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A meme done in the Pointillist style. Now I’ve seen everything!
This is so cute! I think I could easily convince my wife to do something like this!
Also… it’s pretty easy to see in the comments which people were victims of performative parenting. I don’t think they mean to be buzzkills, but behind hysteria there is history. You don’t have to accept thier judgements on this picture… but step back for one second and recognize you’re roasting someone who appears to be having a PTSD response.
You can tell this meme is old by how wrinkly the pixels are
I became a parent today. I’m taking notes
Do not listen to the mainstream fediverse opinion. It is perfectly fine for your baby to use Ubuntu linux, rather than Arch.
Ah, a young one. You’ll learn one day. Everyone desires stability eventually, and debian will come for you, too.
Thank you for saying it! So brave.
Thank you everyone!
Adding to the pile, babies sense your fear.
Really though, they pick up on tone and body language and it can make their panic worse. Start making a mental checklist of needs and focus on that. Hold me, diaper, hungry, burps, teething, mom/dad, toy, pet, sleepy, panic. Keep your tone happy and confident, it helps them feel like it’s less of a problem. Right now, you are the god to them, if the god is scared what does that mean for us mortals?
Find your comforts. It may feel like they have preferences, but what they’re responding to is just as much you as it is the stimuli. My boy didn’t understand the noise that magically appeared when he was colic, but he did understand that dad could tackle any fit he had while listening to Dido’s Life for Rent album. Eventually the hopeful melancholy and sleepy tones because a comfort to him as he grew to understand the noise.
Find a stuffy that you and your baby both like. Everyone suggests getting 2 and cycling them so they don’t have to go without if it’s lost or damaged or dirty. I personally found that hard to do because he bonded to an anatomically accurate squid plush from an aquarium I’ve never been to so instead we made it a game, this is how squidly takes his bath. The uniqueness of the item made it easier to find and hard to forget.
Find children shows you can tolerate or enjoy. Sarah and Duck from the BBC did wonders for me, it was quite enough to wear an earbud over and engaging enough to watch if I had to. Bluey seems like a similar choice, and I grew up Scooby doo so I never minded. It will save you the suffering that is children’s media if you curate it before you get there.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help or take a break. We’re hardwired to feel bad about not responding when a baby cries, but you’re no good to that baby if you’re no good to yourself. If you need to lock yourself in a bathroom and cry or call family to take over, or just make it through a grocery store without getting puked on, do what you need to do to make it happen. They won’t remember you letting them cry it out but they will remember you being a hood example of mental health.
On that point specifically, hit me up if you’re limited on peers with parenting experience. Shoot me a DM, I’ll give you my contact info. Goes equally for any reader in need. Sometimes you just need a chance to have an adult conversation or say fuck without worry, my doors are always open for that.
Serious.
Put up a world map in their room.
First it teaches them colors and shapes. Then numbers and letters. Then history and science.
When they walk into kindergarten and the teacher sees they know things like directions and what the word ‘island’ means, they’ll be the favorite pupil.
Congrats!
Hey, contrasts! Sleep when you can, the first night is a delightful little prank your baby is playing on you.
Night 2 is when it really starts.
Anyway, if you’re the mom, rest! If your the partner, advocate the absolute shit out of your partner. Get lactation support early and frequently. Guard access to the room so she can heal, and don’t worry about what any family thinks if you’re not 100% comfortable with a visit just yet. If there’s a nursery available at the hospital, make use of it. I want you to read that again. MAKE. USE. OF. IT. Let the nurses take a night shift so you can get some uninterrupted sleep.
Congrats! You’re going to be really tired for the next few years, but it’s totally worth it for these kinds of moments and so much more!
10000%
Congratulations. I remember my first day. Was super tired since the birth took a long time. Woke up shocked several times with the realization that there’s a baby now and I had to check where it is and how it’s doing.
Congrats! My little one is a bit shy of a year old. So far, every second has been worth whatever headaches have happened. It truly is a wonderful thing. As long as you love your baby and do you best to act in their best interest and for what’s good for them, everything will be just fine :)
Congratulations!
Needs more jpeg
This better?
Hmm… Ok now add more dither
Dither? I hardly knew her!
