r/InfluencerLounge • u/EngineeringLumpy • 11h ago
She has 0 structure for her kids
Anybody watch this girl? Chelsea Johnson. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Is about how her kids (1 and 4) don’t sleep. This has been the focus of her content since the older kid was like 1. And it’s sooo painful to watch. She doesn’t enforce any kind of bedtime, and when her daughter (the older child) wakes up “hungry” at 1 AM, she will literally turn on the TV and order DoorDash?? Like she’s not trying to fix their sleep AT ALL, then blames THEM!! Then her daughter will sleep in until noon because she’s up half the night!
Currently, her son has been throwing up in bed every night for 3 weeks. She thinks he has lactose intolerance or some dairy allergy, yet she keeps giving him dairy bottles before bed. She has NOT tried oat milk, soy milk, almond milk, etc. it’s like she doesn’t care because him constantly getting sick creates content. She just keeps trying different types of dairy milk like low fat, lactose free, A2, etc. which are all going to make him sick if he has a dairy allergy or milk protein allergy. He was breastfed until 1 which is why this issue is rather new.
People will comment expressing concern about the sleep issue and the new vomiting issue and offer actual good, well thought out advice, and she’ll thank them but not take any of it.
I feel bad for her kids.
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u/Alternative_Salt_558 11h ago
My kids also don't believe in bed time. Luckily for them they have two parents that do.
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u/EngineeringLumpy 10h ago
This. Kids don’t believe in anything except their way or the highway, especially toddlers. My kids would think I was the coolest mom ever if I took them into bed with me at 2 AM to watch TV and order DoorDash. Unfortunately for them, my job is to help them develop into functional members of society!
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u/BeepBoopEXTERMINATE 11h ago
Right? Like I don’t get how that works. I have a 2 year old. Sometimes she doesn’t want to go to bed. She says no or keeps playing and acts like she didn’t hear us. She still ends up going to bed at her bed time.
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u/TheUnicornFightsOn 11h ago edited 9h ago
High school teacher here-- even the older kids actually crave and eventually respect boundaries, even if they don't think they do.
They may think/say they want a "cool" rule-bending teacher but walk all over them, versus actually respecting and learning more via strong classroom management and expectations/routines.
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u/royhope_fairbean 8h ago
I had this exact same thought! Like, I don't think I've ever met a young kid who believes in bedtime?? That's what parents are there for?!
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u/danicies 4h ago
Just fought for my life keeping bedtime at bedtime tonight. They’re still in bed.
Man I thought I did it wrong by letting them join us when they wake up around midnight 😅 I guess at least I don’t order DoorDash for them and keep them awake for tv time then
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u/KittyKathy 8h ago
I used to think it was so cool that we didn’t have a bedtime as kids and would go to bed at around 11pm when my parents did and then wake up at 6am. Now as an adult, I understand why sometimes I would be so exhausted I would cry until they let me skip school. My sister and I struggle with insomnia too.
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u/CoherentBusyDucks 11h ago
My son doesn’t believe in bedtime or school or fruit.
As the parent, I make him do those things anyway. This is not cute.
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u/Original-Network-772 11h ago
Mine also don’t believe in brushing teeth, wiping their butt or washing their hands. For their health, the health of their family and others…. I MAKE THEM DO THOSE THINGS. You are so right… it’s called being a parent!
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u/Less-Kaleidoscope465 11h ago
For real. Like I chose to have them, that is literally my job to make them do these things that promote their health and wellbeing. How the fuck do these people get away with such a lack of structure and boundaries.
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u/EmmerdoesNOTrepme 10h ago
Right?
That's why it's called "Parenting them" and not "Co-Childing" with them!!!
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u/influencersgetagrip 11h ago
I hate all child exploiters, but this is especially egregious. Those poor children will grow up and learn that their so-called mother made their life harder on purpose to pay bills. What the fuck
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u/glitter_laughter878 10h ago
Meanwhile, “regular people” are out there making daily sacrifices to give their kids the best life they can. Videos like this make my skin crawl.
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u/LongWalk86 10h ago
Seriously. Do an Onlyfans like a regular person. At least that way your kids are emotionally damaged until high school.
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
Oh does she have free range children like the crunchy moms don
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u/EngineeringLumpy 11h ago
No I don’t think it’s anything like that. She makes these nightly “woe is me” vlogs showing how awful her kids sleep is, begging for advice on how to get them onto a routine, then not take any of the advice and keep filming them every hour of every night.
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
lol sorry I’m joking, because in the crunchy mom
Sub they’re saying strollers are bad and calling it free range baby! Lmao8
u/Emilygilmoresmaid 11h ago
Do I even want to know why strollers are "bad"
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
Just making up shit. They say baby wearing is better, not to have a “container” baby
Crunchy moms truly just make shit up9
u/Emilygilmoresmaid 11h ago
Lol I have twins and an older daughter, without a stroller for them we would still not be leaving the house.
