I don't want to judge, but...

Rachel Corbett: 00:00:02

Hello there. You'll be pleased to know docs did not knock on my door this week, although I'm not sure that they won't at some point.

And thank you to everybody who contacted me via email or reached out on social and shared some of their stories of when their child had said something really heinous to them after last week's episode. I particularly like this one from Christy Woodhall, who contacted me on Instagram and said, years ago, my toddler didn't want to leave a play center.

So as I tried to remove her, she shouted, this woman is not my mother. That is like a level of epic villain behavior that sometimes you're like, okay, this is problematic for me.

But at the same time, you got to step back and have a serious dose of respect for the intelligence. Like, no idiots are manipulative. You know, like, the evil genius is a genius.

Like, you gotta have some smarts about you to be able to manipulate a situation. You're not using your smarts in the right way, but you're clever, and you gotta take a minute to step back and go, okay, all right.

You've just portrayed that I'm stealing a child in a play center, but at the same time, I mean, one to you, truly, that's. That's solid. You really. Your brain's not super developed, and you came with up with that all on your own, so well done.

Anyway, so good to hear that I'm not the only one who's been framed by my toddler. And I went back to the daycare the following day and just kind of sought out the people who'd been told.

And I was like, you guys don't think that that's true, do you? And they were like, we were very shocked. I was like, okay, please don't ring dogs. Please don't ring dogs. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

So now that that's out of the way, I just feel entirely comfortable to judge other people by the sounds of things and do the episode that I planned to do last week. I know this is dangerous territory. This is just, like, never a good idea.

And to be honest, if you listen to this episode and you're like, you know what? You're an idiot.

And here are the reasons why your judgment of this is ridiculous, and you should actually pull your head in and not judge people for this, by all means, email me.

To be honest, I don't really think much about other people's parenting, like, when I see it, unless they're being horrible or they're doing something I'm like, man, this is just gonna bite you in the ass.

But for the most part, even if somebody is, you know, acting a certain way, you know, the day could have been terrible, or they're going through a really bad patch. Yesterday in the car, I screamed so loud at Olivia.

That's so bad to say, to the point where I thought if anybody was driving past, they would have thought, oh, my goodness, that woman is alone. And. And I felt terrible about it, and I apologized to her afterwards, and I was ashamed of my behavior, and I felt awful.

But the situation was that we were choosing what song to play on the dashboard of the car, and Olivia saw a photo of Emma Member, which was assigned to the MMEMA playlist. So I clicked on that because she said she wanted that one. And then I went through and said, which song would you like? That one. I was like, what one?

The one with the photo that we just saw. That. That's a photo of Emma Mama. But that's just for the playlist. I want that one. It's not a song. I want that one. It's not a song. I want that one.

I said, it's a photo of her for all of the songs that she sung. So then we go through to that list, and then we choose. I want that one. I. I'm like, I can't.

Olivia, I can't give you that one because it isn't a song. It's just a photo. I want that one. Why won't you give me that one? Because it's not a song. This is just like, this went back and forth.

She's screaming at me, telling me, play the song. Why won't you play the song? And I'm like, because it's not a song. I just like to the point where I was like, I actually. I've tried everything.

I've tried explaining the playlist concept. I've tried, like, I've tried showing her and scrolling through and saying, these are all of the other ones that you could want.

I've tried going back to the beginning and stepping her through it. And at a certain point, I was like, I actually have run out of things to do. So I'm just screaming back now.

I'm screaming back now because this is all I have left in me, because this is the most infuriating going around the roundabout conversation I've ever had in my life. Anyway, I lost my lid. Then I was like, quiet. Then I turned around and I said, I'm really sorry.

I was getting really frustrated, and then I really Slowly explained. Like, we'd sat in silence for a little bit, then I explained the situation, and I talked her through.

Like, that was a photo of the playlist, and we couldn't play that there. And so I talked her through everything, and then she goes, okay. What do you mean, oh, okay. Where was okay when we were driving back then?

And anybody driving past me would have thought that I was having an absolute mental breakdown. Like, where was I okay, back then, anyway?

So I know you can have those moments where if anybody saw me externally, they would have seen the rage and anger on my face and thought to themselves, that is a bad mother. Like, that behavior is bad. And I would have felt the same about somebody.

But some days you just get in yourself into an mmm loop where you actually have nowhere to go. And am I proud of it? No. Do I apologize and explain myself and say, I'm really sorry I got angry, I shouldn't have behaved like that?

I'll always apologize.

