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My 6 year old is a way better cuddler today than he was as a 2 year old, though I wonder how much of that is feeling like he has to get it in now, because a big man of 8 doesn't do such things. Also, it may be a matter of considering what cuddling is an alternative to. If you're stopping something awesome to cuddle, then I can see the resistance. This is another good reason to make a nice long drawn out and somewhat ritualized bedtime. If bedtime always involves bath, pjs, toothbrush, then a cuddle with a book, and it's not like a cuddle with a book is something that is happening instead of lego or playing chase, or power rangers, then kid might be more amenable to it. Though once you establish a ritual with a number of steps, the kids will take you to task for trying to skip one or hurry it along. Trying to just do brush teeth and then bed and skipping the song, or the cuddle, or the book, will have tradition-minded 2 year old screaming for a UN binding resolution if they think they are getting shorted.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:25
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TheKennedys posted:Wow, this is a lot of thread. Apologies if there's already been a derail about toddlers dealing with younger kids, but my son's starting to get on my last nerve with this stuff. Time outs for the kid, and time outs for the toys. If your kid is reacting poorly to a situation, remove him from the situation. "Yes, I understand that you don't like it when sophie plays with your things but she is a guest, she is a baby, and you have lots of toys. Sit on the couch and calm down." Just enough to break up the moment, and make screaming unrewarding. If every time he screams he has a 30 second time out, he'll either stop screaming, or escalate into a legitimate freakout that earns him hard "its time you took a nap" time. Two year olds are screamy, but you can definitely moderate by removing them from the situation and the stimulus. Doesn't have to be long at all, and as soon as he's got his breathing under control, you can go back to whatever. If he keeps on stirring up over the same toy, then that toy goes on a high shelf. Etc. etc. Don't get mad, don't shout back, just interrupt and remove. It works...eventually. You can't really reason with a 2 year old, you explain what you are doing because you want to be in the habit of communicating, and modelling calm behavior, but most of what works is just making it unrewarding to be lovely.
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Feb 11, 2014 20:15
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He's going to have a little brother/sister in four months anyway, and I'm kinda worried how he's going to react to the baby if he's this bad with Sophie.
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Y'all were doing so well there for a while. Please refrain from being Pet Island retards in places not Pet Island. Nobody says another loving word about their superior pet-mommy opinions.
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Mar 19, 2014 00:09
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At my insistence, birthdays are a dinner out with family occasion. I hate the whole invitation/renting venue/party favors thing with a passion. My kids are welcome to go to other kids birthday parties, and they can invite a slumber-party worth of kids over from time to time. We lot happier with dinner at someplace kind of upscale, and presents chosen by family, rather than whatever plastic crap was on the 15$ and under rack at wal-mart on the way to the party. Saves a ton of pressure, social gamesmanship, and disappointment. 2 of the last 6 big-venue class-mate birthdays my kids have attended have ended with the birthday kid throwing up and crying.
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Mar 24, 2014 21:23
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greatn posted:I understand what they're going for but you're right, that is a dumb rule. I'm sure they mean to stop exclusion as a form of bullying, but in reality it just means your kid had to invite their bully to their house. Or that you have to get your mom to ask his/her mom for contact info. I suspect the "everybody must be invited" thing is social-engineering to keep invitations out of school as a whole. In kindergarten, it doesn't really matter, it isn't like your cliques and social pecking order is all that established, but by 3rd grade, kids know for sures who their friends are and aren't, since they don't want to invite the stinky kids, they don't chew up in-class time with it at all. The moral of the story is give birth to your children over summer break.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:23
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I feel like a lot of it has to be neighborhood-based. we lucked out when we moved down here, the neighborhood we live in has enough children that it is a strange day in the spring or summer when an urchin or ten doesn't ring my doorbell and ask if the boys can come out and play. My kids are on a shorter leash than I was at their ages though not really deliberately, just, they don't ask, and they don't really have the kinds of huge spans of time that I did as a kid. School eats up a lot more hours than it did when I was a kid, and if you just try to stack peewee soccer and robots league in on top of it, there isn't that much time. Same with summers, the school year is longer, we take more out-of-town vacations, and there just aren't as many 6-8 hour "and don't come back till dinner" stretches for kid to make their way down to the trestle to smoke and smash bottles with delinquents and undesirables.