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
Same girl!!! Lmao I have no choice hahaha how am I gonna baby wear twins in public? Hellll no
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u/Emilygilmoresmaid 11h ago
Absolutely not and mine are nearly two and love to run . . . In opposite directions.
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
Crunchy moms just truly make shit up, they think that their chiropractor telling them something is some riveting medical research and so they spread it like wild fire
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u/mamsandan 10h ago
I am a somewhat crunchy mom. I have a closet full of wraps and carriers. I wear my kids from birth until they outgrow the carriers (2 year old is still going strong). I brought a stroller to the library one time and had an (even crunchier) mom marvel over it like she had legitimately never seen one. “Oh my god! Where did you get that? I should really consider getting one of those!” It was one of the most bizarre interactions I have ever had.
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u/Charlieksmommy 10h ago
Like I said, I think their chiropractors tell them something is bad and then they spew it out
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u/ahtuhhhh 11h ago
I thought I was hallucinating while reading that post 😭😭
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u/Charlieksmommy 11h ago
Same!!!!! I truly don’t understand how people just constantly live in fear over everything
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u/queefersutherland1 11h ago
does she plan on homeschooling or what’s the plan when kids sleeping til noon Monday - Friday
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u/EngineeringLumpy 11h ago
No the older kid actually goes to preschool which is wild. So on the days she goes to school she literally gets no sleep. I think she’s even fallen asleep at preschool
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u/FlakyBasket6016 11h ago
the way she framed that as a quirky personality trait instead of a genuine problem is wild
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u/katrinabritt 11h ago edited 11h ago
Crazy. I don’t play with bed time. I get all kids have different sleep needs and that they’re all different but that’s what a routine is for. A few weeks ago my two year old son randomly started staying awake in his crib just playing for an hour or two after we did his whole bedtime routine and put him in his crib for the night. It was so out of the ordinary that I called his pediatrician!
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u/s3v3ralattemptsmade 9h ago
My kid’s bedtime is just as important for my mental health and it is for their physical health. Idk how some parents don’t do bedtimes.
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u/qssung 11h ago
I never napped. I didn’t nap much as a baby and definitely didn’t nap as a toddler, but I had an hour of quiet time in my room every day. I could play, read books, or draw, but I was in my room until I was allowed to leave.
I also didn’t sleep through the night until I was 8, but there was an established routine for quiet time, bedtime, and after I woke up.
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u/katrinabritt 11h ago
I had meant bed time so I changed it but I don’t play about nap time either! My son is at the age where he’ll nap 90% of the time and 10% of the time he just plays in his crib for an hour. But it’s still the same routine every day regardless of if he will nap or not. I couldn’t nap as a kid either or else I’d be wide awake all night. My mom ran an in home daycare and every day she’d put all the kids to nap and I’d be the only one in her bedroom doing my own thing.
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u/halbugontoast 11h ago
Horrible mother. She’ll also say things like “well they wouldn’t go back to bed, so we’re watching ms. Rachel at 2am!” Like yeah… maybe because you keep giving in to them?
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u/Rose1982 9h ago
Yeah it’s funny, kids don’t sleep when their favourite show is on in bright lights in front of them.
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u/That_Bluebird_3157 10h ago
I’ve noticed this “night owl family” trend becoming a thing with people who homeschool. Not enforcing a bedtime and just letting the kids roam about willy nilly at all hours to supposedly spend more time together? Time that traditional/public schooling would apparently rob them of?
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u/EngineeringLumpy 10h ago
There are 24 hours in a day regardless of how you divide it. So I don’t understand why sleeping until noon and going to bed at 2 AM feels like some sort of cheat code to these people. They’d have the same hours together if they went to bed at 10 and woke up at 8.
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u/RImom123 3h ago
Because many parents are lazy. It takes work to get kids on a schedule, and to stick to that schedule day after day.
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u/clevercalamity 7h ago
Parents are genuinely getting lazier overall. It’s not just a homeschooling thing.
I work in education and my feed is mostly educators and every level (early childhood - higher ed) I am seeing the same issue which is parents don’t want to make their kids do stuff so they just won’t.
Kids are going into kindergarten in diapers. Upper elementary and middle schoolers who have zero emotional regulation skills because no one has ever told them no and they spend all day watching TikTok. High schoolers flunking out because they refuse to wake up and go to school. Don’t even get me started on college students that are functionally illiterate.
Obviously there are plenty of great parents in the world, but every year in education things are eroding farther and faster. This woman is far from the only one.