And it doesn't happen very often, but for some reason, it just tends to happen on those really annoyingly, completely trivial things that you just like, if somebody said, why did you behave like that? You say, because she wanted me to play the mmm. A song that wasn't a song. How is that reasonable? It's not reasonable, and I feel bad for it.

But anyway, all this to say, I am not perfect by any means, and I make mistakes left, right, and center. But there are some things that I'm just, like, this stuff I can't deal with, but I see it all the time.

And it's less really about the parenting and more that you want to go up and say to the parent, this is gonna bite you in the butt later on. Like, this is actually gonna be problematic. This particular thing that bugs me, I just think you are making a rod for your own back here.

And that is being on the phone all the time when you are doing things with your kid. I see it all the time at the park.

Like, these parents walking hand in hand, their kids, like, looking up with them talking, and they're literally holding this kid's hand and, like, watching a screen at the same time. Or they're pushing their kid on the swing and they're not even standing behind them.

I was watching a parent the other day pushing from in front and watching something on the screen standing at the slide. The kids are like, hey, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Or Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. And, like, they can't get their attention because they're staring at their screen.

And I'm just like, okay, you Must not care if your kid wants to use the phone in the future. Because if you think you have any chance of encouraging them not to use a phone or getting them to not want screen time, like, you're stuffed.

Because all you do when you're spending time with them is stand there with a phone in your hand staring at it. And kids pick up on what we do, and all they do is like, okay, well, that's what I want to do.

And then you can't turn around to a kid after you've been standing in front of them in the park all day and say, no, you can't watch a screen because they're like, well, hang on a minute. You just did it all day. Like you're just screwing yourself. You know what I mean? And it's like, I get it. The park is not exciting. I get it.

It's not thrilling.

You got to stand there, you got to do a whole bunch of equipment that you don't get to play on, but you've just got to, you know, do the encouragement from the sidelines when they're doing often fairly underwhelming things. But at the same time, for the sake of, like, 45 minutes, for your kid to feel like you might be mildly interested in how they go down the slide.

I just think this is just going to create a problem for you later. And sometimes I feel like parents feel that their kids don't know. Like, they don't notice. And I'm like, mate, your kid would be clocking that.

Like, really studying it and recognizing what's going on there. And good luck telling that child later, no, you're not getting a mobile phone. Never going to happen.

Here's the other one that really gets me, and that is when people inadvertently, or maybe it's not.

Maybe they, no, I don't think anybody intends to do this, but when their behavior is really doing nothing but guaranteeing that your little kid is going to be an asshole. Let me give you some examples. Mostly this comes under the sort of pillar of, I don't reprimand my kid or say no to my kid at all.

Like, if my kid behaves in a certain way, I just say, oh, that's so funny. Oh, that's so silly. Never say no. Like, do a lot of the whole, oh, well, that's what toddlers do. And I'm like, I get it.

There's a lot of stuff that toddlers do, but there's actually a lot of stuff that they do and you should pull them up on. And it is okay to say no to your kid from time to time, especially if they're being a dickhead.

I was at a music class once, and there was this kid in there that would literally rip the instrument out of every kid's hands. Go up to the teacher, I for the teacher. Because, you know, the teacher isn't in a position of authority. The parents are there.

They can't turn around and say, jimmy, piss off. They've got to go, oh, Jimmy, Jimmy.

And it is upon us as parents in those classes to go and get Jimmy up and pick him up and go, oy, not okay, stop doing it. So this kid just kept ripping the seat from this teacher out from under him and taking it away.

And then he'd come up and pull all of his stickers out of his bag and pull his musical instruments off the desk, and they're smashing around. And is the mum raising her voice or saying, no once? She's laughing the entire time.

And I'm like, this is the most infuriating situation because can you say anything as another parent? Nope, you can't. But I can tell you right now, if Olivia was doing any of that, you would really see me set those boundaries. And I will say I am.

I could. I could verge on too strict. I reckon I'm not, like, harsh or any of those things, but my boundaries, they're firm and they don't get budged.

And if they do get budged, like, I just know and have seen what happens, and I've lived it by doing it myself. When you sort of let those boundaries creep, you're like, oh, mate. They just get pushed out and out and out.

And next thing you know, you're like, holy crap. It's actually so hard to get those boundaries back once they're done. And it could be the smallest, smallest of boundaries.

So, for example, at the moment, and this might seem like a ridiculous boundary, you, like, get over yourself. Like, let you read, kid. Read your books twice. But we kind of got in the habit of now we have to read the two books that we do at nighttime twice.