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Mar 28, 2014 00:47
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jassi007 posted:I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but our picky eater makes me bonkers sometimes. He's 2.5 and doesn't eat a lot as is. he's healthy and all that, his pediatrician has no concerns about his weight, but getting him to eat a vegetable or most meat is a nightmare. We try to offer rewards, and often times that is not enough. He'll often opt to go without dinner or not get to watch a cartoon over one piece of carrot the size of a dime. Even things like putting chese on cauliflower doesn't help. We're going to try some recipes that use something like cauliflower to make a crust and give him "pizza" but even assuming this works it is so frustrating. It can't be reasonable for him to eat pbj, fruit, pizza, and chicken nuggets his entire life (this is his diet of choice) I understand his tastes will change, but that is some far distant future I can not imagine. Involve your kid in the cooking of stuff. My kids are about typical picky, but taking them to the grocery store, or the seed catalog has been a reliable way to get more things on their plate. My kids selected and watered and grew their own snow peas and cherry tomatoes as part of their chores, and got really into the idea. Now they will now eat anything snowpea or cherry-tomato like, which is enough to get fiber and lycopene and suchlike into them. I suggest not making a fight/punishment/reward over it. You are never ever going to out-stubborn a 2.5 year old about what they put in their mouths. Put food you want them to eat on their plate (in small quantity) and say "you don't have to eat it, but if you don't then there are no seconds, and no snacks, and no deserts. This isn't a punishment, it is just the rules. Eat what we serve, and you can choose what goes on your plate next. Don't eat what we serve, and maybe you'll like what we serve tomorrow better...or not. Kid won't starve to death.
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Mar 30, 2014 19:53
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Yeah, it is an unusual 4 year old that hasn't decided to take a little off the sides at some point. Scissors are just plain interesting. I would endeavor to shrug it off, get it fixed best you can, and not make it the most interesting rebellion she's ever done. Just "Yeah, there are several reasons why we don't let children have scissors, and right here in front of us are 3 of them" then move on. Don't freak out, don't make it a big deal, because you'd much rather it be a one time thing, than a reliable way to gently caress with you. As far as the busted dollies go, I'd be tempted to just leave them in situ. If she doesn't like her uglied up toys, well, might could have seen that one coming. Things are not ruined or worthless just because they are nonstandard, or not shiny-new etc. etc. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Apr 10, 2014 |
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Apr 10, 2014 00:11
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VorpalBunny posted:If any of you have been around for a while, you'll remember my dumb "friend" who liked to drive around with his toddler in the front seat of his SUV. I asked him to stop, but he continued, so I went to his wife who presumably got the point across. This was all happening while they were trying to go through a private adoption, and I warned them of the risks not only to the health of their toddler but to their chances of adoption if he was ever caught. A three year old can make new friends. If the guy is dangerous, and apparently gets a chuckle out of watching you sputter like a wet hen every time he says "Hey y'all, watch this!" then stop hanging out. You had some success with ratting him out to his wife last time, right? Can do that, or you can write it off. 3 years isn't all that much investment. A 3 year old will have a new best friend in the whole wide world tomorrow. I'm kinda boggled by your whole situation. I've not gotten into anything close to a "massive argument" with another kids parent, or even another adult I'm not married to in...a decade? more? The fact that he continues to hang out with you after you have gotten into multiple stir-ups in the past is really really weird. You could literally walk down your block and make friends with anybody else with a play-gym in the back, and not have anything to set off about. So you probably should.
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Apr 29, 2014 05:32
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My kids are school-age, we are weekend and longer-car-trip only on screens during the school year, and it works out quite well. You don't need 14 hours a week to be able to cogently discuss minecraft with your peers, and it is not like they are short of things to do during the week. Making screens not an option at all during the week saves a ton of squabbles over "is your homework done?! Just one more minute!" etc. etc. They aren't short of things to do, between school, extracurriculars, family walks in the woods, and books and legos and neighborhood kids, it's not like they need to make more hours go away. We shall see, the strategy may backfire, when they move away to college and binge-watch future-netflix rather than sit for exams. But so far I don't ever think "Gosh I wish we spent more time with screens"
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May 7, 2014 22:47
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Having tried both, I have to recommend having your kids bust themselves up on your watch over getting a call from the school telling you to take your kid to urgent care on account of them getting busted up while you weren't parenting. Both suck, but at least in your "kid was told, I was watching" scenario, you have answers for most of the coulda-shouldas. 5 year olds heal up like awesome, still all full of stem cells. Almost certainly won't show on senior pictures.
