The WTF? Thread

[Sporting]

Yes, but with two or more one has to cover more ground and have four eyes.

[ursus arctos]

Depends on the children

[Balderdasha]

It was definitely a bit more relaxing with only one child.

Many parenting charities have a qualifying threshold for parents who are eligible for their help which is simply "two or more children under the age of 5". The more children you have under the age of 5 and the more additional needs they have, the higher up their ranking list you come.

And yes, it does depend on the child / children. If you have one very easygoing baby (they do exist but are relatively rare, about 10% of babies) it's possible to have quite a relaxing holiday with them.

Time with my children could rarely be described as relaxing. Often hugely enjoyable. Not relaxing.

[Sporting]

If you have one very easygoing baby (they do exist but are relatively rare, about 10% of babies)

Is this a guess or based on something more solid?

[Sporting]

It's an interesting subject. One of my sisters has ten children and rarely seemed to freak out. The other, with two, much more.

[Balderdasha]

Is this a guess or based on something more solid?

There is some research around this but it looks like I've had my numbers a bit muddled. Babies get categorised into "easy, difficult, slow to warm up, and uncategorised": https://www.parentingforbrain.com/ea...s-temperament/

It seems that it's 10% difficult babies, 40% easy, rather than the other way round.

Also, 57% of babies are still not sleeping through the night (defined as a stretch of 8 hours) by six months old, which makes everything else much harder: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gro...4%20were%20not.

Using the classification above my daughter was difficult/slow to warm up, and my son was just difficult. My daughter hadn't slept for more than 90 minutes in one go at any point day or night before she was five months old. My son slept a little better but not much.

[Balderdasha]

It's an interesting subject. One of my sisters has ten children and rarely seemed to freak out. The other, with two, much more.

Yes, parental temperament is a big factor as well.

[ChrisJ]

On the holidays thing, I'm going with Ursus. It all very much depends on the children - and the adults, and what you're looking for in the holiday. For example, after my first marriage ended, the only holidays I could afford for a few years were camping in the UK. I took my two, from the ages of 7 and 2 and we all remember it as wonderful.

Obviously, if you don't like camping, or drinking a lot was important, or whatever, then you wouldn't have found it relaxing. But we did.

[Hot Pepsi]

Um, there isn’t a Squash court at Grand Central. Or Cannery Wharf. Or is front of the pyramids at Giza. And etc. Professional standard Squash Courts can come as flat packs these days - assemble, play the tournament, disassemble and gone without trace inside two weeks. It just needs a small to medium sized hall rather than any kind of dedicated space. The Grand Central one takes place in the Vanderbilt side hall, and only occupies around half of that for the complete court and spectator seating set up.

I was talking about the grassroots of the game.

At least in the US, which is what UA was referring to.

And with sports like squash, I’m pretty sure the bulk of the fanbase here will always be people who have played the game at some point. Just as it is with tennis. So if there aren’t courts, the game won’t have any footprint at all.


That is usually true with every sport except for the ones that are especially violent like the NFL or MMA. Those will always attract a large audience of people who would never dare try that sport.

It’s even true of motorsports, sort of. Few people will ever race anything, even karts, because it is expensive and dangerous.

But a major reason that motorsports are losing steam in the US is because young people aren’t nearly as interested in cars as they were a generation or two ago.

F1 is growing a little here because of Netflix, but the baseline was near zero, so any interest in it in the US feels like a surge.

[Hot Pepsi]

On the holidays thing, I'm going with Ursus. It all very much depends on the children - and the adults, and what you're looking for in the holiday. For example, after my first marriage ended, the only holidays I could afford for a few years were camping in the UK. I took my two, from the ages of 7 and 2 and we all remember it as wonderful.

Obviously, if you don't like camping, or drinking a lot was important, or whatever, then you wouldn't have found it relaxing. But we did.

We a lot of camping when I was kid, as my parents did when they were kids.

I wouldn’t trade that for all the five-star resorts in the world.

The only trip I’d really like to do - and it’s ok if I don’t - is Algonquin Park in Ontario.

I don’t care if I never leave the continent again. It’s good to do that, and I might if it’s feasible, but it probably won’t be. That’s fine. More eco friendly.

I know that travel isn’t going to fix anything that is troubling me.

[Balderdasha]

I took my two, from the ages of 7 and 2 and we all remember it as wonderful.

How old are yours now? Nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses for the past are wonderful things.

I remember all of our holidays with children very fondly and now I can laugh about any of the bits that were difficult at the time. But objectively, these things were stressful when we were experiencing them:

- the time when my daughter was 11 months old and got explosive diarrhoea in the middle of a Greek restaurant which erupted out of her babygrow and all down the side of the high chair

- the holiday when my son was 18 months old and his favourite activity was grabbing glasses and smashing them on the floor. He also burnt his hand on a lamp. And on the plane there and back he was highly insulted that he didn't have his own seat and spent the entire journey headbutting us and shouting "get down, get down"

- the holiday to York when we sat down at a table for dinner and my daughter, age about five, promptly vomited all over the table before we had a chance to order anything

- the holiday in a caravan where my husband had to wade into muddy waters after our son and then we didn't have anywhere to dry his jeans so we tried drying them in the oven in the caravan and burnt a hole in them

There were many more happy times than these snippets, and even these snippets are now funny memories, and were bonding moments. But I definitely wouldn't classify them as "relaxing".