And when we are running late or, like, I'm trying to get her in bed and I'm trying to get things on track, and she chooses a really long book. And I'm just like, oh, my God. This is like.

Actually, this has taken this process from, like, 10 to 12 minutes to maybe 20 odd minutes, which at that time of night, when I'm, like, racing home from work to grab her, getting her in the shower, giving her food, trying to get her into bed on time, so she gets, like, a really solid, decent night rest, like an extra 10 or 15 minutes. Like, that is actually, like, a real issue. But I now can't get her back from the two books, like, doing them twice.

I've tried and the Meltdown, and I've just kind of given up. And now I'm like. I'm like, okay, I let that boundary go. I stuffed it up. I've let it go too long. I can't rip it back now.

And I'm like, there's nothing. You know, there are worse things to do than us reading two books twice.

But just in terms of, like, keeping our life on track, I'm just like, okay, that was my stuff up. That was my bad. Like, it's my fault, right? Like, if the boundaries aren't adhered to, it's because you didn't step in and do anything about it.

And so I. I reckon I've probably run my household pretty tight, but at the same time, I don't have a lot of behavior issues to deal with with Olivia externally.

Like, I don't have a lot of things where she's running rampant and, you know, she's pretty respectful and she's, you know, she stands back rather than pushing in and all those kind of things. And, yes, a lot of that is her temperament, for sure. But I'm also really conscious of making sure that she knows what is okay and what's not.

And, yes, you can play around and be a fun little toddler and do all sorts of things, and there's a lot of leeway you need to give a child, and I get that. But I do think that, like, the leeway should happen within the boundaries and that those boundaries shouldn't budge.

And so when you see these other parents and you're like, mate, you are in hell right now.

And part of me feels for you, because nobody likes to be the parent in the room with the kid who's, like, destroying everything and actually making things really difficult for everybody around them and the teacher. But at the same time, you haven't said no once. Like, you haven't said no once. And I know people are always like, well, you don't know the situation.

You don't know. And I get it. I totally understand that.

But I went through, like, six weeks of being in a class with this woman, and the same thing happened every week, and there was never a no.

And it's like, okay, well, your kid might have behavioral issues, or they could be this or that or the other thing, but like, at a certain point, you got to say no to this kid. Like, you got to tell him he's not allowed to do this in this situation.

Like, if you laugh, that is exactly the kind of response that your kid wants out of you. Like, what kid is not going to want to keep doing things to make your parent laugh? Like, he loves you, he wants you to laugh.

He's like, oh, my God, what a great time mommy's having over here. I'm going to keep moving this guy's chair around, you know, like, there's no consequence for that.

We had this other kid at the sports class that we go to. Like, all the kids have to sit on their red or blue or yellow dots or whatever.

And you have a dot, and that's the dot you stay on and you run from one dot to the other. And it's like, I really like the process of, like, like, right.

You know, we stand here, we know our place, we're respectful of others, space, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, there's this one kid and he just, like every week, bulldoze right through everybody.

Like, and his dad's sitting there, not a word, not a word to the little kid, you know? Oh, yeah, you just push in front of that kid. No drama. You just run in front. It's just like.

And you're looking around going, are you gonna step in at any point? Anyway, I used to just sit back in amazement because I'm like, okay, you're never gonna say anything to this kid, all right, whatever.

And then one day he comes up and stands on Olivia's spot. That's Olivia's been standing on all class. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, these are all our spots. This is where we stand.

Surely the dad's going to come up and say, hey, that's not your spot, buddy. Over to your spot. No, he just came up and said, maybe Olivia can find another spot. Ah, can she? Can she really? Well, maybe.

You are guaranteeing that this little kid is going to be an asshole, aren't you? Like, stuff like that. I'm just like, I'm sorry if that's judgy. Send me emails, tell me I'm wrong, but I just. I can't deal with it.

I can't deal with it. Like, it is our responsibility as parents to reduce the factor in our children. That is essential. That is what we are here to do.

If we let them run rampant, they would. Everybody would be a. Like, with no rules, no boundaries, no nothing. Whether I can do anything at any time of day. In any way.

They would never learn to go through life. They're always going to be the person that's going to sit in a situation and people are going to go, that guy or that girl is a.

And I don't want my kid to be that person because in many ways it makes life so much harder for them. Now you're always going to find people that don't like you. You're always going to find, you know, little things that you don't fit into.

That's normal. But in terms of like just general behavior that makes you an easy person to be around.