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May 22, 2014 20:38
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Part of sending your kids to coached activities is that they get to be somebody elses problem, and your kids get to see how other adults not parents or teachers try to run the show. I'd hang back and not worry about it. If she were an absolute superstar at ladybug soccer, it wouldn't be a big deal. So not being into it this week isn't much of a cause for concern either.
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Jun 2, 2014 20:22
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Tourette Meltdown posted:Lil Meltdown is eight months old and apparently has hit and bitten kids at daycare. I want to keep that from happening, obviously, but he doesn't hit or bite at home, so how can I discipline behavior I don't see? Don't punish kids at home for poo poo they do in preschool. You can't even usefully lecture an 8 month old...or a 8 year old for that matter. Just model good, gentle, considerate behavior, and let the daycare do what they are paid to do. A grabby-smashy 8 month old is not a parenting shortfall, it is just an 8 month old. However, turning a grabby-smashy 8 month old loose on the 6 month olds may indicate a staffing shortfall at daycare, so keep an eye on that. If they are letting the 8 month olds muscle the 6 month olds, are they letting the 2 year olds mix up with the 9 month olds?
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Jun 12, 2014 02:16
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FordCQC posted:Does anyone have tips for keeping a 3 year old in their big kid bed/room once they're awake for the day but it's super early? A 3 year old can be relied on to feed themselves. Maybe give her a shelf of breakfast food she is allowed to have and say "if you get up before mom and dad, you are allowed to get breakfast from your shelf, and play with toys from your bin" Even with a 6 and 9 year old, we have "do-not-disturb/get your breakfast and go downstairs...quietly!' signs for the bedroom door on weekends.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:21
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photomikey posted:My 4.5 year old is an overall good kid. We don't do a lot of time outs but occasionally they happen. From time to time, she'll get put in time out until she can apologize for something she's done. This is relatively rare. Today she was mad at me for something inconsequential and punched me in the face. I sent her to time out until she could apologize. We're probably at around 20 minutes in time out right now, and while she's still upset, I'm pretty sure she has no idea what she's in there for. I have been back in there a few times to remind her, and tell her that when she apologizes, she can come out. She refuses to apologize. This has happened a few times before, and after a while, when the wailing and crying stops, I eventually have a little chat with her and let her out sans apology. This is not a good thing to make a pattern of, and I'm curious what the hivemind advice is, do I just let her sit there until eternity and make her apologize before I let her out, or next time do I just send her to time-out for 5 minutes and waive the apology. Trying to outstubborn a kid is not a good use of your resources. I think your program is fair, but you can't leave her in there till she gets her learners permit either. So I'd let her cool down for a while, like 20 minutes after the screaming stops, it's not like a 4 year old can tell the difference between 20 minutes and eternity, so might as well get it over with quick. Go in, explain your position again, ask her to describe what she thinks she is on punishment, (re explain the problem if you need to), then offer to hug it out. While apology and forgiveness are important, insisting on a specific format and signed confession is going to waste a lot of both of your time.
