Sojenus posted:

my kid is doing an excellent job of equally distributing her food to the dog, but at one and a half or so she's nearing the mental and emotional age of your average libertarian so i need to be vigilant

Flavius Aetass posted:

i make it a point not to lecture about politics so that she can come up with her own ideas and i can offer gentle guidance when appropriate

she's still basically a communist and it rules

she said if she's president she'd have (paraphrasing) open borders and a house for everyone

one time she asked me how much my car cost and when i told her she cried, because poor people couldn't afford that. she said it should be a law that cars only cost $20

Flavius Aetass posted:

yeah i agree. the last thing i want is my kid to just parrot what i say until she casts it off at a later age to be a libertarian or something

pancake rabbit posted:

ooo i didn't know this thread existed, i am happy it is here!

my two and a half year old is obsessed with blippi. i don't let him watch the ones with police cars but fortunately his favorites are like, the fire truck and baseball episodes. he's recently started getting into sesame street and elmo though so we're pushing that hard when it's TV time.

also he got his first haircut this past weekend! he did surprisingly great and didn't freak out or wiggle at all. we kept it shoulder length because he has these amazing natural curls that we have zero idea where they came from, but it was getting a little too unruly on the sides.

pancake rabbit posted:

neither of us!

MacheteZombie posted:

Hopefully the right place to ask, sooo...

What are y'all doing for college funds? I've setup a 529 (lol just in time for recession) that's about it.

just another posted:

the bad: sleep training a baby with a light-sleeping 2 year old across the hall loving sucks
the good: my son told me he's a witch and also a dragon who breathes hot fire so that's pretty

U-DO Burger posted:

bitmap posted:

been depressed about this post for a full 24 hours. you americans are just...man, you're just hosed.

Another Bill posted:

Just wait until your kids discover youtube poop like mine have. There's a lot of Shrek YTP out there. They make me watch it with them.

AxGrap posted:

Mario Galaxy has been so fun for science lessons

Oyak posted:

It took me until college to figure this stuff out...kids grow up so fast these days...

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

Sometimes I'll try to sing along with my 3yo's songs and she'll immediately start crying and giving me a near-meltdown level NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO until i stop

I'm being bullied

Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:

My four year old, triumphant after squashing a bug: "I didn't like it and now it's dead!"

lobster shirt posted:

it's sweet when my son wants me to read to him but reading penguin says please ten times in a row is a little tiring

Cabbages and Kings posted:

hey CSPAM parents, advice desperately needed about an increasingly aggressively obstinate 5.5 year old. Have been told by pediatrics that our concerns are valid and while this doesn't seem "super bad", a behavioral evaluation is encouraged. Also the waitlist for that is over a year, so, here we are.

Background: two kids, 5.5 and 1.25 years old. Older kid has been somewhat impulsive/loose cannon since she was walking, very high energy, distractable, defiant, etc. None of that fazes me, I have all the same poo poo and I was a hellion.

For a long time, basic reward based strategies worked well enough: happy or sad faces on a chart along various axis ("nice to mom and dad", "did bedtime well", etc), TV/video game time (PBS stuff, all) awarded based on how many good marks she gets. (So no "punishment" for bad, just no reward).

As her sister has gotten bigger, more mobile, and of course more destructive, we've seen a lot of changes in the older kid. Some might be jealousy, also, she has been in preschool and summer preschool and while the behavioral reports from there are all fine, and when I pick her up I hear all the other kids happily wish her goodbye or hello when I drop her off, I can't discount that social interaction with peers is a factor in some of this.

So, bascially: she won't do what we say, she will in fact try to see how close she can come to doing the exact opposite, she no longer seems to care about being deprived TV & games for LONG periods of time, and she has taken to kicking, hitting and throwing stuff at her mom and me when she's upset. To be very clear we are NEVER physical with her, we do not spank her, we do not have any indication that other kids have hit her.... except her 1 year old sister, who, you know, is a 1 year old who also hit me in the face with a plastic firetruck 2 weeks ago, hard enough to substantially reinjure a long dormant neck injury I had. We try to remind kig kiddo, she is bigger, she is more mobile, she has a room she can go to. She very rarely actually hits her sister, but we have seen her do it at least once which is enough for "well those two can't be together unsupervised for even 5 seconds anymore" which is not the most convenient situation. Prior to things going downhill lately, I had made some progress paying the older kid 25 cents per 15 minutes to "babysit" -- this was with me very close by keeping an eye, but she was doing a fine job.

