Five for Friday: Obnoxious Abbrev. Re Being a SAHM

1. SAHM (Stay At Home Mom). I just don't really get it. I've been a "sales representative" and/or "territory manager" for the last 7 years and not once can I recall anyone calling me a SR or TM. I also find that, like all of these obnoxious abbreviations, their natural habitat is online message boards, generally in a forum where people go to ask questions about various aspects of child development. And in almost all of those cases, the occupation of the mother is pretty irrelevant. "I am a SAHM to a 6 month old angel, and the diapers that we use are made from responsibly harvested Scandinavian wood pulp." I find that it is usually in real life conversations that it is actually is relevant to share your occupation, and no one should ever say out loud, "I am a SAHM." If you're too busy to take the extra 2 seconds to say "stay at home mom," you might want to loosen up your schedule. Please see this Brian Regan stand-up comedy routine about loosening up your schedule:






2. DS (Dear Son) / DD (Dear Daughter). 90% of all online chat rooms relating to child rearing are running rampant with this one. We get it, you love your kid. Your kid is dear to you. The fact that you're spending your precious free time in online chat rooms commenting on the proper swaddling technique was our first clue. The most annoying thing about this is that DS is only one letter shorter than "son," and since you either have to hit caps lock or shift to capitalize the letters you're not saving any time or finger strength. Just speak English.


3. TTC (Trying To Conceive). Haven't we already abbreviated (euphemized?) this to simply 'Trying?" Do we really need to take it even further? It sounds like a sorority.


4. PDF (Parent Directed Feeding). As far as I can tell, 'Parent Directed Feeding' is a term that was made up by the author of a book called Babywise - it's not a medical term even a term widely acknowledged by the medical community. If you're going to make up a term and abbreviate that term, wouldn't you want to come up with something that everyone in America doesn't already know as 'Portable Document Format?' Come on, Babywise, put your back into it.


5. Binky (Pacifier). I Just. Don't. Get it. Why? How? How are those words related? Who started this?

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