The daily struggles with a toddler have deafening consequences for the neighbors of a young family. A note in the hallway asks for an apology – and tips.
Potsdam – There are things that only parents can understand: the child’s first laugh, the first steps – or what it means when the offspring is in the defiance phase. Notesofgermany shared a picture of a note in the hallway of an apartment building in Potsdam-Babelsberg on Instagram. The message that followed was short, but spoke volumes between the lines: a “cry for help” from young parents who were apparently at their wits’ end.
Parents with a child in a phase of defiance try to calm neighbors with a note: “He’s fine.”
What exactly led to the young parents in Potsdam-Babelsberg having to hang the note in the hallway can only be guessed at. Deafening screaming is probably the most obvious guess. “Dear neighbors, Theo is in the next phase of defiance,” begins the message to the residents. “He’s fine, we just brush his teeth or discuss the color of the spoon.” But even these simple things seem to cause enough drama for the family. “We are happy to accept advice, tips and tricks, food for the nerves or wine,” ended the message, which many young mothers and fathers can probably identify with. In return, the parents offered in the “small print” to distribute earplugs to the household.
It is not known how much understanding the house residents had with the child’s clearly audible defiance. After all, the original note showed a heart with a smiling face drawn with a different pen, which suggests at least one empathetic neighbor. Online, however, the response was overwhelming: over 77,000 people clicked “Like” on the post, more than any other post on the Instagram page Notesofgermany.
Note in the hallway asks for parenting tips: Parents get thousands of pieces of advice online
Values and worldviews flow into raising children, and the question of parenting tips quickly becomes a controversial topic. This was clearly demonstrated by the almost 2,000 comments under the post. Above all, a discussion arose about how much freedom of choice one should give a small child. The controversial opinion of one Instagram user is that the fact that “all children today are so spoiled and no longer follow the rules” is due to parents like these. You don’t have discussions with three-year-olds, the user continued. “It makes no sense to discuss things with three-year-olds because their brains are not designed to recognize complex dangers,” agreed another person, who says she works as a teacher herself.
If a child wanted to cross the street at a red light, he or she would not understand the danger, even after hours of discussion. “Then it’s dead if you don’t react,” was the drastic example of the alleged teacher. Another commenter thought this was too much of a leap in thought. “How do so many people here go from ‘Child is allowed to choose the color of the spoon’ to ‘Child is allowed to walk alone across the street’?” the commentator asked the group. Two different things are being thrown together, one being the right to have a say in small and harmless things – like the color of a spoon – and the other being “survival measures on the streets”, according to her opinion. After a long discussion, another user got to the point and wrote: “You should just take this note with humor.”
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