Holidays with my son are probably more stressful than with an average neurotypical child. Possibly mothers find holidays more stressful than fathers. And I was a much more anxious person in general when my children were younger than five.

[Sporting]

Possibly mothers find holidays more stressful than fathers.

I know you preface this statement with "possibly" but still...?

[Hot Pepsi]

I was recently present when one friend of mine, with older kids, was explaining to another friend, with young kids, how to go to Disneyworld. The former cautioned that it’s exhausting and that one will need a vacation when it’s over. But the kids will love it.

[ChrisJ]

How old are yours now? Nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses for the past are wonderful things.

Oh they're adults with children of their own, but it's not nostalgia. I don't really do nostalgia. I know they feel the same because a couple of years ago I asked them what they remembered from childhood and both started with the camping. And, "We were always outside, doing stuff."

Don't mistake "wonderful/relaxing" for "perfect," "free of effort" or "suitable for all," as I hope I made clear. I spent more time than I'd hoped walking them to the toilets; I couldn't drink alcohol as I was solely responsible; I had to carry a lot of stuff backwards and forwards; I had to monitor them by water; once they were in bed, I was on my own, etc. But at the time I was living in a bedsit in Gloucester so...

Anyway, we had a lovely time.

[Janik]

with sports like squash, I’m pretty sure the bulk of the fanbase here will always be people who have played the game at some point. Just as it is with tennis. So if there aren’t courts, the game won’t have any footprint at all.


That is usually true with every sport except for the ones that are especially violent like the NFL or MMA. Those will always attract a large audience of people who would never dare try that sport.

That is an interesting point re: Tennis, which has a significant global following and media presence. I’m not entirely convinced it’s true. I’m fairly sure it isn’t accurate in Britain where a large chunk of Tennis “followers“ are really only interested in one specific tournament, Wimbledon, and are driven to that by the clear trend amongst the British sport watching public of curiosity and engagement with almost any big ‘event‘ (they might go on to try Tennis after watching it - public Tennis facilities in Britain always report a significant increase in bookings around tournament time which fits with the idea of fandom coming before participation). But that is a particular local phenomenon.

The sport in Britain where the fan base having also played is most accurate is probably Football, interestingly enough. Just about every male and increasing numbers of females have participated at some point, often as a kid. Plenty don’t engage in the organised version of the sport for long - my own experience of joining a junior club and really not enjoying it so stopping again after a few weeks and dropping back to watching only may be quite common... but that still counts as having played at some point.

[Janik]

The UK Sport Active Lives surveys include a section on spectating (data tables for it here:- https://sportengland-production-files.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2023-08/Active%20Lives%20Adult%20Nov%2021-22%20Table%2045%20Spectating..xlsx?VersionId=BpTBZ 61hi01zbEywR.daLnnxAx10fnwo ). There is no attempt to correlate whether spectators are also active participants, which seems an oversight.

The three dominant sports in participation terms are the elements of triathlon - cycling (for sport, cycling for travel is differentiated), running and swimming, in that order. Which are notably all as things used for basic fitness rather than necessarily sport, though they can be of course. Other big activities are likewise generic ‘get fit’ stuff (Fitness session, gym session, exercise machines). Once you get to actual sports Football is far and away the biggest participation activity amongst adults in the UK. As well as far and away the most watched sport.

[Hot Pepsi]

Well, I don’t know anyone who follows tennis who hasn’t played it, either in high school, or on a regular recreational basis.

Except, I do know some people who go to the US Open because they have a hook-up for tickets.

I don’t know a lot of people into tennis. It does not seem to be hugely popular in the US these days.

[ursus arctos]

I believe that there is a genuine disconnect between the spectator bases in the US and UK and my experience generally matches HP's (with the addition of a few people who support and follow all women's sport).

The English/UK penchant for "big events" is definitely a thing and rather interesting to me. I can't think of another country that exhibits it to a similar extent.

[delicatemoth]

Aren't 'vacation destinations' places where the people who live there are regularly reduced to being a picturesque part of 'the experience' for tourists? Ranging from the aggravating (Humza Yousaf being accused of wasting time travelling round holiday destinations cos he visited the Highlands) to the disgusting (coverage of the Hawaii catastrophe from the POV of inconvenienced tourists).

Anyway, Turger Burger.

https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1690472475208081408

[DCI Harry Batt]

I didn't know there were two kinds of squash.

[ursus arctos]

Essentially not anymore (as Janik has noted).

[DCI Harry Batt]

We (my elder brother, my sister and I) had some squash classes as a summer holiday treat or something one time. None of us tried to do it any more at all again afterwards. We didn't hate it, though. But I guess it didn't grab us either. Plus, you know, that bloke dying of squash.

This was long before the 90s, obvs.

[ursus arctos]

Janik can tell us when wooden racquets disappeared.

They lasted longer here in squash than in tennis. I am so old that I learned both sports with them.

[Janik]

My first racquets were wooden. I don’t recall exactly when I got my first non-wooden racquet, but at a guess it was aged around 10. So we are talking mid-80s for the transition. Not that long after Tennis, actually. I guess Badminton swapped at the same time as well, as the technology is so obviously similar.

[S. aureus]

I used to really enjoy playing squash when I was at university, not that I was any good at it. I didn't find much in the way of squash courts in the US, and hated racquetball (possibly by mentally comparing it to squash), so that kind of thing fell by the wayside for me.