So much for being a role model

Do you entertain the illusion that your running sets a good example to your kids? I did too, until yesterday.
Went to pick up my daughters aged 13 and 8 from sports camp being run at the local secondary school this week. I'd timed a run just beforehand and turned up feeling great; there we were young and old(ish) alike, all being active!
My 13 year old greeted me with a withering look, looked up and down my sweaty self and said sarcastically: 'THANKS for coming in your running gear.'
Apparently 'none of the other mums' pick their kids up in their running gear.

Comments

  • BarklesBarkles ✭✭✭
    Ah! I think you are going about this the wrong way.
    The correct spin on this one must surely be none of the others are as fit as you. Why not see if you can lure one of the others to come for a run and be the trend setter.
    Alternatively remind your errant child that a) You are the one with the car.
    b) The other kids mums haven't got your energy.

    13 yr olds are the worst!
    One of the mums at my school turns up in her aerobic gear to collect her kids, and none of the Dads complain.
  • Don't worry about it Laura, just wait till she has kids and a busy life and has to fit in whatever she does round everything else, and her daughter says the same thing. They you can smile.
  • Thanks SB, there's a growing list of things I'm looking forward to smiling about when she has her own kids.
    Barkles - that was my second faux pas, I didn't bring the car making the poor little mites walk all the way home on their tired legs..
  • I am glad to here that you make your kids walk, I think there is too much of this chauffering the kids back and forth.

    I can not believe the couch potato society that is being bred at the moment, well done LL. Keep up the good work. I like a mum who bucks the trends, or as Barkles says starts new ones.
  • I have just had my confidence boosted no end by one of my daughters. Next week I am running my first 10k and started having doubts about coming in last, she responded by saying it doesn't matter were you come in at least you can run 10k.
  • Your daughter has the right attitude WW. Good luck with your first 10K, which one are you doing?

    About the 'other mums' bit, I know for a fact at least 2 of them do go running, I think it was being seen all sweaty and dishevelled by her friends that so bothered my daughter. Anyway, now she's 13 my presence on this earth is increasingly a source of total embarrassment were it not for providing her with food and shelter for a few more years!
  • If my kids are ever embarrased by me then I threaten the next time I will turn up in my pants!
  • HillyHilly ✭✭✭
    Laura, as sad as it is kid's seem to go through a stage when they are actually embarrassed by their parents. I can remember my son not even wanting to walk in the town with me. It hurt at the time, but they soon grow out of it and now my sons aged 15 and 18 will actually run with me on occasions.

    Take heart in a couple of years she will be so proud that you are fit and healthy and not sitting all day smoking, drinking tea and watching television.
  • Laura I am running the Gallovidian in Dumfries, fancy joining me.
    Two of my daughters (I have 3, the witches coven) have been training partners either swimming or running in recent years, good bonding sessions. I don't envy any of you with "Kevin's" nothing is fair to a teenager.
  • Thanks! It's good to know you've come out on the other side Hilly. Most of the time we get on pretty well; she's even willing to accompany me on some my runs on her bike. The other day my husband kissed me in her presence and she literally curled up shrieking: 'I'm so glad my friends aren't here!'

    Dumfries sounds quite a long way away, is that where you live? I'll look up the details WW as I do want to do a 10K this weekend. What about the Langdale 1/2 on 8/9? I've just re-read the details which ominously refer to a free Tshirt to all 'finishers', and has the strapline 'give this form to your friends - if you want to lose them'.
  • Laura, The race is actually next Wednesday evening at 7.0p.m. and Dumfries is about half an hour off the M6/M74 at Carlisle and along the A75.
  • Laura, sorry meant to say I am working in Dumfries until October/November, home is Heysham, near Morecambe Lancs.
  • WW - my problem is with my 4 year old who won't come anywhere near me when I come back from a run - she says 'you're all sweaty - yuk! You need a shower!'. But at least she has promised to come with when she's older.
  • My 19 yr old has been tempted to run with me on my short circuit, then her boyfriend accompanied us too....we keep up the banter on the way round and then sprint for the finish, I can still (only just mind) beat the 21 year old boyfriend and that makes me feel SO good!
  • I find that if you remind them that you are only embarrassing them in revenge for the times as 3 year olds that they screamed the supermarket/bus/train/street down causing all within earshot to tut and call you a bad mother soon shuts them up.
    I got told not to wear my purple studded dog collar to my son's open day at school, I wouldn't mind but it matched the outfit perfectly.
  • I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering with the 'Kevin' attitude. My 13 year old daughter's fav line's are Mum you are so embarassing & why are you not like everyone else's mum? mmmm no idea... I am apparently 'Uncool' I drive a van instead of a car (hide me please) I ride a motorbike for fun (mum my friends say only lesbians ride motorbikes) I run with pig tails and wear shorts !!!!
    Then I turn up a school party to get her, and a friend thought I was her big sister ... (it was dark) that did not go down too well... I'm sure some day she will forgive me ....
  • I remember when my daughter was 13 a couple of years ago and rather unfortunately for her whilst I was out running one day (down a road that I don't normally go down) I saw my daughter smoking for the first time, she looked at me and very cleverly tried to hide the cigarette as I ran past she timidly said 'hi mum' and her friend (who later became her first boyfriend) shouted at the exact same moment'cor get your xxts out'. My daughter hated me from that moment onwards!!! We are pals now.
  • Clearly this is to do with being 13 rather than being a running mum. I'm glad there are others who don't try to be like everyone else's mum - pig tails and a motor bike sounds cool.
    Haven't had to confront any furtive smoking yet; so your daughter still accepted him as a boyfriend even after that Wolfy, she must have liked him!
  • Laura L, I think my daughter taking him on as a boyfriend was an act of rebellion rather than her liking him due to the fact that when she came home not only did she get blasted for smoking but I questioned her taste in friends too!!!! The knack is to pretend that you like their pals even going to the extent of inviting them round for tea....your teenager will soon stop bothering with the undesirable individuals deeming them uncool!
  • Reading these I'm really glad I don't have a daugther (yet). Do you ladies remember what you were like at their age. Just as rebellious I dare say
  • and haven't stopped yet!!
  • Laura, before the independent education system spat out my children (or spat out the two oldest ones - we removed the neurotypical ones in protest when they informed us that, regretfully, educating Ivor the Engine was becoming too much like work), I had the opposite problem - I'd turn up at the school wearing my working clothes and most of the other mummies would be in designer sports kit and their faces would be adorned with perfect make-up instead of encrusted sweat. Or else they'd be participating in the my-shalwar-kameez-are-glitterier-than-yours parade.

