The most annoying/ridiculous things about raising a baby/toddler in 2024?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two kids, 2021 & 2023, and top two annoyances already mentioned

Gentle parenting! Especially all the gifters who will take your money for overpriced consultations and scripts of what you should say to your kid. These scrips are usually waaaaay too long & ridiculous to have an impact. The Visible Child fb group is, imo, the worst embodiment of this outlook.

The surface level conversation about autism and neurodivergance that celebrates the quirky stuff but doesn't grapple with the reality.

The ASD stuff is fascinating! That wasn't a thing at all a decade ago. I mean, obviously it was, but not talked about.

What I remember everyone having was food allergies. Clearly some kids do have life and death food allergies, but the kid who may get the faintest of rash from a particular food had equally vocal parents. That still a thing?

One thing that changed with allergies is there was a period of time where peds advised to wait til 2 to introduce allergens and now they say introduce them as soon as your baby can eat solids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Solid Starts and baby led weaning (AKA bragging about feeding choking hazards with zero studies to prove there are long term benefits)

Gentle parenting

maybe i'm doing solid starts wrong-- but isn't the point for me to learn how to cut/prep the food? My mother and mother in law always think i'm being over the top anxious as I follow it religiously as they would be happy to give much bigger chunks of choking hazard and feed my one year old nuts/seeds/etc?

The main thing I don’t like about solid starts and baby led weaning (and yes, I have the app and read the food prep for maybe 100 foods) is that it instructs you to give food in big pieces. It’s like they think all 6-12 month olds have zero teeth. Guess what: if you give an 8 month old baby with teeth a whole strawberry or a quarter of an avocado (those as exactly their suggestions for serving), they can break off massive pieces with their teeth and choke. I know a child who did actually choke on a strawberry this way. Parents had to do CPR and call an ambulance. They were huge Solid Starts fans until that. My own daughter bit off huge, unsafe chunks of so many foods they recommended serving whole before I realize what total lunacy it was and went to soft foods and purées like sane previous generations.

By age 2 you cannot tell one bit who did baby led weaning or purées. My daughter had perfectly spaced teeth, zero picky preferences, and a great palate. I’m angry it’s pitched like fact when it’s just an unsafe fad.

None of my kids really cared for purees but you're right it is insane to offer a 9 or 12 month old a whole strawberry. Toy manufacturers don't make toys that size because they would be sued into bankruptcy. All stone age cultures have mom chew food and spit into the baby's mouth (yummy).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two kids, 2021 & 2023, and top two annoyances already mentioned

Gentle parenting! Especially all the gifters who will take your money for overpriced consultations and scripts of what you should say to your kid. These scrips are usually waaaaay too long & ridiculous to have an impact. The Visible Child fb group is, imo, the worst embodiment of this outlook.

The surface level conversation about autism and neurodivergance that celebrates the quirky stuff but doesn't grapple with the reality.

The ASD stuff is fascinating! That wasn't a thing at all a decade ago. I mean, obviously it was, but not talked about.

What I remember everyone having was food allergies. Clearly some kids do have life and death food allergies, but the kid who may get the faintest of rash from a particular food had equally vocal parents. That still a thing?

One thing that changed with allergies is there was a period of time where peds advised to wait til 2 to introduce allergens and now they say introduce them as soon as your baby can eat solids. What else is generally accepted as true but is actually totally false?

Good example of ridiculous advice by the """experts"""" which was passed off with zero evidence.

[Anonymous]

I agree that almost all of these are icky, except for swim lessons for babies/toddlers. That's a safety thing, not a status thing.

[Anonymous]

I'm currently about to have a baby and the thing that's been most annoying to me is the way it's become normalized to let anxiety drive your decisions. I don't have TikTok and don't watch instagram reels. A lot of my friends who are new moms do and I see it creating SO much anxiety to the point where I worry they will adjudge me a bad parent for just not doing that, or not worrying about a particular issue that they view as a BIG DEAL because they watched something on the internet that's poorly sourced and designed to attract attention/manipulate the algorithm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two kids, 2021 & 2023, and top two annoyances already mentioned

Gentle parenting! Especially all the gifters who will take your money for overpriced consultations and scripts of what you should say to your kid. These scrips are usually waaaaay too long & ridiculous to have an impact. The Visible Child fb group is, imo, the worst embodiment of this outlook.

The surface level conversation about autism and neurodivergance that celebrates the quirky stuff but doesn't grapple with the reality.

The ASD stuff is fascinating! That wasn't a thing at all a decade ago. I mean, obviously it was, but not talked about.

What I remember everyone having was food allergies. Clearly some kids do have life and death food allergies, but the kid who may get the faintest of rash from a particular food had equally vocal parents. That still a thing?

One thing that changed with allergies is there was a period of time where peds advised to wait til 2 to introduce allergens and now they say introduce them as soon as your baby can eat solids. What else is generally accepted as true but is actually totally false?

Good example of ridiculous advice by the """experts"""" which was passed off with zero evidence.

