ILPM "use other words please"

am gonna avoid moaning about language related to disability cos cultural differences and shifting fashions but sometimes I hear parents use words about their kids that make me do a little cringe inside

1. "go down" as in "he didn't go down til 8:30 last night" - wtf you sound like you are talking about shooting an elephant with tranquilizers. it's a child going to sleep.

this is how i feel about "put down." you put down an old, sick dog, not a sleepy baby.

5. "I can't drink orange pop it makes me hyper" - medical evidence for this is tenuous as fuck and your parents shd stop telling u this cos tbh it just gives u an excuse to go nuts when u drink some

6. All the fucked up business-speak that teachers are now commanded to use and that they have to put in their school reports.

7. "Quality time". This is really un-Zen, people.

8. "Hot-housing". Prefer "inflicting crippling mental damage".

"wtf you sound like you are talking about shooting an elephant with tranquilizers."

I think this is the great thing about the phrase myself.

lol truth

11. All the fucked acronyms: SAHM, LO, BF, etc.

Woops that was 9. LO is particularly annoying.

8. "Hot-housing". Prefer "inflicting crippling mental damage".

Hope that's not similar to hot-boxing! "Not until you're 15 years old, little man!"

Do not forget DH (Dear Husband!) which can be either fauning or sarcastic in tone. Plus, it's my initials, so I'm particularly aggreived.

I'd never seen that one. In fact I've never seen a mother on any message board refer to her husband in a complementary fashion at all.

lol

i don't know what "hot housing" is

#2 really has got to be the all-time worst. uggggggggh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hothousing

"Tiger mother" That woman should be pelted with rocks.

My wife just pointed out that the widely-used acronym for breast milk is BM which is actually really funny.

"How do I know how much BM my baby is getting?"

"Babies do better when they're fed BM"

Famous people who underwent hothousing

Sufiah Yusof -- (ended up as a prostitute)
Gordon Brown[1] -- (lollll)
John Stuart Mill -- (had a nervous breakdown at age 20)
Aubrey de Grey[2] -- (eccentric but influential and respected)
Val McDermid[1] -- (seemingly perfectly normal)

never heard/heard of most of these, I have to say

5. "I can't drink orange pop it makes me hyper" - medical evidence for this is tenuous as fuck and your parents shd stop telling u this cos tbh it just gives u an excuse to go nuts when u drink some

are you saying concentrated doses of sugar do not have behavioral effects? I find this hard to believe, just based purely on personal experience alone.

Personal experience also tells us that people go crazy during a full moon, but that's wrong too.

nah I've never noticed that. unless you're referring to PMS lol

It's an old, old urban legend among cops and medical workers, but it's still pretty well known by the general public--I'm surprised that you haven't heard of it.

"nah I've never noticed that."

You've never heard someone say "full moon brings out the crazies"?

no, I mean in my personal experience I have never witnessed it. I have personally witnessed kids losing their fucking minds after eating a bunch of sugar.

Anyway, I'm just saying that you need to go by the facts in things like this, not personal experience. Personal experience is subject to all kinds of bias and preconceived notions.

"no, I mean in my personal experience I have never witnessed it."

Most people who have to deal with the general public at night have.

Anyway, I'm just saying that you need to go by the facts in things like this

fair enough. when Noodle comes back I'd like some hard facts about the effects of, say, high fructose corn syrup on the metabolisms of toddlers

1. "go down" as in "he didn't go down til 8:30 last night" - wtf you sound like you are talking about shooting an elephant with tranquilizers. it's a child going to sleep.

― 40% chill and 100% negative (Tracer Hand), Friday, April 1, 2011 10:57 AM Bookmark

So that's what you think of when you hear the words "go down", eh?

^^^lol have to admit I had the same thought...

Well, that's not the ortiface that's used to conceive the kids...

Speaking of using other words

hey Shakes: here is a link discussing the myth of the sugar high: http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2769.full

I've seen kids go nuts too but it seems likely that if they're told often enough by adults that sugary drinks are a licence to go apeshit...anyway, biochemistry says "bullshit"

i guess you hear "put down" more..? anyway both are completely unacceptable

I had to put down my child last night. It was hard getting him to go down, but in the end I was able to by filling him with BM.

"put down" = unacceptable

So in the interest of sensivity one must use a much lengthier phrase, each time?

Sensitivity is such a hardship.

not sensitivity so much as not sounding like you are talking about killing your pet cat

i dunno, "put down" also assigns all this agency to the parent like "woe is me, i had to really work at it". and maybe you did. but there's the cat-killing thing too. why not instead of "we put him down at 8:30 last night" say "he fell asleep at 8:30" or "he went to bed at 8:30" the way every other human being gets talked about??

Because put down /= fell asleep. Went to bed implies the baby did it on their own like they just waved good night, closed their bedroom door and popped themselves into the crib. In my experience the bedtime experience is more like killing a pet cat than it is like that.

How's about the old standard: "We put him/her to bed." ?

Has a vaguely mobbish overtone. I like it.

Went to bed implies the baby did it on their own like they just waved good night, closed their bedroom door and popped themselves into the crib.

i think everybody understands that it does not work like this - so you don't have to pat yourself on the back every time you mention it

christine's sounds like a perfectly sensible compromise

unless you accidentally say "we put him to sleep"

it just sounds so.... arrogant! "my boy was a cryin and a wailin... so i had to put him down"

another shade of meaning for "to put down" is to insult. it's a very negative phrase!

i've been loving this conversation

I always assumed 'putting down' was a hangover from a time when mothers carried babies around when they were awake (so put them down for sleepytime). Whatever, this seems like a bit of a weird discussion, given that we all know what a strange thing the English language is.

no there is RIGHT and WRONG

so let's just agree, not to disagree exactly, but that i am right and everyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.

Went to bed implies the baby did it on their own like they just waved good night, closed their bedroom door and popped themselves into the crib.

i think everybody understands that it does not work like this

Ah, one time we were all "Amber's very quiet... " we went to see where she'd got to and found her in bed, fast asleep. She'd clearly decided she was sleepy and put herself to bed. She was 18 months old at this point.