A father has called out ‘lazy’ parents who don’t spend time with their kids.
The dad of ‘an almost three-year-old’ took to Reddit recently to share his annoyance at other parents who take their children to the park or pool, but sit there glued to ‘the phone’ instead of interacting with their kids.
“It's not my f****** job to babysit/play with your kid(s) while hanging out with mine. Put down the phone. Get in the pool. Run around the park. Be reactive and imaginative. I'm tired from work too, but my kid, your kid, THEY DESERVE BETTER,” he wrote anonymously on the social media site.
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He went on to explain how after he finishes work, he takes his child to the swimming pool at his local gym, or to the park and playground before they head home for dinner.
“Now, I'm not exactly father of the year, but I try my best,” he said. “I exaggerate my facial expressions whenever he shows me something, I acknowledge all the mundane little things as if they were Nobel- Prize-winning discoveries that will help mankind, and every once in a while, I'll let him win when we're having water fights or wrestle matches.”
He then explained how other children will approach him and his son playing in an attempt “to be brought into the action…or generally be invasive and disruptive so they can have fun too”.
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While the dad-of-one noted that he didn’t mind entertaining the children alongside his own for a short period of time, he is aware that his son now “recognizes that these older, bigger strangers are taking his dad away from OUR one-on-one guy's time, and he'll start to get jealous and bashfully try to take me back”.
“I look around and these kids' parents just look off onto their phones, or just sit there doing anything BUT playing with their kids because I'm practically leading an entire damn summer camp by myself, and the energy and group of kids tend to snowball…
“After about 15 minutes of five-to-seven kids all trying to hog my energy, I'll just abruptly say goodbye, pick up my kid and just leave.”
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He then reiterated that playing with other people’s kids is not his responsibility and that parents should be spending more time with their children.
“PLAY WITH YOUR KIDS IF YOU BROUGHT THEM OUT AND STOP TAKING THE LAZY/EAZY WAY OUT. WE'RE ALL TIRED,” he concluded.
Fellow Reddit users threw their support behind the father, noting that ‘phone parents’ also grind their gears.
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“F****** phone parents suck! ‘Mommy (or daddy!) Look at me!’ ‘Oh wow!’ (Without ever looking up) I wanna march over there and fling that f****** thing into the trees,” one like-minded person wrote.
A former lifeguard also shared the same anger at this phenomenon, writing: “Even before cell phones were so prevalent, this was bad. My first job was as a lifeguard when I was 16 and guarantee the most amount of saves were in the baby pool.
“Small kids don’t have balance and they are very buoyant so when they flip face down they can’t stand back up. The amount of times I had to wade through and pick up a baby and hold it out like ‘whose child is this?’, while four parents are talking less than 4 feet away is insane.”
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Another user wrote that their other half does the same thing as the anonymous father, playing ‘with the other kids and ours’.
“My husband is a saint he plays with the other kids and ours .. makes everyone feel validated and accepted. He was abandoned and neglected as a kid so he does whatever he can to share the love and my son [is] super social because of it”.
Meanwhile, another social media user has suggested that after engaging with his own kids for 'as much as possible', he feels "maybe I've overdone it. It seems my kids are too clingy sometimes, and I'm in the process of trying to break them out of their codependence on me in order to have fun."
"'No honey, you can down the slide by yourself. You don't need me to go with you. I'm going to sit on this bench and watch.' I think that's an OK thing to say. I want my kids to be independent and learn to have fun on their own. If they can't play and have fun on their own, I'm failing them."
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Gabriella Ferlita