Pet Peeve On These Parenting Reddits..

@jsphalford11 Just because you dont have time to read, doesnt mean it's useless advice to everyone. Books have a lot more credible information than some strangers on the internet too.
Besides, if you didnt have time to read the book, why do you think another parent has the time to type it out for you?
 
@babylonfive Pet peeve - something I personally find annoying. Not something EVERYONE is going to find annoying.

Nobody is asking anyone to type out a book (...nor did I say anything even close to that, what?). But saying 'well I'm not going to help you, I had the time and money to hire a consultant/buy and read this book so you must too' is really just deliberately meanspirited gatekeeping.
 
@jsphalford11 OR, it's some genuinely helpful advice that would work out very well if you would make the time to take it.
It's perfectly okay you cant take every piece of advice given, but what's not acceptable is coming to a parenting group to whine about getting inconvenienced because you didnt get the handout you were looking for. Even worse, you're whining about posts that dont even apply to you, so now people following this sub have to see your post while looking for actual advice.
 
@babylonfive 'Make time' is one of those amazingly unhelpful phrases like 'figure it out' or 'you'll need to make a plan'.

It is callous and speaks to an astonishing level of privilege or...yeah, mean-spiritedness.

Sometimes there is no time to make, when you're trying to take care of a sick wife, a very difficult baby without any outside help or the money to afford paid assistance.

What I do have the time to do is taking 5 minutes to ask if anyone has any advice on the internet.

You are free to not respond. You are free to respond unhelpfully.

What annoys me is when you respond...essentially accusing people who are likely in a worse situation than you are of being entitled or 'cheating' because they need a different sort of help.

Also - you are now whining about whining. Which is generally the point where the discussion has passed the point of productivity.
 
@jsphalford11 If you’re spending enough of your limited time on reddit that you’re developing “pet peeves” and noticing patterns in the way internet strangers behave, yet you keep coming back to reddit instead of redirecting that energy into another more productive activity (like reading books written by experts), it’s really not a reddit problem. That’s a prioritization problem of your own design; as an adult, it’s in your power to improve your habits, and it sounds like your social media time on those hard days could have been better spent elsewhere.
 
@jsphalford11 Totally agree with you on the book recco. Like being sleep deprived and stressed out if my mind with barely time to shower, I’m not going to be reading a book, especially one that’s got a lot of research in it
 
@jsphalford11 I agree. I love reading but I read for pleasure. A literary adventure. I refuse to pay $20-$30 to read a boring book about potty training or sleep or something when I can Google it and get advice there. Or ask people here for their first hand experience. The limited time I have for reading is for fun books lol
 
@jsphalford11 I think a lot of the time the most helpful books contain a lot of information and you can’t really provide the specifics that will be the most helpful in a concise way without knowing way more details than a general post will provide.

In the same vein as your complaint, though, not everybody in a parenting sub has the time to go grab the book, find the exact excerpt that may be helpful, and type it out in its entirety in a post tailor-made just for you. And then do the same to the next poster that asks the same question about a different baby tomorrow. And the day after that. And two hours after that on the same day. As you pointed out, a lot of people have the same issues, but as you also failed to notice: not everybody takes the time to scroll through the sub to see what answers are all ready available to them that people took the time to provide the painstaking level of detail you think everyone should get every time.

If you’re coming for advice in a social media sub, you’re going to get general information and then you need to actually put the work in to make it work for yourself because only you are going to be aware of all the nuances involved in making that advice work. Expecting others to do it for you is pretty entitled.

Also being suspicious that everybody is a bot trying to sell you something is just bizarre. I’ve got a very magical and typically common concept for you to consider that’s probably way closer to home that can give you the precious resources you seek for free from well meaning strangers: a library. Often times they will have multiple copies of a book, or have an inter-library loan system that can get a copy to the branch closest to you for a tiny fee (mine charges a quarter). A lot of them also contain research librarians that can help you find specific excepts from specific books based on specific needs. So if you can strap said high needs low sleep super stressful baby into a car seat for a quick drive, and soothe said baby long enough to literally speak to another human being, you can get all the information you’re looking for from someone very qualified to do it efficiently and quickly, often for another very small fee if it isn’t a totally free service.