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Jul 26, 2014 00:33
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My kids will be at different schools their entire educational career, so they are bringing home round about 1500 people worth of no hand washing and sneezes every single day, and my woman teaches in two departments, so that is another 1000 or so vectors. Between them they bring home all the plagues of egypt. Gonna go swim in the Ganges, it might take the edge off.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:03
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Another thing to consider when potty training is that sitting on the toilet to poop is the least stimulating thing in their day. It is straight up boring, AND it means quitting whatever awesomely engrossing lego/television/fight-with-sibling thing they are doing to poop. So they won't think to do it until it is urgent, and they will miss from time to time. Putting them on the pot 5 times a day at regular intervals, and not interrupting something awesome might help. "You don't have to go, but nothing else is going to be happening for the next 5 minutes, and we're here anyway, so do or don't, your call"
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Sep 13, 2014 18:41
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:So I have a few questions I haven't seen pop up here before (or if it does, I don't see it often)! There is reason to keep your hand in, and not let your resume get completely covered in weeds. BUUUUUUT, it is a huge advantage to have a parent home all the way through school. My woman is putting the finishing touches on tenure, and it takes crazy hours and crazy availability, and while she can schedule so she can catch mornings, it is a major boon for me to be home for afternoons/homework/haircuts/doctors appointments/cooking dinner, and all the other doing that needs done. It may just be our school district, but they really do appear to assume that there will be a stay at home parent. Kids under 10 goddamn years old must be picked up at the bus stop. They don't trust my 7 year old to walk around two sides of the block to his house, so I have to be there, or they will drive his rear end back to the schoolhouse and I have to pick him up there. Fortunately I can do that. But if I were working 9-5, like most people who need two incomes to keep the mortgage and the credit cards paid, something would have to give. So, is there anything about your trade that you can do for a few hours a week, enough to keep current, and have something for your resume, that doesn't need even 20 regular hours of clock punching a week? If you can find or fake that, I would. If you can't? Well, are you a better parent than the person you'd be paying to pick up the slack? would you be bringing in more than you'd have going out for daycare/babysitting/cleaning service/whatever? Since you probably have the option, I'd stay home, do cool stuff with the kids, get to the gym on the regular, and get good and happy about cooking. It ain't a bad living, if you can afford it. You can definitely squeeze some education in, so if nothing else seems like it is worth the commute, you can grab credit hours at community college, either in something you like, or something related to your trade. Will keep you on a schedule and keep your mind flexible, and let you talk to adults for a few hours a week. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 03:36
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Hot Dog Day #82 posted:Thanks for the good words regarding my post, all! I am thoroughly enjoying my tenure as a SAHD, and I agree that I am probably about to enter one of the better times of raising kids! I think paling around with some 5 year olds is going to be a blast, once the time comes - it has been a long road to get to age 2, but hopefully I'm just about out of the weeds. Being a stay at home parent is great work if you can find it, and I absolutely agree that tossing that away for a 10 dollar an hour schlub job would be the worst. If you are anywhere near STL, we may be a bit out of your age range, but we're always up for more zoo or city museum or botanical gardens. 3 year olds can monkey the hell out of the City Museum. By the time your kids are old enough for a babysitter, mine will be old enough to sit on them.
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Sep 23, 2014 07:22
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photomikey posted:At what age would you allow your child to go next door (directly next door, not across the street or anything) to see if the kid next door (of the same age) wanted to play - either at their house or yours. For the purposes of this example, let's say you're more of a granola-eating, free-rangey kind of parent, not the Amber Alert, helicoptery kind. We used to live in an 8 story tower block in the city, right next to a nice city park, and while I told my then 6-year-old to go ahead and try it, he never managed to actually get past the various dogooders and busybodies in the elevators or managers office, or across the street without somebody intercepting him. We moved out to the burbs, and lucked into a 10 year old girl down the way who was running a neighborhood gang. She would come by, collect the 7 and 4 year old, and do whatever 8 kids between the ages of 4 and 11 do pretty much every day after homework. Their range wasn't crazy-long, one or two blocks worth of houses/kids, but their supervision was pretty nonexistant. "Home by dark" in the summer. Unless something cool was happening after dark, then "home in an hour, check your watch". Now, at 10 and 7, they are allowed anywhere they have people, but tends to be within 3-4 blocks, just because that is the people they know from the bus stop. However, new school policy, kids must be met at the bus stop untill they are 10 goddamn years old, or the bus driver will drive their asses back to school and call you to pick them up. My 10 year old can walk the 7 year old around the corner to our house this year, but next year he'll be on a different schedule, and I'll have to be standing on the corner for two years to make sure my kid can walk 300 feet. Basically "gently caress you, working parents, if you want to be in this school district, you should have married more money" policy.
