are still having lunch! You don’t need to bang on the door… we need our lunch too you know!”
I mean, come on. He’s two. It was so obvious she meant her remarks for ME, but didn’t have the guts to say it to me, so she growled my baby! Grrr.
PS I have stretched my inspiration about a child of mine just a little. But I think you’ll like the result. Its “Inspired by What if”
xx
Since Blogger is being a douche, I posted mine on Blog Frog. Ha! Take that, Blogger! *gives blogger the finger*
Who cares if you didn’t answer the prompt exactly? (This IS your show after all!). And I agree – one of my kids’ best preschool teachers was amazing with kids, not-so-much with adults. We walked in one day and she said something to the effect of, “I see mom didn’t think we needed a coat today.” (Said child having refused coat and mom deciding natural consequences would convince the child.) Oh well. I went a tiny bit off prompt today too – my “inspiring child” has four legs but quite a story.
My husband conveys messages to me by talking to our dog! Like when I’m going to join them on a walk, he’ll say to Abby (the dog) “Not yet, we have to wait on Karen again”) to get me to hurry up.
YES!! This happened to us all the time. It drove me BONKERS! I hate passive aggressive BS. Just give it to me straight. What made it more cringe-worthy is the baby voice. How does one respond? I would just roll my eyes and try (operative word is “try”) to not say something nasty back, especially given the post-birth hormone concoction that was still coursing through my veins when my daughter was an infant.
I so agree with you. That is very annoying. My sister used to do that to me all the time.
Holy Cow YES! I find this supremely annoying… the whole baby voice in general. I do tend to soften my voice, but I refuse to coo and babble at babies. I talk to them in my normal voice!
I was on my daily walk the other day, and I saw a deer. Not as in “a pastoral scene from afar,” but right up close, about 10 feet from me. I stopped and started talking to Bambi. Not in my real, Mrs. Scribe, voice, but the way I would speak to my cat. Sort of as if Bambi were a baby, antlers and all. He ran away. I’m ashamed.
That baby talk commentary things sounds awful =( I am sure that I would be annoyed by it too.
Oh, that annoys the ever loving crap out of me!! My mother does the same thing and it drives. me. BATTY!
Oh how I hate when people do that to me and my kids. I just want to say “HELLO do you not think I know your talking to me. Do you really think that’s a nice way to let me know that frankly I don’t know what Im doing? Seriously? Ugh, its so annoying!
I agree with this one…it especially bugs it when my mother-in-law does this…UGH!!
Cute pictures, though :)
A friend told a good story about a mom who told her toddler son (in baby talk) that “that woman over there (my friend) shouldn’t be eating that cake because cake is bad for our bodies and teeth and will make us tired and sad.”
She said this out loud for her to hear, and everyone else around at a public place, to prove a point to her son? I’d have told that kid to go check the back of his momma’s dresser drawers for her stash of KitKats and Snickers. “Your momma’s a closet fatty!@”
What is it with people and their obsession with someone else’s baby’s socks?
And the baby voice – gah. And the unsolicited advice – gah.
Clearly, a peeve of mine too.
Baby talk in general drives me nuts. Talking to me through my baby is even worse!
I had people ask me, sometimes through my son, why he only had a onesie on when only a month or so old. Um, it was July and 90 million degrees and we don’t have central air.
I will write my post and link up later…I just wanted to say, I HATE baby talk in general…even when talking TO the baby and not necessarily as a subliminal message to me. I have found recently adults do this too…makes me crazy…if you have something to say, just freaking say it…whether verbally or in writing… Hiding behind a computer screen is just plain cowardice.
Loved this post! Just hilarious! I agree, talking baby talk is totally annoying! Totally inappropriate, if you ask me.
My son hates socks on too, and many times we go out without the socks on. And forget shoes!
The talking-to-parents-through-babies-and-children is SO passive aggressive.
Funny, because… FOR REAL?
But passive aggressive.
Such a good one, it is quite annoying when they’re so clearly talking you!
Ha! Yes, other people’s kids can be so annoying! ;)
I never messed with the socks, either. I worked in a gym nursery, and it was policy that all kids had to have on socks and/or shoes. It was a lot of fun repeatedly putting socks back on all the babies.
Baby talk is so horrid. We know someone who talks to our daughter (she is four) that way as he has several grown children (grown in comparison with ours, I guess) and misses it, maybe? Ugh. Not cool. cootchie cootchie coo.
I hate it when people use the baby voice to disguise the fact that their commentating on your baby raising skills lol! This is very very true :)
Other people’s annoying children is definitely a pet peeve of mine!
You too? My kiddos baby socks never stayed on either. Don’t even get me started on how many blankets great grandma thought my son needed. (It was more than 3)
i am there with you on this pet peeve. people who do this need a great big ol’ kick in the butt!
If I am ever that passive aggressive I hope someone punches me in the throat.
You should have said very seriously, “You know the baby can’t talk yet, right?”
My kids are 10 and 6 and still only wear socks to school on days they have gym or in the winter…when I force them. I swear they’d go barefoot to school if I let them. I don’t care, them not wearing socks means I don’t have to wash them and then spend the next 12 hours trying to find its mate.
like this :) “them not wearing socks means I don’t have to wash them and then spend the next 12 hours trying to find its mate.”
OMG how annoying, now I hope, I don’t do that!!! Very passive-agressive
I also find it annoying when people seem to direct questions to your kids that were directed to you. And I find it annoying when I hear people talking in baby talk to kids in general, especially the older kids who can obviously speak
Loved this weeks prompts! I wrote about love using #1. Today is my 4 year wedding anniversary!
Ha! My mother says that about the socks (to my 1.5 yr old of course): Do you know what tapeworms are, baby? Evidently your mommy doesn’t, because she doesn’t have sockies on your wittle feetsies. Just say it outright already. And for the record, he can say SOCKS, LITTLE, and FEET. My main pet peeves in parenting are: parents allowing the use of a pacifier or bottle at, say, 5, or a parent who makes her kid rest her chin on her knees b/c mommy has her 6 yr old butt in an umbrella stroller (or any stroller!). And then whispering: (I really hate to see thumb or finger suckers, especially teens).
Hmmm I sound angry.
Oh my GOSH I could totally hear her baby voice just through your spelling. So annoying. My sister does that. She once said, “C, do you think Aunt Leigh Ann would take a picture of us? Huh? Should we ask her?” And I said, “Do YOU want me to take a picture of you? Because I will, if YOU ask.” Ugh. You can count it as a parenting pet peeve too — parents do it to each other.
Oh, baby talk – the baby talk. I HATE it.
There is a mom at the kidlings school who STILL talks like this to her kids. Who are 5 and 9.
*shudders*
wow! i just stumbled onto your site and happened to write about annoying ass parents/children in costco on my blog yesterday! it was meant to be :)
God, I hate that. I especially hate when people ask me, “Why don’t you brush her hair?” As if I forgot, and am not simply hesitant to have my eyes clawed out.
I absolutely hate that! I mean, if you’re going to talk to the baby, fine, talk to the baby, but don’t use that voice and pretend you’re NOT talking to me when we both clearly know you are!
Oh yes. I also hate it when people say “Poor baby” when they’re crying. As if they’ve got it so rough. In the meantime I’m frantically whipping out my boob, checking their diaper, or searching for a pacifier. Poor baby?! Poor mama!
I loathe the baby voice – and people telling me I needed socks on my 1 year old when it was 110 out… seriously people get over the socks!
Thanks for the link up!
Oh, you made me laugh sooo hard! My kids are grown, and I have grandchildren….now I now how I sound : (
so, so familiar. I totally think this one would have fit into last week’s prompt about what to say/do when someone else gives you unwanted advice… lol! D.I.L.L.I.G.A.F. (and if you don’t know what it means… ask a biker… NOT! hee, hee!) Maybe we should create kid/infant shirts that say that… hmm… MONEYMAKER!!!
My mom is a number one offender with asking my kids questions directed toward me, and I. hate. it! She was at our house one evening while I picked out pajamas for my 18 month old. She picked up the selected clothes, addressed my daughter, and commented something like, ‘oh Audrey, won’t you be hot in these tonight.’ Gah, just tell me to change the outfit. or better yet, just shush and let me dress my kids!
It really happens sometimes, making other unusual things to pertain something. Yeah, baby’s voice is annoying but I would rather hear my baby crying than my dog barking all the time. :D
Yes! On both counts. First, what is wrong with not having socks on and second, don’t talk to me in baby voice.
My baby is also a sock hater and never wears anything on her feet (I can already see getting shoes on a NIGHTMARE) but once when she was quite small, we went to the supermarket and I was already having a bad day when some ancient old crone comes over to me and scolds me for not having anything on my baby’s feet and that essentially, I was the world’s worst mother. I was so shocked I didn’t have chance to retort back to her that she DID have socks on in the car but that they had been jettisoned, and as we were going into an indoor supermarket and not hiking the Appalachian trail, that I thought she would survive.
Obviously, the busybodies were out in force that day as TWO other women said the same thing to me. From then on, she wore tights under EVERYTHING.
To old crones: Keep your noses out!
This was a good one. I forgot about that. It irks me too when other people do that – I mean, I’m right there, they can’t just tell me?! And what message does that tell my child? That her mom doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing? Even if it’s true, I’d like my kids to believe I know everything and my decisions are always right, thank you very much. So yeah, stop freakin’ talkin’ to my kid when you really should be talking to me!
Good post. =)
I so agree with you!!!!! This happened to me as well. I read that children learn best to walk in bare feet and Alexis wouldn’t keep socks on, so why not? She wasn’t crying over the temperature of her feet. I got told by several people to put socks on her and must have explained a dozen times how it was helping her learn to walk actually. So annoying.
The baby talk frustrates me no matter what is being used for. Our babies, although little and unable to talk, are humans. I talk to my 4 month old as if I were talking to any other adult or person. On the other note I don’t go around telling you how to raise your child so why is it ok to do that to me.
We actually had our baby out at a get together when she was 8 weeks old. She had not met several of the people there and she absolutely loves being social. It was 10pm, she was being cuddled and sleeping in someone’s arms, doing fine. One of my girlfriends looks at my husband and says, “you need to get that baby home.” Really, she is not screaming, she is sleeping and enjoying being cuddled. I will take her home when I think is appropriate. Oh I could go on and on.