And for the record, nobody has to respond to anything anybody posts on Reddit, let alone provide an entire specialized dissertation in response to every single person with the same problem that has so many ways to solve it, most of which probably won’t work since they’re not in your shoes (and will be a total waste of that other person’s time to provide to you).
 
@steelcityd You...really beat the hell out of that strawman, didn't you?

My point is that the sheer amount of 'just read the book' is frustrating when the chances are good that the person asking for help just...doesn't have the mental bandwidth or physical time right now to read the book.

We have a library near us. With 'near' meaning a 25 minute drive through a busy part of the city. No research librarians.

Now? Doable. But we're okay now for the most part.

Then? I can't drive (well I can, but not in any way safe). Wife was sick. We made it out to the library once and it was a whole thing.
 
@jsphalford11 I took the time to read the books, dude. It’s possible. It really doesn’t take as much mental bandwidth as you’re claiming to look through a table of contents and skim for pertinent information little bits at a time, and hold onto what’s useful and look for more when what you’ve tried isn’t it.

I also had a high needs baby who went through a purple period, also had very shitty parental examples on both sides of the aisle who provided next to no decent advice and also didn’t demonstrate stellar parenting, also both of us worked full time in pretty demanding jobs while she was an infant so we didn’t have to spring for full time childcare.

You know what I didn’t do?

Blame random people on the internet for not doing all the work for me when all they provided were small snippets of advice and book titles. If it matters to you, you make the time. If it doesn’t, it’s a lot easier to complain how people didn’t cater to your needs while ignoring the fact that the answers you were probably looking for were all ready in the sub answered a dozen times over, they maybe just didn’t want to type it out for the 10th person asking the same thing.

You know what people did for parenting advice before the internet? They talked to other people around them and in the same way tried the advice to use what worked and kept looking when it didn’t work, or often times, got the book the other person found helpful.

If you want nothing but specific information with sources from a sub, create and moderate a sub that does exactly that. If you want general parenting advice from people who are also slogging through it at the same time (and much of the time also lack the time and mental bandwidth to do all the work for you), stay here.
 
@jsphalford11 Just go to the library for free to get books? I read books still, while in the pram and with the rocking my baby sleeps for a bit so I can read a book in the park or wherever. Also read most of the parenting book stuff while pregnant, cost me a few quid ordering them from eBay.

Not sure why you’re cross that other people aren’t doing the work for you that they did themselves.
 
@james2206 This comment right here, 💯. Reddit takes a lot of my time but I love it, and it’s no excuse for my lack of reading. Also, if someone recommended THE book and I was desperate for something to fix a problem with my child, I’m reading it the night of (I’m not referencing the book I actually read till 4am since it’s a trigger for OP). Obviously I’m not gonna read every book ever recommended but at least the one most people suggested.

EDIT grammar
 
@jo412 I take the baby to free storytime at the library and look for books while we’re there. Yes, I have to make the time to read while baby is napping or doing independent play. It’s not impossible though. Beautiful thing about a book is you read one word at a time so anytime you need to pause the book, you can and you pick up right where you left off. Can read as slowly as you need.
 
@jo412 Because it's not helpful and it comes over as gatekeeping when you go 'oh well it sucked for me and while I could actually be helpful, it should suck equally for you'.

Trust me. That first year, without the money for childcare or family to help us, we barely had time to eat some days. Let alone read an entire book.
 
@jsphalford11 The ‘mother is always right’ trope.

I understand complaining about the fathers who come home from work and turn on video games.

But some just get trashed no matter what they do. Yeah they didn’t carry and birth the child, but it’s perfectly valid for them to be stressed and sleep deprived without being a total deadbeat who just doesn’t care
 
@jsphalford11 Yeah like people forgot how to paraphrase and reference lol. Still scared of plagiarism i guess.

That or they just wanna flex that they read the book! Im over here reading my half-price GOT series a couple pages a day because thats all i can afford. Im not reading a whole ass baby book for a problem that might just be teething, or gas, or milk intolerance, or x, y, z into infinity because with how much these guys develop i such a short time its like every week is something new.
 
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