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u/BellaPona 8h ago
It’s because they don’t want to do the hard labor of putting their foot down and enforcing anything. It’s much easier to just let kids do whatever and they tell themselves that since it’s easy, and their children cry less/appear happy, then it must actually be better for them.
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u/Glad-Albatross3354 3h ago
The flip side is that difficulty with sleep seems to be incredibly common for kids with autism/adhd and until recently it was treated almost entirely as a personal moral failing. Most adults were trained to stay in bed through fear of punishment if they didn’t. Acknowledging that this not fair or productive and looking for alternatives is where we are collectively.
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u/acidqueencamcam 11h ago
One day one people will look at the monetization of personal/influencer content and see the full picture of how it destroyed so much the workforce, accountability, common sense.. when people can monetize ragebait, it’s a problem.
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u/Elegant-Date4481 10h ago
My kid hardly sleeps. Don’t need to complain about it online. Working with his doctor to fix it. It’s rough, I can’t imagine having the energy to post like this if her kids barely sleep. And if her daughter sleeps till noon she’s sleeping. Just not a healthy time. My son will literally be up at 2am but never go back to sleep 🤦🏻♀️
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u/momlife555 10h ago
I’m sorry. My kids are such a handful but the one place I was truly blessed is they sleep (wake up early but sleep). I don’t know how parents of bad sleepers survive. I think about it all the time
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u/Elegant-Date4481 9h ago
I think I have brain damage at this point from lack of sleep 🤣. Glad your kiddos sleep for you!
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u/momlife555 1h ago
That’s how I felt until 7 months or so with each kid. By 8 months when I start sleep training I’m not even human! Thankfully they just have my sleep genes because they all like sleeping still. I could sleep 18 hours a day if someone let me hahah
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u/Hotelwaffles 4h ago
My mom loves to remind everyone how my younger brother was the worst sleeper on earth. Then she started watching my now 2 year old when he was about six months and skipped naps, let him stay up until he passed out from exhaustion…I put my foot down and said she either follows our nap & bedtime rules or else he can’t stay with her until he’s much older. Magically she changed.
Oh golly, wonder why my brother was the worst sleeper on earth? Ma’am, I’ve seen your work. I think it’s a you problem.
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u/EngineeringLumpy 10h ago
Get his iron checked if you haven’t already. And not just total iron, but all the iron markers, including ferritin especially.
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u/Elegant-Date4481 10h ago
Thank you he just finished an iron supplement round and will get retested soon. He’s autistic so I think his brain has a hard time shutting off
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u/OstrichPrimary6694 11h ago
CPS needs to be involved. This feels like neglect if what you’re saying is true
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u/EnvironmentMinute171 11h ago
My son wouldn’t believe in a bed time either if I didn’t make him have one 🙄 I guarantee that’s going to make school a nightmare for them and their teachers if they are not getting proper sleep and don’t work on structure.
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u/PuppyJakeKhakiCollar 10h ago
If she even sends them to school. She seems like the "unschooling" type. Not because of any strong beliefs but because she is too lazy to actually do any parenting.
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u/ButteredPizza69420 11h ago
Gee maybe her baby is sick because their immune systems are weak from lack of sleep.
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u/Rose1982 9h ago
My kids don’t believe in seatbelts or bike helmets or life jackets or waiting for the light to change before crossing the road and many other things. But since I’m their parent and responsible for raising them I enforce such things.
What a fucking idiot.
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u/Then_Software_2206 5h ago
I consider myself a reasonably loosey-goosey parent when it comes to my kids’ independence/preferences, but the one area where we didn’t fuck around was sleep. We prioritized bedtime routines and independent sleep habits, and they’re both rockstar sleepers.
I’m not sure if it’s nature or nurture but we’re definitely a calmer, happier family as a result.
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u/innocentsalad 9h ago
My kids don't believe in plenty of things like bedtime or vegetables but that's irrelevant because I'm the parent.
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u/lizzie1st 7h ago
I was raised without a bedtime. It was chaotic at best, and took me a long time to teach myself healthy sleeping habits/routine. I averaged about 4 hours/night of sleep in high school.
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u/probonworkhours 11h ago
The rage has baited me because I just had to stop myself from seeking out a video of hers to watch for myself. Not giving her the views! EW that's terrible
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u/Tapas541 9h ago
There should really be creation of a branch of CPS that monitors family vloggers, specifically for things concerning like this...
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u/doggynames 11h ago
It's funny because this same sub snarks on women who do have schedules and sleep train their kids 😂
For the record - I think this is worse - but I suppose to each their own.
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u/EngineeringLumpy 10h ago
There are definitely extremes on both sides. Personally I don’t see anything wrong with sleep training at an appropriate age, and the statistics and science back that up.