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Oct 14, 2014 02:44
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Tigntink posted:This really really weirds me out as a millenial. When I was 6 (1993) I had a key to our house and came home to an empty house every day because both of my parents worked. We were lower middle class and there's no other way life could have really functioned for us. Now child abductions and kidnappings are down substantially and continue to decrease every year thanks to how easy it is to track down kids. Most abductions are by family members anyway. Stranger abductions are next to nil. So why the heck is it so crazy to allow kids independence? There are a number of studies on the range of children across various generations. This is a crappy british broadsheet, but same thing in the us. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html I grew up slightly generation-shifted, with a 50's vintage range in the 80's. I was allowed to ride my bike 24 miles round trip to the next town over because it had a comic book shop (on farm roads, wasn't supposed to ride on the side of the main road, though it isn't like anybody was checking up on me) but that was unusual. There were a couple other kids who were allowed to go with me, and a whole bunch who weren't. Definitely thought nothing of riding across town at age 8 to go visiting. Even knowing that I was allowed to do that when I was 10, I would feel a little twitchy about letting my 10 year old kid do that. AND he has never asked. Think he has never asked because so much of his social interaction can be accomplished in two blocks. When I was coming up, it was a mile to the nearest agemates, and closer to 3 to my best friends. That, and there are just a ton more inside options, both social and passive now. There was literally nothing on TV I wanted to watch as a kid, because there were 11 channels, and they all sucked except for like 2 hours at 6 in the morning on saturday when they ran Star Blazers on UHF 47, or whichever. You also couldn't dawdle on the phone because long distance cost, and there was only one line and dad probably wanted to use it to log in to Compuserve. However, part of the reason we settled here was that there are pre-car-age groups of children out and about in public. I feel like by middle school, his social circle and interests will have expanded to the point where he wants/needs more range. For one thing, he isn't going to be alone with girls or weed in my house, so he'll have to go visiting.
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Oct 15, 2014 06:35
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BonoMan posted:At the very least it's been detected and there is treatment available to you - so take some solace in that! Take it one step at a time! The doctor tried to screen our big-head kid for hydrocephalus about three times, before we had her measure and plot the wife's head, and come up with a diagnosis of congenital big-headedness.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:52
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gvibes posted:So this is kind of silly, but is there ever a point where you would take a kid to the doctor for eating too much? The eldest is about two and a half, and just eats an absurd amount of food. Maybe seven decent-sized meals a day. She will, for instance, eat an entire personal pizza (~350 calories) plus other stuff at a sitting without issue. She is pretty skinny (99th percentile height, and 50-60 weight), and no other stomach issues. I'd probably be a bit worried about establishing a hosed up relationship with food, if you decide to medicalize it. If it were me, I'd probably make the volume available, but keep closer track of the content. "No, there are no more microwave pizzas, but there is ALL THIS BROCCOLI!!!" Getting convenience/garbage food out of the house is probably a good idea anyway. I put on an annoying amount of weight with kids aged 0-6, just because we had a bunch of convenience food to feed kids, and while you can feed a 5 year old toasted grease, if you're eating it along with them as often as is convenient, it'll show about the middle.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:21
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When we had carseat sized kids, our local fire station would do the install for you, including making shims out of rolled up foam rubber and duct tape to set it at the correct angle and tightness in the seat. Worth the 20 minutes it took.greatn posted:My other question is why aren't all bus seats rear facing? It wouldn't require any extra space. Probably A) Effort/change, B)Rear facing is more likely to set off motion sickness. Also possible Buses are more likely to get rear ended than front-ended, due to professional drivers in the bus, and nonprofessional drivers behind it. I'd appreciate it if everybody got their back down, before we have a multi-page personality conflict that results in probations. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Nov 11, 2014 |
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Nov 11, 2014 19:01
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CelestialScribe posted:Our first is now five months old - it's been so much harder than I thought that we now don't plan to have any more. We started our second one because the first one was so entertaining from 6 months to 18 months. Little did we know. I feel like I could have gone for three, and not even had to buy a new car, but work/tenure demands and such kind of kept piling up, and when the second one was out of diapers, the prospect of throwing away the diaper pail was so compelling that we kind of decided "ok, replacement is fine, no need to get all crowded" They turned out pretty ok, eventually. 
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Nov 12, 2014 20:28
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CelestialScribe posted:No money for a therapist! I doubt I have depression. Its just that everyone told me raising a kid would be fun despite the hardships, and actually no its just lovely as gently caress. Kids get interesting quicker than you'd expect. You may have run out of gas on the "I Made This, look 10 toes!" thing, but it isn't long before they get funny in a slapstick sort of way, and you can impress the gently caress out of your 4 year old on a regular basis. 2-3 years sounds like a long time, but looking back on it, it went quick.
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Nov 14, 2014 03:40
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KiddieGrinder posted:My nephew is a teenager (is this thread ok for teens? No way you can bring this up without being a nosy rear end in a top hat. In terms of what to do about it. Call every teacher and say "I need an e-mail of my child's homework assignments, cc'd to myself and my child every day" Costs the teacher an extra 20 seconds, and he or she probably already has a similar arrangement with other actually engaged and attentive parents. Then you say "the X-box doesn't get turned on until you've done your homework, and checked it by me" This costs the parent probably 15 minutes every day(which is the sticking point, I expect). But it is a lot more likely to have results than bouncing him around schools, or grounding him till he is 25. It costs time and attention. And it is a pain in the rear end for the parent. I suppose you could volunteer to be nephew's study buddy, and plow Your 15 minutes a day into checking his homework against the list...that would be weird and intrusive, but probably better than telling somebody else they need to do that...because uncle kiddy-grinder says. Military school was interesting for me as a teen, ended up meeting some way-richer, way more hosed up kids. Turns out that my academic/social/behavioral/drug problems weren't poo poo on the kinds of problems you can get with real money and and real problems and real inattentive folks. I found it instructive, but not the way it was pitched, I don't think.
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Nov 17, 2014 02:07
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) and has had issues with his parents and school for a while now.
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Kodilynn posted:Anyone have any good alternatives to medication therapy for ADD type behavior? You're a LOT better off with medication and a happy child who isn't up to her ears in trouble all the time, than a 'clean' child who is always in trouble. If your kid can't keep her poo poo together in kindergarten, in spite of her own efforts, the efforts of her parents and her teachers, then you need to get that sorted out, and medicine is one thing that works for a lot of people. A few CNS stimulants are a lot better for you mentally and socially than being in the doghouse every day during your formative years. If it turns out you don't like them, you can always quit. Note further than an awful lot of adults and children both self-medicate for ADHD, a ritalin scrip is cheaper, more effective, and lower sugar than a venti moccachino. We exercised, coached, cajoled, punished, understood, one-on-oned, read up on, and generally worked the hell out of our wild child, and he spent all of kindergarten, and half of first grade in trouble, and he was really really unhappy at school, and unhappy at home, because schools are very good about putting it on the parents so that everybody in the house is getting punished. Then middle of first grade, after a discipline incident that was likely to put us on the track for expulsion, we took him to the shrink, got him on some ADHD meds, and the very next week he turned in his first all-green behavior card for a week in his life, and proceeded to do it every week for the next month. If your kid can't be happy in kindergarten, then an arbitrary "nope, you have to have a lovely life until you are in 2nd grade" rule is arbitrary and stupid. Alternately, pull her out, and try kindergarten again next year. My eldest is the youngest in his class by a good span, and we had to decide "do we sent him young, and let him have dicipline problems due to being young, or do we keep him back, and let him be the oldest kid in the class with dicipline problems for being older, stronger, and bored with the material" Don't know if we made the right decision, but I feel like generally if they can do the academics, they should go where they are challenged, and let the body catch up, rather than trying to redshirt your kid for kindergarten. It is case by case. Also, teach her to read. Lot of ADHD kids hyperconcentrate like awesome, so if they are up to reading chapter books, you can buy a lot of peace and quiet with "why don't you go to your chair and read a book, rather than messing with the other kids, or me, for stimulation" And have it be a reward that helps everybody, rather than a punishment. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 22:00
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photomikey posted:My daughter is turning 5 in a few weeks, and we're considering getting her a tablet as a gift. Not sure what to get, but the Kindle Fire HD7 is $119, and... how much computing power could a 5 year old need? I may be a puritan, but I don't think kids having their own electronics at age 5 is a great idea. We get a ton of use out of our Nexus 7's, but they are _my_ nexus 7's that are used with my permission when all the chores and homework are done and the rooms are clean and we aren't about to go do something else, rather than the kids tablets that I take away from them when they need to be doing any of the above, or paying attention to great-grandmother who won't be here much longer and so on. So, yeah, no problem with a 5 year old having access to electronics, but you may be better off letting them use Your electronics when it is ok, rather than taking away Their electronics when it isn't ok. Fewer squabbles that way, I think.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:36
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luna piena posted:Hi thread! Kids do just fine with multilingual families, there is sometimes a bit of a delay, but not enough to worry about. My little sisters kid is fluent in Farsi, English, and French. But she is picky, she only speaks Farsi to Baba and the Persian aunts and uncles, and only speaks French in school and to her dad, and only speaks English to me and her mom. If I speak French to her, she answers back in English. All her toys play in English though.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:35
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Kodilynn posted:Update on the behavior issues with the 5 year old. Therapist agreed about the ADHD diagnosis and wife finally conceded to do the scale testing. We both did our surveys and her teacher did one as well. We go next Thursday to follow up and consider treatment options. I know she's not a fan of the medication route, but I was ADHD at her age and beyond (still am as an adult) so I'm kinda pushing for that given how alternative OT therapies have kinda failed. When I did that for my kids, they handed me the "how annoying is your kid 1-5" test on a Concerta clipboard, with a Ritilin pen.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:17
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frenchnewwave posted:Can we talk "time out"? My daughter is 2. She's very well behaved (as much as a 2 year old can be "good" or "bad") but is learning to test limits. Right now she's learning to grab things and say "mine mine" and not give them back. Or she'll continue to touch something she's not supposed to (like the Christmas tree that she ended up knocking over). I've never tried time out and wondering if this is a good age to start or still too young? Well, it gives you something proactive to do anyway. The thing about timeouts is that they have all the effect they are going to have in not much time at all. Might depend on how patient or introspective your kids are, but in my experience a 1 minute time out is as good as a 5 minute time out. The point is to interrupt the stimulus that is causing them to make bad decisions, not punish them. Of course, if you need more than a minute to get your poo poo back under control, then that is also a consideration. But long time outs I think are not terribly useful as interruption or punishment, because again, in my experience, they will be in some whole other mental place 5 minutes from now, so a 20 minute timeout is a 2 minute time out and 18 minutes of "I forget, where were we again? can I come out now?!". Kinda like prison, "you only do two days, the day you go in, and the day you come out", so stretching the sentence out is not that useful. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Dec 11, 2014 |
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Dec 11, 2014 21:13
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VorpalBunny posted:My lovely daughter somehow bypassed my phone's password protection and did a factory reset. I lost everything. Model good behavior. Same as always. Sit your kids down, explain that you totally lost the plot, and that behavior isn't acceptable in adults either, and apologise. Same as you'd want your kids to do. And make whatever rules are appropriate to make it so this doesn't happen again. I found it was well worth the couple hundred bucks to buy kids their own electronics that they are allowed to touch, so that mine can be untouchable. They are still 'my' electronics and they live on a high shelf except when they are expressly permitted, but they don't have my stuff on them, so if it gets screwed up, it is their problem rather than mine. I have every sympathy though. I've had kids who were well up near the age of reason decide to delete my super-high-level many hours of life wasted game saves, in order to free up a 4th slot, because they like to play the first level again and again. That poo poo will make you lose your mind.
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Dec 20, 2014 19:46
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I suppose logically it is a lot easier to disown a sibling you have than buy one if your folks didn't make you one. I have a sibling that I am not close with, but we like eachother, and our kids get a lot of vitimins out of having cousins to see a week or two a year at various family parties and visits. I was down for a bunch of kids, but after the first two wife's professional situation was such that we had to have summer babies or no babies, and we kept putting it off. We eventually tossed the diaper pail, and decided 2 was plenty. I'm pretty happy with our 3 year spacing. The eldest is definately the boss, but their interests and abilities overlap enough that we don't have to make separate arrangements every time. Both kids can do after school skate, and robots, and a 5 mile desert hike. Am glad I don't have to plan with for both the 7-10 cohort and separately for a 4 year old.
