What little things drive you completely up the wall....?

[ladyknight1]

I am so sorry to hear that. I know a mother like that, and we had to cut ties with the family.

[Piratelvr1121]

DH knows my organizational skills are less than sublime. He also knows that since he can't accompany us on our camping trip, the planning and preparing has fallen to me and that it's a bit more stressful for me than it might be to him, making sure all's done and ready.

But, that said I'm pretty proud of myself. I've gotten several lists together and have crossed quite a few things off them already and made decisions as to what's really important and what's not, to simplify my life and minimize our packing.  I do think everything will be ready by the time my friend's train gets in next week, provided my children don't make a whole new mess o' things in the next week.

So it truly annoys me when he gets smug about me finding out how much planning is involved in all of this. Dude, I know! It's not like I didn't lift a finger to get ready last time, we just shared this responsibility.

To his credit, he would help if I asked but dangit, I am stubborn and want to prove to myself that I can do this without his help.  Beyond packing things into the van, that is, and getting the carrier on top of the roof of the van. 

[Shalamar]

My 18-year-old daughter recently took a trip to Britain by herself.  She planned the whole thing, and I was very proud of her organizational skills.  I said "Y'know, it's possible you got those from me."  She raised an eyebrow and said incredulously "YOU?!?"

Geez.  I know I'm her mum and therefore know NOTHING, but I've planned all of our family vacations, complete with printed itinerary so that there'd be no "What are we doing today?" questions.  I know a thing or two about organization.

[lilfox]

<snipped>
Speaking of helicopter parents, my daughter once had a birthday party to which we'd invited all of her daycare friends.  The idea was that the children would have fun in the basement (with adult supervision provided by my husband and/or myself), and the parents could go away and come back later.  One of the mothers refused to leave.  (She seemed shocked at the suggestion, actually.)  Not only would she not leave the house, she wouldn't leave the basement, and she hovered around her little boy the entire time.

Well, up until the last bit, I would be a little understanding - clearly the mom then went way overboard, but I can understand not leaving a preschooler in an unfamiliar situation under certain circumstances.  My DD was invited to a birthday party for a friend from daycare at one of the local party-places.  The general advice was there should be a parent per child if the children are on the younger side.  Not only did I stay, but I ended up escorting my DD around almost the entire time.  I felt I had to do this because she was one of the youngest by far (ages ranged up to 10 or 11) and she was getting bumped around, ignored, and causing "traffic jams" on some of the games because she was smaller and slower than the others.  There were one or two other moms walking their little ones around so it wasn't totally unusual, I guess.

On the other hand, she had a great time (once she stopped getting nearly trampled).  But I did feel a bit like "That Mom" for hovering around my child almost the whole time.      If I had known that would be the situation, I would have declined the invite since I thought the party group was going to be all 3-5 yr olds, not 3-11!

[Piratelvr1121]

Multiple cowlicks.  I truly can't tell which way this child's hair is meant to be parted. Some days it looks like it ought to be parted on the right, some days to the left, some days when neither looks right.   

[ladyknight1]

Spike it with gel!

[Piratelvr1121]

Well it's a bit long for spiking but at the same time I'm just not ready to get him his first haircut, as it's thin and fine and just now seems to be getting a good amount of it.   His brothers, by 12m had a full head of thick hair that they got from their father. 

That's another thing. I really need to get over it and just get him a haircut but I'm reluctant to mainly because he's the last so it's going to be the last first haircut.

[Luci]

That banner ad the keeps popping up and everytime I move my mouse, the pen writes!

Oh, wait! There's nothing really wrong with the ad and it does pay my way here on eHell!

[Adelaide]

My mother used to do my brother's homework for him and insisted that I help as well. She wasn't that great at spotting grammatical errors, but she would never explicitly say "I want you to help me do your brother's homework". She would always randomly say things like "I'm going to read you a sentence, and you tell me if I should use 'who' or 'whom', okay?" When I called her out on it she would NEVER admit to it. She'd just say things like "I'm just helping/teaching him" or "I'm not doing it FOR him" or "If I don't help him like this he'll never graduate." Drove me nuts. She justified it to herself by making him sit there and follow along as she did the work.

In hindsight, I can see that she was just doing it to get him graduated from high school (doing his work for him mostly happened in middle school days, but she didn't want him stuck in remedial classes) and out of the house. He's really smart but he really did NOT care about school at all.

[twiggy]

Not sure if this is an extension of helicopter parenting, but it drives me up a wall when people encourage their children to blame inaniment objects for their own mishaps. The other day my niece was sitting in a chair and tipping it backwards. She, predictably, fell on her butt. Instead of "Why in the world were you sitting like that?" her grandmother said the "Mean old chair had tipped her out." The chair is the victim here!

See, I don't even think the bolded is appropriate. I'd say, "Are you all right?"

The fall should be consequence enough. I think when you admonish children unnecessarily, you actually send the message to them that you're "in charge of" them, and if that's the case, then THEY aren't "in charge of" themselves.

