"I'll never ever..."

[deletedit]

I thought I would go to uni, get a job, work a decade or so in some nice government research position, get a PhD, get married, have kids.

I ended up a single mum at 25, went back to work part time, then quit, now a self-employed unmarried (defacto) SAHM in the country.

Never really had much to do with kids but my own are fine, even if DD#1 drives me bonkers at times the whole chain of events triggered by having her (very long story and not pleasant so I won't share) led me to meet my current partner, who I would never have met otherwise. I just missed him at uni - I was teaching there and he started uni the year I finished so I never had him in any of my classes. Would have been a bit weird dating one of my students though ...

[boomba]

Great thread!
I said I would never let my kids eat all over the house....now as long as they eat something I dont mind where they eat it!
I would never be the banshee lady yelling at her kids to come back cause my kids would be well behaved when we went to the shops.....yeah right! Banshee is my middle name!
Defintiely not using TV as a baby sitter....DS1 has dinner in front of the TV cause its the only way he will eat shamefull I know!
Would never ever let the kids have junk food...DS1 is a chocaholic

[Renee_AW]

I didn't think I would co-sleep until I read about the benefits for DS. He sleeps in his bassinet in our room but at 14 weeks is getting too big for the bassinet so will soon be moving into his cot in his own room (I don't sleep when his is in bed with us).

I don't want him to go into his own room but his cot doesn't fit in our room & our bed doesn't fit in his room!

[ladybirdflies]

some very funny replies here!!!
I thought I would NEVER let my children eat in the car! Squished sultana's are a plenty in our backseat! YUK, but I still hand them food when we are traveling!

[AwesomeFoursome]

I would never put my children in childcare. DS starts Friday.

I would never put them on formula. DD was on it from 7 months.

I would never yell at my children. Yeah that worked NOT.

[Trillian]

The only one we ever really had was no babies in bed with us, which worked fine for the first three because there was no need to have them in bed with us, but then we had a baby with reflux that didn't sleep from 4 to 10 months old so it became vital that he slept in bed with us so we could get some half decent sleep. SIL is a good one for saying "My kids wont do..." and she is adamant that her kids will do as they are told, all the time and not do the things she doesn't like. she is due in 3 weeks and she is about to find out the hard way that kids aren't very good at listening

[Bathsheba]

Oh my! This thread is so comforting to read! Basically EVERYTHING I was adamant about before having my children i have done back-flips on. And maybe not with my first two chidren but at least by the time I had my third i had had to re-think my stance.

Now I am very slow to make a hard-and-fast rule about anything. And i don't judge another parent lest I am then forced into walking their shoes. These days i am particularly slow to judge parents of teenagers. I was one to say "how can parents of teens simply allow them to wander the streets????" Um, probably because the parents believe their teens are somewhere safe.... maybe even they have been assured (misled) by another parent that their child will be fully supervised at their house. This has happened to me. 15yo DD was invited over to another friend's house. I spoke to the parents and made sure that this arrangement was known to them and expressed a preference that DD stayed under their supervision. That was all and good until the parent decided to go out afterall leaving my DD and friends free to roam the bloody streets! Oh but if my DD was seen in public being a nuisance or loitering at the train station etc i am apparently the worst parent in the world! Yes some parents don't even try to keep their teens safe... but you just don't know. ETA: oh and my DD had the consequence of not being allowed to go around to that friend's house anymore... and she now has to call in every hour to confirm where she is. ie I have tightened up even more... because yes, she should have known.

[misty]

I would not let them eat junk food until they were older, and then only occaisionally. I was pretty good with DD. Not so good with DS1, he started eating junk food much too regularly at about 1yr. And Sadly, DS2's first food was a milky way - fed to him at the ripe old age of 4??mths by his wonderful sharing big brother. I don't think I ever had a chance with that one.

I never liked the leashed too much, but with DS1 and now DS2 - Absolute godsend!!! especially when trying to chase three kids in three different directions and not loose the pram and your purse at the same time (and they are good for strapping the kid to the chair at the food court so they wouldn't run away.

Those are probably the only two things I said I wouldn't do. BUT there are alot of things I said I would do that I haven't followed through with.
Said I would do baking and cooking with my kids - much too messy and time consuming, not to mention bad for my waistline.
I would do arts and crafts - ditto to the above (although, minus the waistline problem).
I would take them for walks to the park and get out side and play with them - usually much too cold or inconvient.
I would read to them everynight - doesn't work out that way EVER, so we just read when we get the urge during the day.
I would ensure they had a good stable religious education - somehow fallen by the wayside, we rarely even attend church anymore only for special occaisons (lets hope this one gets fixed when they are at school).

I know my DH always used to go on about how his kids would never have runny noses, go downtown half naked or without shoes, that they wouldn't throw tantrums or write on walls, that they would behave in restraunts. I always used to laugh at him, and now he knows why.

[deletedit]

especially when trying to chase three kids in three different directions and not loose the pram and your purse at the same time (and they are good for strapping the kid to the chair at the food court so they wouldn't run away.

This is the biggest advantage of having kids with a big age gap - the biggest one becomes an extra pair of hands to keep an eye on the smaller ones, and the little one is likely to want to chase the big one around so you sort of know where they are in a department store.

Having such a big age gap was also something I'd never considered

[Bathsheba]

That's so true about the benefits of a big age gap. One of the things that I was right about was that smaller gaps are harder work... First I had a big gap, then a small one... And sure enough the smaller one is harder! Mainly due to the sibling rivalry. But I never had any set ideas other than that about age gaps... Just had kids when the time was right.