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Dec 29, 2014 23:40
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So, parenting story: I get a permission slip home for the DARE program. Having fond memories from my own youth, I went ahead and looked up the efficacy of DARE programs, and found NIH studies from 1991 through 2009 that say that the program has a "less than small" effect on any of the stated goals. So, I fired off a 3 line e-mail saying "NIH studies indicate that the program is ineffective in any of the stated goals, what are the alternatives if my child chooses not to participate in the program?". Turns out, the alternatives are that the teacher forwards the e-mail to the Principal, and I get a 30 minute daytime phone call from the principal, 29 of those minutes spent not answering the question, and offers to make appointments with the officer in charge of the program, and the school psychologist. If for some reason I don't get the hint by then, my kid can sit in the principals office and write essays instead of going to health class for the rest of the semester. Interesting how much administration springs into action, if you mistake a permission slip for a question.
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Jan 15, 2015 01:40
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This thread is busy getting lovely again, and I will turn this goddamn car around. No more personal attacks, no more line-by-line quote-responses. Hippies look out your own window, titans of industry look out your own window. It is my strong feeling that nobodies system is on terribly firm ground because there are too many other variables at work. Most infants manage to stop doing whatever horrible infant thing they were doing in a few months, and replace it with some bright-new horrible toddler thing, no matter which book you skim and bitch about on the facebook.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:33
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Konomex posted:Blegh, I thought discussion about CIO was banned because none of you can talk about it nicely. Take all the kids out, all the time. Walk the 2 year olds little legs off. Go to museums, nature parks, all that. A busy 2+ year old is a lot happier and less trouble in a stimulating and somewhat toddler-proofed environment with enough exercise to tucker them out than they will at home. Throw the lump-baby in a baby-carrier or stroller, and let the 2 year old drag you around by the pinky. I took my 0 and 3 year olds to the local science museum's toddler area two or three times a week for a year, the opportunity to play with somebody elses toys, and get sneezed on by whole new children was wildly exciting to my 3 year old, and the lump-baby didn't care where he was, so everybody was happier for the change of scenery. If you don't have a local museum, the library is an option even for 2 year olds. They will have a childrens play area and new things to see.
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Jan 18, 2015 20:02
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Hdip posted:How do I keep my 2 year old from drinking bath water? Take showers? Alternately, get some soap that tastes bad or you don't mind your kid eating.
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Jan 27, 2015 05:04
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MarshallX posted:OH! Another great story for you guys - my daughter has a heart arrythmia and is on medication for it for the forseeable future. They increased her dosage due to her growing and required an ECG a couple days later to check if everything is honkey dorey - we decided to go to the local hospital instead of the big Childrens Hospital 30 minutes away to get it done. Lucky they would. I got my kid turfed from the ER at my local hospital for the fancy Childrens place 30 minutes down the way, as soon as they saw he had an existing patient relationship with them. Wasn't wild about paying for the ambulance from 15 minute away hospital to 30 minute away hospital. The aquariums are better at Childrens anyway, so unless it is something we shouldn't be going to the hospital at all for, we're probably just going to roll straight to the big guys next time, rather than waste the time and money on twice the paperwork and transfer.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:23
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Sockmuppet posted:Yes, thank you! Well, they both start with an H... This is why baby sign language is worth a few minutes. It isn't an amazing panacea that will get your kids full ride to the Ivys, but it will bridge that gap when they have wants, but can't express them. Just teaching and using five or six signs. "up" "down" "more" "all done" and "Wet" pretty much address all the concerns a preverbal child has, and saves three freakouts an hour. Nothing worse, for a 13 month old than to get more when they want done, or down when they want more, or whatever other crime against humanity you were about to commit. Just add the signs in with the rest of your happy chat, and it'll save you a good portion of 4-6 months of shouting right in your ear.
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Jan 28, 2015 17:12
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Hopefully that will help for you guys too!