As for the "mean old chair"--isn't it clear that it's a joke? A way of saying, "sorry you got hurt"?

My niece used to be watched by her grandmother during the day, with me as the back up. One day I came into the kitchen to see her crying and hitting the table. She had been sitting under the table, stood up, and bonked her head. Not a huge deal, or so I thought. Turns out, she was punishing the table because that's what she did at Grandma's house. Run into a wall? Bad wall. Spank it. You tip the chair back and fall out? Bad chair. Go put it in time out. 

back on topic: Something that's driving me up the wall is people ringing my doorbell. It's always during naptime, and I can never get the child back to sleep. And it's usually for something stupid. Like today I got a knock at the door and it was a "neighbor" selling children's books to raise money for his college trip. I've seen those books before. Even if they're not a scam, they're a rip off so I told him I'm not interested. He asked if I would be able to just make a donation. Um, no. Not even for a "neighbor" (I didn't recognize him and I know my neighbors)

[Piratelvr1121]

My boys typically will help each other here and there with homework as one is really good at math while the other's exceptional at science.  Course this also means arguments of "Tell me what the answer is!"

"No! I'm not doing it for you, I'm just telling you how to get it!" I can help with elementary and middle school science but once they get to chemistry, beyond "balance the equation", I will have to direct them to DH.

And oh, another thing that will last me the rest of my life.  Being short gets real annoying!  Especially when trying to put a rain fly on a tent that's taller than you  are.   In preparation for our trip, I'm pitching our tents to air them out and refresh my memory as to how to put them up.  We're bringing 3 tents, one big one that will sleep myself, Piratebabe and my best friend.  Then two small tents for each of my older two boys.  The boys put up their own tents to air out as they're very easy to pitch.  I got the tent up just fine.  It was getting the fly over that was a bit more tricky.  I managed, but I'm sure glad my best friend is taller than I am.

[TootsNYC]

Not sure if this is an extension of helicopter parenting, but it drives me up a wall when people encourage their children to blame inaniment objects for their own mishaps. The other day my niece was sitting in a chair and tipping it backwards. She, predictably, fell on her butt. Instead of "Why in the world were you sitting like that?" her grandmother said the "Mean old chair had tipped her out." The chair is the victim here!

See, I don't even think the bolded is appropriate. I'd say, "Are you all right?"

The fall should be consequence enough. I think when you admonish children unnecessarily, you actually send the message to them that you're "in charge of" them, and if that's the case, then THEY aren't "in charge of" themselves.

As for the "mean old chair"--isn't it clear that it's a joke? A way of saying, "sorry you got hurt"?

My niece used to be watched by her grandmother during the day, with me as the back up. One day I came into the kitchen to see her crying and hitting the table. She had been sitting under the table, stood up, and bonked her head. Not a huge deal, or so I thought. Turns out, she was punishing the table because that's what she did at Grandma's house. Run into a wall? Bad wall. Spank it. You tip the chair back and fall out? Bad chair. Go put it in time out. 

You know what? I take it back--I do remember my MIL doing something like this. And I told her to stop.

And once when DD, then 3, wanted to ride the little coin-op horse outside the grocery store but couldn't because it was broken, MIL told her, "Mommy will fix it."
So of course the moment I arrived to pick DD up from the visit, she said, "Mommy, come and fix the horsie." I told MIL, "Don't lie to her." And then I had to explain that Grandma was wrong, it was "the people's" horse, and they'd need to fix it.

Thanks for making my job tougher, Grandma! Instead, how about teaching the truth, so my kid can learn to handle disappointment (or injury, in the case of the "bad table") like a sensible, learning person.

[Carotte]

Indoor rock climbing made me literally drive/haul myself up the wall

I guess it's a minor annoyance but the way I bruise so easily bothers me. My knees looks like they got quite a beating, blue and red, swollen...
I wouldn't be surprised to get some bruising on the inside of my thights too, from the harness.
And I had just gotten rid of a huge bruise on my shin made by a bed frame  (who jumped in front of me, of course, 3 weeks ago!)

[squeakers]

Facebook vague-bookers.  Right now there are 2 flavors:

1) People who post vague, slightly threatening, whiny posts regarding how people parent.  I like to answer those as if they were talking about me.    Most of the time I know who they are writing about but I really don't care.  I want to see kitty pictures, good music videos and the occasional all out FB post brawl.  Being vague deprives me of the latter 

2) Game friends whining about not getting enough clicks/likes/items back from neighbors.  Again, I answer back like they are talking to me. Mainly about how it's a game and not a job: no one pays me to do that clicking and if I am not doing it fast enough/often enough.. you can delete me as a neighbor. They never do.

[Julian]

There is a multi storey car park behind my office building.

A car alarm has been going off constantly since I got here at 0830.  My colleague got here around 0530 and he said it was going off then.  It is now around 1430, and I have at least another two hours of constant 'beep beep beep beep beep beep pause beep beep beep...' to listen to.