Parenting isn't always fun. Parents may love their children, but frustration is normal and expected when raising kids.
Things get more thorny once the child is older, too. As a child grows and matures and develops their own personality, parents might find themselves sparring with their children more often than not.
But airing grievances—especially about one's children—can be considered taboo in some circles.
Redditor RoseyTreatsBakery asked the online community:
"What is your least favorite thing about your child?"
"It does annoy me."
My kid can literally talk non stop for hours. It does annoy me. Ive been making an effort to stop what im doing and just listen.
"They both think..."
Both of my children, actually:
They both think being in a lockdown/virtual school situation means they never need to bathe or use deodorant again.
"He is constantly..."
Sock balls. He is constantly making balls out of socks and throws them around endlessly. He never has any socks to wear because they are nowhere to be found due to constant sock balling. Drives me insane. It's a good thing he's cute and a really good kid. It could be so much worse at 15.
"I can correct a stubborn kid..."
How much he's like me. I can correct a stubborn kid, but when it's more like looking in a mirror... that makes it 10 times more irritating and I have no idea why.
"All of the things that annoy me..."
All the things that annoy me about my kids are traits they inherited from me. Apparently I'm pretty annoying.
"Which means..."
Can I answer as an uncle that does more parenting of the kid than his deadbeat father? My nephew adores me. He's autistic, and I'm one of the few people who "gets" him, but it means any time I'm around he's attached to my side. That's fine, but he doesn't seem to be able to understand that he can just "be" around me without having to fill the silence. I'm cool with him playing his switch with my left arm around him while I browse facebook with my right. I like conversations, but he feels the need to always be talking, even with nothing at all to talk about.
Which means 3-4 times a day I have him pop his head up and ask whatever random question he can think of in the moment. Like "What would happen if Super Mario were blue" or "What if black holes weren't black holes?" or "What's your favourite type of.... um.... wall?" (All of these have been asked at one point).
"Turns out..."
When our son was two, he was a horrible eater and sleeper. Just very finicky with his food, and very difficult to keep asleep. We would get so frustrated and sometimes just be distraught with lack of sleep every night.
Then we went to the doctor. Turns out he had a minor structural issue in his mouth that made it very hard to eat solid food. He wasn't eating because he physically couldn't, and he wasn't sleeping because he was always hungry.
"Including..."
My stepdaughter has entered the phase of her life where she wants to know what we're doing at all times. Including when I'm sleeping/laying down. Two weeks ago I took a nap and she got into my face while I was sleeping to confirm I was still sleeping. The good news I'm happy to experience this now so I can prepare for it later.
"It's only been..."
Currently, it is the scream. Basically, she's just started the most godawful high-pitched scream whenever things are going badly for her, especially when she's frustrated or raging. It's only been the last couple of weeks and we're cracking down on it hard now, because if you banshee scream over minor things how do we know if something is really truly wrong when you do it? (Aka boy who cried wolf.) It's definitely slowed down in the last day or so since we got stern with her, so hopefully its ending but it was not a fun phase.
"She has some brave moments..."
My stepdaughter is afraid of everything. When I first came into the picture we couldn't even get her to walk past the Halloween stuff in Home Depot (she was 8), we can now get her in a Halloween store but she still won't go anywhere near the animatronics (she's 13 now).
She has some brave moments though, I gave her a staff that I had gotten from a ren faire to make her feel a little more safe. Now when she hears a loud or strange noise she'll come running out of her room with the staff, banging it into the walls and almost falling when she gets it tangled in her legs.
What's your most annoying thing about children?
