Reply to Is this an American mom thing or specific to my kids school?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Is this an American mom thing or specific to my kids school?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I offer potential solutions to a friend who is complaining about a problem, I am not trying to sound smart or show off. I am brainstorming and trying to help because I care. If it were someone I didn’t care about complaining, I’d simply say “well that sucks (for you)”.

If your worldview is such that people offering to help are being know it alls, good riddance. It’s a different story if people are just talking over you to sound off their knowledge but that doesn’t seem to be the case with the OP.

[/quote]

If they didn't ask for this "brainstorming" then it is actually rude.

One thing I've noticed is that people who jump right to "offering solutions" often skip over a really important step -- asking questions to better understand the situation. Like I'll say "man I'm so tired -- DD was up half the night and wound up sleeping in our bed." The compulsive advice givers will jump straight to trying to offer up solutions to fix our sleep issues. But people who are not know-it-alls will say "whoa that sounds super hard I'm sorry. What was up?" And then they'll listen to me talk about it (if I want to -- I might say "oh nothing we figured it out I'm just tired) and ask follow up questions ("oh I had no idea she'd recently started new meds -- did you already talk to the ped about it?") and then maybe after all that if they have some insight they might offer it. But often what people discover in the process of just listening and answering questions is that other people have a good handle on their own issues and aren't really grasping for advice or guidance (especially not from people who are just friends and not like experts in anything). In listening and being interested they'll offer me what I actually want which is emotional support. What I don't need is for a friend who just learned of an issue I am intimately familiar with offering 47 ideas for how to fix it based on her instinctual first impressions. If it's a real issue odds are good I've already thought of those ideas already -- it's my actual life and not a hypothetical exercise for me.

Now if a friend comes to you and says "can you brainstorm ideas for how to address this issue with me" then by all means. But assuming that any time someone complains about anything they want you to jump in with a bunch of ideas for them is incredibly self-centered. It's not about you. They are just complaining. If you don't want to hear it then change the subject.[/quote]

So would you say Mom A is right in the following exchange?

Mom A: My son has been waking up at 4am every night and I am exhausted!!!

Mom B: That’s rough!  I’m so sorry to hear that. Does he take a nap?

Mom A: *Looks annoyed*. Of course not. He stopped napping months ago.

Mom B: I see. I went through a phase with my oldest son waking up early in the morning too. I noticed that when I gave him a later dinner that is protein rich he would sleep better

Mom A:  Are you kidding me?  My son is well fed. I didn’t ask for your advice! Can’t you just listen without offering advice!!! You Americans are such rude know it all’s!!![/quote]

op - it's more like:

me: my kids are obsessed with watching randos on youtube play roblox and I'm always trying to extract them from this weird vortex.

British mum: omg i know - mine watch this man who fishes specifically for bizarre obscure and very ugly fish and they are OBSESSED.

Moms at my school: we dont allow lots of youtube. I have a million safety controls. I only allow 5 minutes a day of youtube. youtube will rot their brain and make them into weird shut in incels. my kids watch actual tv.

[/quote]

It’s so weird that my 65 year old midwestern mother is hanging out at your east coast private school.   [/quote]

Op - lol. Can you please send your kid to my school so we can hang out [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics