10 bloody annoying things all parents have said to their children
When my son recently asked me, ‘What are we going to eat?’ and I replied, ‘Poop with farts,’ I realised that I’ve really gotten old and that I make the same annoying, dated remark my parents used to make. Well, suddenly… suddenly… I’ve also found myself guilty of the statements below at the dinner table. Just like pretty much all the parents I know. Sound familiar?
1. ‘You look with your eyes, not with your hands.’
When my son pointed a little too enthusiastically at something he wanted in the bakery with his tiny toddler paws. A super-annoying comment, delivered in such a preachy tone too, ugh.
2. ‘This isn’t a hotel.’
Often followed by remarks like ‘Sorry, we don’t do room service here’ or something passive-aggressive like ‘The maid is on holiday’, with every mother referring to herself.
3. ‘Not hungry? Then you can make yourself hungry.’
Apparently trendy again in women’s magazines. ‘Don’t feel like it? Then make yourself feel like it.’ At least as silly.
4. ‘If you lick your knife, you’ll cut your tongue in half.’
The horror scenario from everyone’s childhood that was nevertheless very exciting. Would it really happen?
5. ‘People are hungry in Africa; you’re just peckish.’
‘People aren’t poor everywhere in Africa, you know,’ children say nowadays, but in the seventies we didn’t have the internet and I firmly believed that nobody in Africa had anything to eat. I felt genuinely bad when I complained that I was hungry and was played the Africa card.
6. ‘I want, I want, I want… I want something too, sometimes!’
When we didn’t want to eat pasta yet again. Apparently my mother wanted things too. Probably no whining children at the table. Or a shot of whisky. Probably both, in no particular order.
7. ‘Eating bread ends gives you big boobs.’
I don’t know why my mother always said this. She probably wanted us to eat the whole loaf instead of constantly leaving the ends. Either way, I can confirm through experimentation: it isn’t true. The same goes for the following lie:
8. ‘Bread crusts give you breasts.’
Something Grandma said when my sister and I were picking the crusts off our bread again.
9. ‘If you swallow chewing gum, a tree will grow in your stomach.’
As a child, this genuinely terrified me, so I always spat my chewing gum out in the street. Nowadays I neatly throw it in the bin – no stress. In the old days, all sorts of things would grow in your stomach if you weren’t careful. Another one I often heard: ‘If you swallow an apple seed, a tree will grow in your stomach.’
10. ‘Eat everything on your plate.’
Yessss, we get it already!