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u/doggynames 10h ago
I'm with you I just found it funny to read this here because people here call women monsters for sleep training
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u/momlife555 9h ago
I somehow have missed every sleep training post but I wouldn’t have survived motherhood so far if I hadn’t sleep trained. And by sleep train, I don’t mean letting them scream themselves to sleep as newborns either lol.
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u/Hippopotamus_can_fly 11h ago
After day 2 with no signs of my youngest getting better I got her checked by a doctor, she had a respiratory infection. I cannot imagine going 16 days without having my child checked over if they were after a few days not showing any signs of improvement, maybe that’s just me.
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u/IllustratorTall9602 11h ago
Why are you following her lol
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u/EngineeringLumpy 11h ago
For a while I felt like she was genuinely asking for help and she was always nice to people who gave her advice, so I thought she actually wanted it. She eventually stopped showing up on my FYP, and I never use the “following” page, so I kind of just forgot about her until recently when she started popping up again.
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u/Orion-Key3996 10h ago
Dairy thickens mucus and being too congested they can cough and throw up. My kiddo does this. My kids don’t believe in bedtime either but it’s a battle of wills and routine they end up asleep every time..
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u/Resident_Age_2588 10h ago
I would argue pretty much EVERY kid would say they don’t believe in bed time and yet across America (and the world) every single night they are required to go to bed at their bedtime that does in fact exist.
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u/wamariegi 10h ago
I knew a girl who would keep her kid up until 5am and then they would both sleep until 5pm. Kid got zero sunshine most days. It was so hard to not be critical of her since it was purely because the mom didn’t feel like waking up early (as in before 3pm)
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u/DifficultyMost4372 10h ago
Ew idk who she is but from what you’ve said I already know I can’t stand her. She sounds like an awful mother. And people follow her?? Her son throwing up every night in bed for even two nights in a row would be immediate doctor visit to determine what’s happening THREE WEEKS? Good lord why are “influencers” so against medical care?? Fucking over it 🤦🏻♀️
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u/LawfulChaoticEvil 10h ago edited 9h ago
If you breastfeed and drink milk/eat regular milk products yourself, you will know if your baby is dairy sensitive (which is usually due to the proteins in milk, not to the lactose) - as someone whose kid was and who had to cut dairy out of my diet for 11 months I am all too familiar with that. Also, that intolerance resolves by one for many babies, it doesn’t just show up then. And true lactose intolerance isn’t likely to show up until much later.
That baby should have gone to the doctor by now.
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u/Dense_Ant_8989 9h ago
Yessss. I followed her initially for the sleep struggles as my 1 year old is a shocking sleeper. But she goes out with the kids at like 9pm??? Takes them to Walmart, full of bright lights and stimulation and then is confused as to why they won't sleep?
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u/Medical-Ad3053 4h ago
Man, with all the research out about how badly sleep routines can affect development and mental health you would think people would take it more seriously. Feel bad for these kids fr.
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u/ladygroot_ 11h ago
I'm a no schedules mom subsequent to shit sleeping children and was ready to defend her but then I read the caption. She's on her own
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u/Dry_Conflict4174 10h ago
Yep, and by the time we get your kids in middle school they are spoiled, entitled, self centered and lazy. You figured out you didn't have the authority or skill set to homeschool all through elementary school so you send them off to public school to let teachers raise your kids properly.
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u/ArielMant0 10h ago
We have so many kids like this at the primary (up to age 11) school I work at. Parents would rather be friends than parent them, and let them stay up half the night with them watching horror movies, playing video games etc & the kids are just SHATTERED all day.
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u/Crazy-Spot5872 10h ago
Yeah my kids don't believe in bedtime either but this mama does and this mama needs those hours after 8pm of silence. Also I get my best housework done when everyone is asleep. Ain't no way. Kids don't want to miss out so of course they don't believe in bedtime. We still have to enforce it. Also my youngest had a hard time with cow's milk when we switched her from formula (she had diarrhea from it) so we found an oat milk that had a close fat content to what whole milk gives. You don't keep giving them something if it seems to be making them sick 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
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u/MeetingMundane5800 5h ago
That’s so stupid; my kids don’t believe in bedtime? My 40 years of experience out the window for a 5 year old with a half formed frontal cortex and no experience, sounds brilliant. Maybe she can ask life advice too since we are handing over the keys to the castle.
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u/Dreamer-and-Believer 3h ago
We’ve had two rough nights either my 13 month old not wanting to go to sleep, thankfully she went down easily tonight. We have to do our best to keep a strict bedtime because my husband and I have to get up early for work, which means my daughter has to get up around 5:30 and I want her to have as much sleep as she can. I can’t imagine just letting her free rein to stay up all hours of the night; I would probably go insane and she would be constantly exhausted. This is just bad parenting.
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u/Various_Summer_1536 11h ago
If she’s on night 16 with a sick baby, she probably needs to take said baby to the doctor.