Children, neither fun nor relaxing...(kinda long)

Sorry, I couldn't get this posted on the rants page. It kept saying that this was spam...don't worry, it's not. Though at the end I will offer to use my mind power to increase the size of your toes, but that's free to you, if you can get 14 other people to sign up. HA!

This is just me decompressing from a recent vacation that my BF and I take yearly with a largish group of friends. Two have bred, and while we all were in agreement that they could still join us with their sprog, we were also VERY GLAD to see them leave before the rest of us. I think most of us also agreed that family life was not the life for us.

I did just get back from a glorious week long vacation, well actually a glorious 4 day long vacation. The first 3 days involved a 2 year old child, which was not so glorious, relaxing or fun. Honest.

Here are some things I learned about 2 year old children and parenting. Amazingly enough, none involve relaxation.
1. A two year old has one reaction. It involves screaming. Happy? Screaming. Milk the wrong temp? Screaming. Hungry? Screaming. Dirty diaper? Screaming. Wanna play? Screaming. Seriously, I do not know how the parents figured out what the kid wanted, but whenever the tone of the screaming changed, they'd go through a list of questions, and I guess would determine the solution to problem by a subtle shift in the tone of their child's screams.

2. Two seems to be pretty much the age when parents give up. I think it's because of the screaming. I remember right around when the child was born, the parents were very conscious...no TV, ever, it will stunt the child's mind. No sugar or processed foods, it will destroy the child's health. A million outfits per day, we'll have a clean child. During the 3 days we were together, the child had several videos to watch, which he'd seen so many times he could pretty much scream right along with them. He ate 3 full sized hershey's bars, or at least some part of them, which helped with the screaming (didn't help when the adults wanted to make s'mores, but it was for the child, so how could I complain?). However, he was allowed to wear many dirty and wet outfits, which should be the norm on all vacations, I do not begrudge his parents that.

3. Having children is wasteful. They will not finish the food they are given, they'll get distracted, full or start screaming about it. You will have to throw it away because they will have finger-banged it to death, thrown it on the floor or smeared it on something or someone, themselves included. I do not know how a child consumes enough to grow, but from what I've seen it involves constantly encouraging the child to eat a bite, and hoping that over the course of the day they consume enough individual bites to meet their daily caloric needs.

4. Parents work in shifts, and this is why every child should have at least two responsible guardians of whatever gender combination works. Very rarely were they together with the child, which makes perfect and total sense. If you share equal responsibility with someone for something that screams constantly, wouldn't you split that responsibility as much as possible, even if it means that you rarely see the person you had chosen to spend your life with? It was actually a petty interesting dynamic to watch.

5. Silence is golden, beautiful and something to be treasured and nurtured. We should relish in our silences and the ability to maintain them. This is something that parents only get between the hours of 10pm, when the screaming finally stops, and 4am, when the screaming starts again.

6. I am fine with children in small doses, however this has cemented my decision that parenting is definetly NOT a path I want to take in my life.

If you feel you must have any children, you should seriously sit down and realize that children are small and helpless beings that can only communicate via screaming at the top of their lungs for at least 2 years straight. To be honest, I think that might be the easy part. As far as I can tell, you do not get vacations from your children, you do not get to take a break and go home at the end of the day and you will get the stink eye if you continue to live your life as a non-parent with the kids in tow (seriously, they do not belong in bars, porn stores or rock concerts). They are yours and it will be your responsibility to raise them. If you feel like other people will, or should, watch your child in public, you are seriously deficent in the skills and desire to raise a child to be a productive and cooperative member of society. If you think that frozen, premade peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a great idea because you simply do not have the time, energy or desire to apply peanut butter and jelly to bread, you should not be a parent. If you don't feel like you can deal with something that requires a constant 24-7 commitment for several years at least, then it's a pretty good bet that you should not have children of your own.

great rant feh, i know that screaming well.. every 30 minutes, scream, wahhhh wahhhh, all through the day, and nite, and the next day, and the next..but imagine 3 of them doing it..