Like that stuff is taught, it's modeled, it's explained and ultimately it just makes life so much easier for a kid moving forward if they're able to do whatever they want and they never learn that there are any consequences for their action. And they're never going to hear no, well, they're going to be that 25 year old guy who everyone's like, that guy is a pain in the ass.

Nobody wants to hang out with him. He's a. Because he's been probably a since day dot. So far be it for me. I've taught.

I mean, I've given you an example at the beginning of this episode about how I am not a perfect parent. I make mistakes all the time. I stuff it up all the time. I'm apologizing to Olivia. Every time I stuff it up, I get angry. I don't like to get angry.

I'm not an angry person. But there is so much infuriating stuff that goes on in the life of living and raising a toddler that I can't help but get angry from time to time.

So I know I am not perfect by any means, but these kind of things, I'm just like, I tell you what you'll never see me do, let my kid be an and not pull her up on it. There's no way in the world you will ever see me do that because I got eyes on her like a hawk. And this is the other thing.

We were at the daycare the other day and there's a chicken coop thing with these baby, baby chickens. And these two mums are standing there talking to each other literally side by side with their two kid boys.

And one of the boys has taken the lid off the chicken coop and has his hand in there and he's grabbing these chickens, like these baby one day old chickens and dropping them, grabbing them. And I am sitting there just going like, oh my God, please look at your child. Look at Your child.

Now, if my three year old daughter, who I know does not have an aggressive temperament, if she was anywhere near that chicken coop, I would be watching her like a hawk because she's a type toddler, she could of course pick the lid off. She doesn't know. Like he doesn't know how much pressure he's applying. Would this really be hurting this chicken? Like, you don't know.

You don't have any idea, like what kind of gentle grip you're supposed to pick up a baby chicken with. Like, you're not even supposed to be picking them up in the first place.

So I'm sitting there watching this mum going, please, like, don't make me step in, I need to say something. Anyway, she eventually kind of looked down. I was like, oh, very, like casually sort of like, oopsie.

And then of course, Tommy just puts his hand straight back in and starts literally grabbing these chickens again. And they're just talking over the top of this kid.

And I'm just like, I had to stop and say, I'm so sorry, but what your kid is doing to those chickens, it's actually really dangerous. Like. And she's like, no, I know. I'm like, no, you don't. You're not looking at it.

And I am sitting here watching these chickens be grabbed and I'm like, if I turn up to daycare tomorrow and these chickens are dead, like, I'm not going to be able to live with myself. Like, I have to just stop this. And you are paying no attention. And then her mum and the other mum are like, oh, silly Tommy. I'm like, silly Tommy.

Oh my God. Like, Tommy was being a. Just tell Tommy, no, that's not. And put the lid back on the chickens and say to Tommy, no, you can't handle the chickens.

Just say no for just occasionally just say no to your kid. I'm sorry if this makes me really judgy. I'm sorry if you're listening to this and you're just like, you would a clue. I know, I get it.

We're not allowed to say anything. But this grinds my gears. It drives me nuts. I'm like, set the boundaries. Say no to your kids. Like, please, for the love of God.

Because, like, we all have to coexist with them, right? And my kid is not perfect. I'm not perfect.

But sure as hell, if I ever see her behaving a certain way around other people and it is not okay, I am going to be the first person to speak up. You will never have A situation where three parents down, somebody's got to turn around and go, excuse me, your kid is being really rude to my kid.

Or your kid is doing this now. Could she be around the corner and I don't see it? Yep, 100%.

But if it is happening in front of me, I am not going to be staring at my phone, not paying attention to my kid, because I'm conscious. This kid is bumping into in life. It's learning how to do things.

Like, I'm supposed to be there to guide her through this, and I'm doing the best job I can do, but I definitely do not want to set her up for a life where people are like, I do not like that person. And that is what happens if you never say no. And that's Miranda over. I know I will have pissed people off, probably.

You'll be listening to this go, well, that's it. Me and my tiny human can effort.

And I don't mean this to be, like, judgy in a way that, like, I am putting myself up in terms of parenting, but this stuff just grinds my gears. I would love to hear your thoughts. My email is in the description have a crack at me, but I cannot deal with this crap. Say no to your kids.

That's all I'm saying. Doesn't have to be all the time, but it does have to be sometimes.

Because I don't want to be the asshole parent that's coming up to you and saying, excuse me, could your son not murder the chickens? Then I now I know what's going to happen.

She's going to see me in the reception area and go, there's a woman who told my son not to murder the chickens. Sorry, Sorry. All right, rant over. I'll see you next week.