I would post the surprised Pikachu face but I don’t want to be arrested.
I ain’t afraid of Johnny Law!
You can tell that this is an old pic, because there’s not self check-outs everywhere…
Everywhere? The pic is not framed to show anything else so how would you have any way of knowing if there are self checkouts or not?
Everywhere as in like they are nowadays. My Walmart doesn’t even have “speedy checkout”
Yea but my point was you can’t tell that from this picture.
Maybe it’s the lane to buy cigarettes.
Yeees, to the arena, go fight my little Pikachu and make me proud!
“It electrocutes the other children or it gets put in the pokeball again”
Probably coming back from a con.
Or Halloween. Pumpkins on the sign indicate it’s autumn.
Convention or conning people? Both?
This is adorable
Is this doing patenting right, or is this forcing a child to dress how you want them to because you’re a weird adult with a specific idea of how you want your child to be?
There’s photos of my wife dressed up in little sailor outfits as a toddler. She found the outfits itchy, uncomfortable, and stupid, but her mother thought they were adorable and didn’t care for another opinion.
For all you know it was the kid’s idea
Exactly. I don’t have kids, but i have nephews and nieces and my 6 year old nephew recently showed up at my place wearing a pikachu costume that was 100% his idea. He didn’t change the whole visit.
Yeah, that’s the assumption everyone else has piled onto, but we have no context except that they’re all wearing costumes. Nothing in this photo inherently shows “good” parenting, unless the baseline for good is making sure your child isn’t completely nude in public.
Cute, but I suspect this is a relatively minor aspect of parenting.
No, it’s a major part. Not in this particular form, but play with them, be goofy with them, teach them cultural things and taking them in your daily life are all major parts of parenting.
This is part of why Bluey is such a good show. It shows parents getting involved in their kids’ play to a (mostly) healthy level.
How do you know the parent does all of that? The only evidence you’ve got is a kid in a costume. That kid might be neglected 364 days a year, but mum wanted to go to a fancy dress party this day.
The only reason the pic got that caption is because someone likes Pokémon and would’ve loved to have been Pikachu with their mum, not because of anything else.
You can charitably believe that all the other things you’re talking about happen in this child’s life if you like.
That’s kind of how photographs work, isn’t it? They exist as a moment in time without context. Anything we say or think about this one is framed by our own experiences and feelings. That’s part of what makes it a powerful medium - the viewer is left to consider everything that led to this moment and what happened afterward.
All the OP is saying is that this particular moment in time reflects something that they believe is important to raising a child. As a dad of 3, I agree. You indulge their interests, you treat them as humans, you try your best to teach them about the world.
That doesn’t mean I think the family in this photo is doing everything right - just that in this one moment, they did something good for their kid.
just that in this one moment, they did something good for their kid
We don’t even know that. For all we know, the kid hates Pokemon but the parents thought their costume idea was too cute to skip. To your point, this photo shows exactly what the viewer projects into it, and that is not necessarily good parenting.
(Also, that’s not how most photos exist. Context is supremely important to most photography, because otherwise that photo of Thích Quảng Đức is just an album cover that goes hard.)
For all we know that kid was kidnapped and forced to wear a costume to make it less obvious.
We can speculate a million terrible things, or we can choose to say “aww” that’s cute and move on.
I’m not saying people can’t think it’s cute. Parents dress their kids up as all sorts of shit because they think it’s cute. I’m saying that dressing your kid up is not objectively good parenting. That kid didn’t buy those outfits. The parents made them dress up. Maybe the kid wanted to and was excited about it, maybe not. But nothing about this image is inherently “doing parenting right.”
Take away that text and I cease having an opinion on this photo, but the comments piling on that this is what parenting should look like without context or explanation are reinforcing the idea that children are dolls to be dressed and shown off like toys. Denying children autonomy because you want a cute Christmas card isn’t necessarily a good thing.
‘were he’ the parent, I believe was your OP’s point. Damn dude, don’t bring others down just to be edgy.
I’m not. People just place too much weight on outward displays of subcultures they appreciate instead of the stuff that actually matters.
The first sentence of your comment makes no sense to me, sorry