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

That sounds like three days of pure hell, Feh. Glad you made it back in one piece, and relatively sane.:-)

It may have taken 4 days of excessive drinking, swearing, drinking, sex, drinking, fireworks and drinking to purge the child's screams from my tortured soul, but the end result was an excellent vacation so I can't complain too much. The 3 days with the child involved almost constant "medicationl" to keep from screaming right along with him. Did I mention, kids like drunks? Seemed like the only time he stopped screaming was when he wanted something to do with me..."shure kid, sit on my schtomach and schtick yer fingers up my nose...just don't shpill dat glass" Inspite of the teevee and candy, I believe the parents will be PNB AND stop with the one, so it's all good.

I feel for you Feh! I think your vacation was the kind of bootcamp that all would be breeders should go through before sprogging. If they can last 72 hours with a shrieking two-year-old hopped up on Hershey's, and not want to tie their own tubes in a McGyver-like fashion using a sharpened slurpee straw and a curling iron, then I say go forth and breed.

Seriously, these people who have more than one toadler and trek off to Disney destinations must be blissful idiots, or know some life secret that I lack.

Glad the last part of your vacation was great. Will your group invite the couple with the child next year?

n/a

Sherz Wrote:
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> I feel for you Feh! I think your vacation was the
> kind of bootcamp that all would be breeders should
> go through before sprogging. If they can last 72
> hours with a shrieking two-year-old hopped up on
> Hershey's, and not want to tie their own tubes in
> a McGyver-like fashion using a sharpened slurpee
> straw and a curling iron, then I say go forth and
> breed.
>
> Seriously, these people who have more than one
> toadler and trek off to Disney destinations must
> be blissful idiots, or know some life secret that
> I lack.
>
> Glad the last part of your vacation was great.
> Will your group invite the couple with the child
> next year?


I second that.

Great rant, Feh,...and so true!

I have witnessed the wastefulness of American sprogs. Over ten years ago, I was friends with an older couple who had a single moo for a daughter. I tried to be friends with the moo out of kindness to her parents. We had gone to McDonalds one time. The toddler whined and begged for a Happy Meal. Moo got him one. All this brat ate was a few fries and maybe two bites of burger. The rest of the food went into the trash. I really think we need to back to the days where ungrateful sprogs are reminded of the starving children worldwide.

Well, there is no reasoning with a two year old, becuase they don't understand. I think the the parents of a two year old are so sleep deprived, that they have lost their capacity to reason. I'd have to bite my tongue every time they warmed up a bottle of milk for the kid, because I knew in most instances he'd dick around so long that it would become the wrong temp. for him to drink, then the parents would just dump it down the drain, because I guess you can't rewarm it, or put it in the fridge for later. They went through a gallon of milk in 3 days this way, a gallon of milk they did not buy I might add.

I am guessing they will be invited next year. Of the four years we've been doing this, they've been around for three of them, and the kid was with last year as well. The only year they missed was when she was a couple weeks away from popping him out. It's a weird situation, I am the odd man out. They're mostly friends of my BF's from college, the father is in BF's bands, and the mother is really good friends with the other women who go on the trip, they'll even babysit for her. Plus the mother knows the people who let us use the cabin, so without her cooperation, no one can go. It's such a beautiful location, and very reasonably priced with all the people, I'd have a hard time turning it down as I usually don't have alot of money to go on vacations that involve hotels and resturants. I try to make the best of it and allow the kid to trample on any sort of maternal instincts that may rear their ugly heads.

When I was 16, my mom took me to her friend's home in Tahoe for a two-day ski trip. The friend was a single moo with a nasty two-year-old. Her aged dad and fiance lived there, too. Yes, Feh, the toddler ran the entire house. We all would be tired after skiing all day. I was never a night owl except for work so I wanted to go to bed. Everyone had to stay down in the living room while Moo begged the brat to go to bed. By 2am, Moo picked her up and took her to her crib. Yeah...the screaming and caterwauling went on for quite awhile. My mother had me entertain this thing do "pay back" her co-worker for having us in her house. My mom is a cool woman and meant well but I really resented being a playmate to this sprog. I never went up there again!

