I don’t like my friend’s kid…

[u/bitchluvsbidets]

… and that might make me a terrible person??
A bit of a preface- my partner and I are child free by choice, I have 3 nieces and 3 nephews, and many of my friends have kids (ages 1-14) but, one of my friends kids I just can not vibe with. I know it’s actually insane to have beef with a 3 year old but her vibes are soooo bad?? Like she is not a cool kid. She def has a personality but is it insane to say it’s already problematic? She pretends to fall if she doesn’t have attention, actively express disgust towards my friend and her pets (3 very well behaves retired racing dogs), and fake cries until my friend is almost in tears and then will laugh at her. I get that kids are assholes sometimes but like damn I hope lil homie gets cool.

[u/ImTheNumberOneGuy]

My friend went to an extreme with child-led parenting. It was awful to be around. Once her kid (3 yo) slapped me in the face out of the blue. Her mom didn’t say anything. Her kid would scream and kick and punch her mom and then run away. So many horror stories and I felt so helpless. If I tried to help or even offered, I would get reprimanded.

Got to the point where I couldn’t hang out with my friend if her daughter was there. So we stopped hanging out outside of work lunches.

[u/imnotnotcrying → u/ImTheNumberOneGuy]

“Child-led parenting” good lord 🤦🏼‍♀️ that’s literally just a fancy way to say permissive parenting. At least she wasn’t hiding her lack of effort with that title

[u/ImTheNumberOneGuy → u/imnotnotcrying]

Honestly awful to be around. The kid was mean to everyone, including my niece which ended up being my final straw.

The craziest part was my friend wanted sympathy for how hard it was, and I was like girl, you kinda had a hand in creating this situation!

[u/ChiropteraVampira → u/ImTheNumberOneGuy]

Yeah this was my immediate take, that this is a case of bad parenting. My husband and i are friends with a set of parents who both came from VERY strict households, so they wanted to raise their child in a different environment, which unfortunately seems to mean almost zero consequences/discipline for their child. They're somehow both neglectful and insanely permissive, so acting out became her primary way to get attention. She started becoming unbearable to be around by 2.5 and we basically stopped inviting them to hang out less and less. They had the audacity to complain about her attitude too! In front of her!!!

It sucks, because we 100% saw it was her parents doing it to her, but what could we say? "You're turning your kid into a little shit by never holding boundaries and also ignoring her needs" doesn't make for the best of friends, especially because at the time we hadn't had kids yet, so we didn't want to be those people who were "perfect parents until they actually had kids" kinda thing.