So -- I am stressed as gently caress. My job is stressful, if I lose it we're kinda super hosed until I find another one, my wife is behind in her professional certification desires because of kids and COVID, we're both in independent therapy, etc

We love the hell out of both kids, and, when she's not being a tyrant she's great! This is a kid who will happily do 15 mins of meditation and yoga with me most mornings! I try to encourage her to channel to that energy when she's spinning out of control, but she's just too young to connect the dots like that and all I can hope is that I am giving her a foundation of mindfulness and calm that may eventually serve her some purpose in the deserts of the future.

For now, we're just trying to find ways to navigate this more happily, and coming up blank. Also, I am anxious as hell about the general state of the world, so is my wife, and while we try to not say doomer poo poo and answer our kids' questions in non-doomer terms they can understand, it would be illogical to not assume that 2 years of COVID stress, combined with MPX, combined with general collapse anxieties, is impacting mine and my wife's behaviors in ways the kids are picking up on. Not sure what to do about that.

We almost aborted a trip to go get ice cream yesterday because older kid was so completely out of control in the leadup, but, my view is: poo poo like nice summers where you can just go get ice cream may well be a limited loving commodity. I don't mind depriving my kid screen time, who gives a gently caress, and actually she seems to have figured out she can have as much fun playing outside, which is great from an addiction perspective and not helpful from a behavior modification one. Anyway, point is, even if she's being a tyrant and even if it kind of rubs me wrong to "reward" tyrannical behavior, I think "family trips for ice cream" are a benefit to the whole family and I'm not going to let her gently caress that up for me and the rest of us if I can avoid it.

FWIW we had a good time getting ice cream once my wife got through her tears in the car from the insane trauma of the whole lead up ("I hate you" was used as weaponized speech a couple times, of course followed shortly by "I WANT A HUG!")

Any advice at all is loving appreciated, we're just dealing with this incident by incident at this point. Also she tends to obey me much more readily than her mom, but I am not sure if that's good or not; I am quicker to raise my voice, and also quicker to simply pick her up and remove her from a situation physically if she is being completely noncompliant.

Good luck, and condolences on your cartoonishly evil and chistofascisct patriarchal state leadership.

Saltpowered posted:

Get a big inflatable ball. The bigger the better. Have your kid explain the model is to scale so the protons and neutrons are stationed around town. Share some images of various town landmarks with balls photoshopped in and a “map” of where the other balls “are”

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

Btw Pete the Cat and his whole crew are definitely stoners

Son of Thunderbeast posted:

My in laws have a couple of rescue cats. One avoids the babby at all costs, the other one is ornery and likes to bite or scratch if he decides he doesn't like the way you're petting him, but seems to have infinite patience for the babby who gets excited about him and is always trying to pick him up and hug him lol

SirPablo posted:

This you?

https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1587155605025964039

DR FRASIER KRANG posted:

my kid literally only eats four distinct foods so his vomit is a very consistent paste.

unlimited shrimp posted:

Huh. We weren't allowed to leave the hospital without a name.

sullat posted:

For my second kid the insurance refused to pay so we ended up paying $8000 or so.

Chad Sexington posted:

What do people do re: Santa these days?

Our girl is just four months so it's all academic for me, but is it possible to be honest with your kid without them torching other families' holiday magic?

Mustached Demon posted:

yeah it's basically conditioning kids into the police state with bonus jesus sprinkles of magic man's always watching

Dreylad posted:

some bonding issues can also be mild postpartum, guys can get it too apparently. I bonded pretty quickly but i was off work anyway.

It really is amazing when they start showing social cues though, agreed.