Lip and tongue ties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm currently about to have a baby and the thing that's been most annoying to me is the way it's become normalized to let anxiety drive your decisions. I don't have TikTok and don't watch instagram reels. A lot of my friends who are new moms do and I see it creating SO much anxiety to the point where I worry they will adjudge me a bad parent for just not doing that, or not worrying about a particular issue that they view as a BIG DEAL because they watched something on the internet that's poorly sourced and designed to attract attention/manipulate the algorithm.

You are way ahead of the game! Takes most of us at least five years of motherhood to figure this out. Congratulate yourself and don't get sucked in!

[Anonymous]

Wooden toys … miss Rachel … beige and macrame in a baby bedroom. Having the baby’s name in cursive over the crib, unisex ugly clothes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm currently about to have a baby and the thing that's been most annoying to me is the way it's become normalized to let anxiety drive your decisions. I don't have TikTok and don't watch instagram reels. A lot of my friends who are new moms do and I see it creating SO much anxiety to the point where I worry they will adjudge me a bad parent for just not doing that, or not worrying about a particular issue that they view as a BIG DEAL because they watched something on the internet that's poorly sourced and designed to attract attention/manipulate the algorithm.

Oh it does not stop, either. It's particularly intense when you are pregnant and have a baby, because people will talk to you about stuff like formula feeding or tummy time like it's a life or death issue. I was in a moms group when my baby was an infant where people freaked out about everything. There was a woman there who was obsessed with how much time her kid spent in a carseat and seemed to think if her child was in a carseat for more than 20 minutes, his muscles would atrophy and he'd never learn to crawl, because she'd read something about "container babies" who didn't develop gross motor skills because they spent all day in car seats or infant seats. Once I showed up to group with my baby in a car seat and she lectured me about it for like 10 minutes. I was like "it's raining, I drove, the baby is asleep, I'm not getting her up." It was nuts.

But it doesn't end. There are a LOT of high anxiety parents out there and they work very hard to try and foist their anxiety onto you. Cosleeping, potty training, academic milestones, type of preschool environment, choice of school, sports and activities, kid friendships, anything safety related, food (oh god, the intensity of anxious parents around food, I swear so many of these people have full blown eating disorders they are just passing onto their children).

I love being a mom but one of the worst parts is dealing with other parents. I can spend all day with my kids and feel tired but happy and satisfied. Meanwhile 1 hour with certain other parents making small talk while our kids "entertain each other" and I need to go home and I just feel jumpy and stressed for the rest of the day because they are always coming up with some new thing to stress about and then telling me ALL about it.

[Anonymous]

“Baby led weaning.” It’s called purées and small bites of food.

“Baby wearing.” I don’t know about you, but my back was in bad shape after wearing my second kid around for a year.

Oh crap potty training.

And as others have mentioned, gentle parenting.

My kids were born in 2018 and 2021.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Baby led weaning.” It’s called purées and small bites of food.

“Baby wearing.” I don’t know about you, but my back was in bad shape after wearing my second kid around for a year.

Oh crap potty training.

And as others have mentioned, gentle parenting.

My kids were born in 2018 and 2021.

Oh and I despise all those reels of “influencers” talking in a fast paced monotone about the “easiest” and “most nutritious” meal they made for baby Sage, which inevitably involves boiling pastina in chicken broth, steaming eighteen vegetables in a baby breeza, making some kind of puree with coconut milk and then serving it to the nine month old in a silicone bowl and a cup without a lid

[kettysui]

Parenting nowadays is tricky. There's so much advice from influencers about raising babies and toddlers, from potty training to bedtime routines. Things are changing too, with some parents trying new ways to discipline their kids, like gentle parenting. Social media makes it even harder, as parents compare their children's achievements with others and feel pressured to show off. There are also lots of trendy products advertised as "Montessori" or neutral-colored, which can make parents feel like they have to buy them. And despite all the technology we have, finding good childcare that doesn't cost a lot is still tough. So, being a parent these days means juggling between new ideas and old worries while trying to keep up with what's trendy

[Anonymous]

Hangin out with the dad crowd + kids is so much more relaxing/fun. Anytime I'm with my wife and a group of mothers they're all trying to one up eachother and share anxieties it's awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hangin out with the dad crowd + kids is so much more relaxing/fun. Anytime I'm with my wife and a group of mothers they're all trying to one up eachother and share anxieties it's awful.

As a generality I agree that moms tend to be more anxious than dads about parenting, but some dads are as bad or worse. And they can be stealthy about it because you don't always expect it from men. Two of the most intense, anxious, stressball parents I know are both men.

I have also found that many men are more competitive than women about their kids, while also lacking the social graces to conceal their feelings. The competitive moms I know will act anxious or passive aggressive about it (it's own kind of hell) but competitive dads can be really annoying boasters and will say things in front of kids that are rude of r hurtful without understanding why that's a problem.

[Anonymous]

I’ll be the second teacher to weigh in here to say I’m very concerned when the “gentle parenting” kids reach my grade level. Don’t get me wrong — I was a pretty gentle parent, I expect, but I fear that parents have interpreted this movement to mean that their child doesn’t have to do anything they don’t want to do… which is often what school is.