    Now that he's at a local school, my 8-year-old son hates Thursdays because that's the day I collect him from school - on foot. He only has to walk a mile or so, but he growls and grimaces and roars and generally behaves like a baby raptor when he sees me.

    My 11-year-old is so keen not to be a chubby teenager ("like you were, Mummy") that she's happy to come with me on long walks and, having walked up Snowdon, has declared her ambition of climbing Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis before her 12th birthday next June. She's OK when she's away from her siblings, despite the fact that her stock of adjectives has recently been reduced to "dumb", "REALLY annoying" and "not fair".

    And we're having a little snigger because, despite spending the past 2 years in the behaviour support system, Kevin cuffed her former classmates in the selective grammar school exams for this year, and by throwing Ivor out when they did the school prevented him from being exposed to a teacher who has recently been banned from entering the Midlands while he awaits trial on internet child porn charges. Which is not at all funny, but when I think of the amount of self-righteous green ink that school expended on us...
  • Welcome back Vrap, you'll notice your absence has been missed on the forum this week.
    I can see you've been through a roller-coaster ride in terms of educating your raptors; sounds inspiring and stressful at the same time. Congrats to Kevin for doing well in her exams, there's nothing like confounding others' gloomy predictions for your kids is there? As for the ex teacher, yes, too uncomfortable to feel smug I'm sure. Love your image of school run one-up-man ship too.

    Just come back from hideous school uniform shopping trip, having of course left it to the very last minute.
    13 yr old: 'These trousers don't fit' (the waistband perched about 1/2 inch above her pubic bone)
    Me: 'Don't think M&S do a line in hipster school trousers'. Husband: '...(hugely amusing joke)'
    13 yr old: 'Dad, sometimes you're just so stupid.'.

    Truce was finally reached in the shoe shop where she found fashion shoe with heel height acceptable to both of us.

    Glad you got up Snowdon - twice (go on, it can't be too boring to tell us why; let me guess, the other raptors insisted on a second ride in the train because the peak was covered in damp cloud the first time?) If you do come up with the intention of doing Sca Fell Pike, get in touch and I will drag mine up as well.
  • School uniform...bah! I can just about handle shopping for it and paying for it (we haven't got to the heel-height wars yet, although persuading the little ones that the school might prefer them not to wear pink patent shoes remains an issue), but when it comes to sewing the name-tags on it I really wish I'd taken the Pill properly.

    I am very seriously considering a Scafell Pike expedition at the end of October. We're all going up to Scotland to spend some time with my parents, and Kevin is up for booking into a B&B within walking distance of the Scafells for the Friday and Saturday nights at the start of the holiday and climbing on the Saturday if the weather permits then going on up to Scotland on the Sunday. Can your littlest one manage the climb? If so, I might persuade Ivor to have a go - he's quite a fit little beastie.

    The double Snowdon excursion happened because on gloriously sunny Tuesday Mr V-rap discovered, after dropping off Kevin and me, that all the trains were fully booked, so their Plan B (another railway) came into play. We booked them all seats for Thursday, but Kevin said no way was she getting on no stupid train that went up at THAT dumb angle and was THAT annoyingly crowded, so we walked up by a different path through rain and fog and wind. I can't claim that she held me back very much, either. Cost me a fortune in souvenir t-shirts, but it was worth it.
  • Vrap, email me nearer the time if you decide to do it.
    My Kevin has been up twice; once as a 7 week old babe-in-sling when we were still trying to delude ourselves that having kids wasn't going to change our lives. Got photo of me doing earth mother impression breastfeeding her in the swirling mist at the top. The second time I think she was 10.

    What kind of route would keep your kids the happiest? From Wasdale it's short and very steep with a tiny bit of scrambling, but sometimes that's more fun than a long plod. I've never been up from Eskdale but that would be the quietest and one of the least-known routes.
  • I'll certainly drop you an e-mail, Laura. In fact, I'm going to get the map out in the next few days and start looking for accommodation as demand might be high at that time. Scrambling up rock faces sounds much more fun than trudging up the tripper path, although we don't go as far as ropes and harnesses. If we did that, I'd just bring Kevin and leave Ivor with his daddy.

    Kevin's first hill-walk was as a baby in a sling too, in Austria, at about 10 weeks of age. We realised that having a baby DOES change your life when one of the staff in the hotel where we stayed had to be seconded to baby-minding duty for a couple of hours each evening so that we and the other residents could have a meal without it being ruined by colicky screams. Breastfeeding was lovely there, though, because people came over to have a chat and compliment me on having produced such a beautiful baby without batting an eyelid. Which is, of course, how it should be.
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