I understand how a toadler can run adults ragged. It's the screaming...The Screaming...THE SCREAMING!!! Damn, it never stops! His parents were working with him on communication skills, and he'd mastered the loud no and yes, but it took alot of questioning to get any answer. They were good at making sure he'd be tired out by the end of the day with lots of running around and activity. Again, I am confident these folks are PNB.

At least, if I were to end up in some bizzarro universe where I was a parent, I could never, ever, NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS say anything as stupid as "Wha?! I never knew it took so much WORK to raise a kid", like most idiot breeders. What a load of bullcrap...seriously, when I hear someone say that it sounds the "breeder alarm" to run as quickly as possible away from them out of spine chilling fear that they'll try to foist their kid off on me, or pull out some b.s. bingo. Actual parents never seem to express amazement that it takes work to raise a kid, breeders always do.

Hey India! Funny, I was subjected to something similar when I was 16 too, except it was a Methodist youth group ski trip to Gatlinburg, TN and one of the couples who was there to chaperone brought their 6 month old baby, who hollered for a good majority of the trip--some mini-vacation! Then again, maybe they were thinking it would be the best form of birth control for a bunch of teens. Either way, it confirmed the fact that I did NOT want to have to take care of one of those EVER!

I've noticed that a lot of breeder's two year olds don't eat everything on their plate but maybe a measly two bites. Maybe its b/c for most of the damn day, the damn brat is eating nothing but junk food, which is being served to him from his/her idiotic parents.

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lab mom

That's an interesting point you make, WaterLily. If parents let their kids chow down on chips, chocolate, and cookies all day, how can they possibly expect the kids to want to eat real food? It shocks me how the stupidest people are the ones who seem to spawn.

I agree with the screaming. I swear, I might lean slightly away from CFdom if it weren't considered child abuse to stuff a balled-up sock down a kid's throat or crack it upside the head with a spatula to shut it up. I have patience with a lot of things, but babies aren't one of them, and even the most patient and mellow people can be driven insane by incessant screaming. While I don't advocate it, I don't blame those people who shake their babies when they cry.

DH and I went out for a late lunch/early dinner today. I watched this little brat of a kid, at a table near ours, devour a huge milshake before her food arrived. After getting all of that sugar in her she felt the need to skip-run around the entire restaurant, tap dance and sing in front of her parunt's/handler's table, and crawl all over the floor. Her parunts did nothing. When their food arrived, little Snotleigh was too full from her milkshake to eat the greasy fries an chicken strips she had ordered, so she continued to "entertain" the restaurant with her darling antics. When our waitress brought our food she asked if she could get us anything else. I jokingly said, "Yes, a rope and a gag for that brat over there." She thanked me for saying that because the kid had been getting on the server's nerves, and in their way, but the manager told them they couldn't say anything to the parents unless customers complained about the child's behavior.
She went right over to the table and told them that their daughter needed to sit back down with them, both for her safety and because other patrons had complained about the noise. Moo shot us a dirty look, and I just smiled sweetly at her. They actually did attempt to keep her under better control after this, but she was annoying them so much that they boxed their food and left. Thank goodness! Bad kids suck!

Gee, Sherz, breeders do not like to be put in their place huh? hehe.
Good grief, why give some kid a whole milkshake before the food arives? Dog Damn.

As I always say, Cambion, stupid people do nothing but breed.

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lab mom

The idea that brats are fun or relaxing is so fucking twisted that it defies description. Since we all know breeders are out of their minds, only they are gullible and stupid enough to believe all of that tripe.

Who in their right mind would want to sign up voluntarily for a lifetime of resentment, penury and the bitterness that accompanies all of it? Who in their right mind would want to put up with the "I hate you", "I wish you were dead" and "You never let me do anything"? Who in their right mind would want to shell out every fucking dollar and then some for the bratcrap that becomes obsolete faster than anything worn by Paris Hilton? Who in their right mind would want any of it? Obviously, I answered my own question, but dayumn...just how much more clear can it be to the fucking breeders that we CF would rather do without all of it?!

LOL Dr. Dan, SO and I had this exact conversation yesterday. Someone would have to be out of their minds to make a conscious decision to screw up their lives like that. May as well slit your wrists and dump yourself in the bathtub with a bottle of muscle relaxers.