This post was originally published in 2013 and it still makes me livid. You can see the original post and comments here.
Overheard outside my local café last week:
“I have three kids and I hate all of them.”
Can someone please explain to me why this jack@$$ gets to have the privilege of being a parent when so many lovely people I know (including myself) don’t?
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s got you spitting nails this week?
On another blog I follow, this was a topic of conversation. Another childless woman had a great comeback.
The mother was complaining about her kids and the childless woman said, “Well what have you done to make your kids like you and want to behave?”
She then made the point that kids learn by example and that just yelling and ordering them around isn’t parenting.
How many little kids want to help mommy cook, clean, etc but the parent pushes them away because it wouldn’t be done they way they want it or it would take too long if the kids help. But when the kids become teenagers they don’t know how to do anything because they weren’t allowed to do anything when they were little and were taught how to go watch tv instead of putting the dishes away or cook dinner or what ever the parent is complaining about.
When my sister starts complaining about her kids in the things listed above I ask her if she wants her kids to be able to do thing or be lazy in 5 years.
My brother, sister, and I were the kids that were pushed away. When mom wanted us to do something we didn’t know how to do it and got mad when we did it wrong. When she left our father (and us) we didn’t know how to cook anything beyond pasta. When my father found out that we didn’t know how to cook, he took precious time off work (because we really needed the money) to teach us three basic meat meals to cook while he was gone on the road. (My father was a truck driver.) What is really sad about this is that I wasn’t a teenagers when mom left. I was 21 years old.
Parents should teach their kids when they are young. Let them help.
love the comment about behaving in a manner that allows your kids to respect you.
I hate hearing people talk about how they hate her kids. I also hate pregnancy announcements unexpectedly on tv. For example I was watching tiny house hunters and towards the end the girl announces she’s pg out of nowhere. Didn’t feel it was really needed for the show.
It feels like every 2nd House Hunters episode has a pregnant woman on it.
Before being childless,it was a guilty pleasure show,but this kind of ruined the show for me, seeing as buying a house and having a child are both things I will never be able to do.
I have a whine and have been spitting nails this week. It also has to do with a previous post on what to do with family heirlooms and keepsakes when you don’t have a child to pass things on to.
I was speaking with one of my four brothers this past weekend. He told me that his wife wants a piece of my mother’s jewelry. My mother died nearly 5 years ago. 2 years I gave my sister-in-law a beautiful antique piece. (My sister-in-law loves jewelry and to be perfectly honest is a high maintenance person.)
Actually, I sent the jewelry piece to my brother so he could give it to her for Christmas. I never heard any acknowledgment which didn’t really bother me.
So, he brings it up on Sunday that she wants something else. I felt myself having all sorts of ugly feelings: jealousy etc. and I knew it was obvious in my voice. My brother called me out on it. So I said (gulp): “You know why I am having such a hard time with this?? You know what pisses me off: The fact that you and brother 2 and brother 4 all had abortions (5 among them) and I always thought I would have a family and children because I wanted them and I don’t and it’s very sad for me.” My brother said ‘Well, why didn’t you do it.” kind of like “well, that’s your own damn fault”. I went on this rant of my experience with looking into sperm donors and adoption and then deciding that it wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. My husband died 10 years ago so I never had the chance to try get pregnant.
I feel like an idiot. Like I threw myself under the bus. My brother and his wife also do not have children.
I just told him that right now I am having a hard time parting with some things because of sentimental value more than anything. And, I must admit, that my brother was somewhat understanding of that. I am also thinking of my 3 nieces in the long run as 2 are very young an done is in a lot of transition at this time of her life.
BUT..what really bothers me about the whole jewelry thing is an incident that happened right after my father died which was a year before my mother. I went into my mother’s room and there was my sis-in-law trying on my mother’s necklaces saying “Pearls just don’t look good on me.” She supposedly was trying to help my mother organize her room. My mother had some dementia and got confused and a bit unorganized. So, this “tidying up” was encouraging my mother to lay out her jewelry so she would choose from it everyday. It just wasn’t something my mother would have done anyway. I felt disgusted by the whole thing. I just thought it was rude! It still makes me angry.
I am afraid of damaging a relationship with my brother which is a little delicate at the moment.
I feel petty, embarrassed and ugly and that I have done something wrong. I know they are just things and that “you can’t take it with you” but I still feel like I want to hang on to them.
Ugh.
My whine: a woman at work had a baby about 6 months ago, and during the several months before the birth, seemingly everyday other women at work would discuss various aspects of their pregnancies. Now another co worker has just announced her pregnancy, and it’s started back up again… Everyone telling the same stories they told a year ago. “I loved being pregnant!” “The baby is the size of a army guy this week”… Total, total overload on baby talk.
I just hate this kind of parent, who said bad about kids.