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VanSandman posted:Sleep training, my god. Let the fucker cry for a week, he'll get used to it. It's the worst goddamn feeling but it'll keep everyone sane in the long run. Yeah, could you take turns doing this? Let the wife go stay at her mom, and then alternate staying at the house each night so only one parent is there and ruined the next day. You don't need two people to take the abuse of listening to a kid scream their head off for six hours straight
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Oct 16, 2020 19:02
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in_cahoots posted:We try to practice a loose combination of Montessori and RIE. For us that means consciously allowing our son to explore and grow independent with as little intervention as possible. We buy Montessori toys (mainly because I’m not creative or handy enough to make my own) but it’s by no means a necessity. I would recommend reading Montessori from the Start and The Montessori Toddler if you’re interested. I appreciate the feedback and recommendations!
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Oct 16, 2020 19:23
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BonoMan posted:We're in month 16. Not a single full night's sleep yet. We did sleep training at about that age, a little younger. It was a week of hell and then another week or two of heck, and then she was great. I don't know how much to attribute to the methodology and how much to the personality/needs of our particular kid, but this is what worked for us: Put the baby in the crib for the night, happy and fed and warm. Say you'll be back later. The baby will start crying. Turn your cold, heartless back on him and leave him alone in the dark. Set a timer for 5 minutes and spend the entire duration questioning your worth as the kind of person who would deny comfort to a crying infant. When five minutes are up, go in and briefly reassure the baby that you're still there. Try not to pick him up or put thrown toys back in the crib. Exit after 30 seconds. Repeat with a 10 minute timer, then set 15-minute timers until the crying stops. It may be a while. Restart the process if he wakes up and starts crying again. Take notes on what time everything happens because you're not going to be getting any sleep and the nights will blend together. Eventually the notes will start to show a trend (not a straight line, but a trend) of progress. It took 4-5 days for this to start to click with our kid, and in the meantime she spent all night sitting up in her crib silently refusing to go to sleep, staring exhaustedly at the door in case we came back. But sooner or later she learned to lie down and close her eyes, and then she started sleeping all night with no interruptions. I think it helped that we gave her a pillowcase from our bed with familiar scents. I also lay down on the floor before bedtime with her stuffed animals and mimed sleeping. (Bonus: this was a chance to take a 30-second nap! Very useful! I encourage it!) We didn't pull out those tactics until several days in, so I don't know if they were directly responsible or if it was just the passage of time--but that night was her first "good" night. Good luck and godspeed.
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Oct 16, 2020 19:24
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I don't know if our 1.5 year old is just tall or my wife was overly concerned about his chances of getting out of the crib but she had me drop the crib base down to the floor months ago, so every morning I have to bend over and lift a 30 pound kid up. Don't wait until age 40 to have a baby folks. Really looking forward to whenever this turns into just a regular bed.
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Oct 16, 2020 19:52
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Our daughter is a few months older but I'm also 40. I wish I had met my wife sooner so we could have had a kid earlier because it sucks. Our neighbors just had a kid, the husband is the same age as me and his wife is the same as my wife, a few years younger. I pity them because they look exhausted.
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Oct 16, 2020 20:22
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wizzardstaff posted:We did sleep training at about that age, a little younger. It was a week of hell and then another week or two of heck, and then she was great. I don't know how much to attribute to the methodology and how much to the personality/needs of our particular kid, but this is what worked for us: We've tried sleep training a bunch and it hasn't taken yet. He will go 2-3 hours solid screaming or crying. Pediatrician gave us some pediatric sleep specialists but both are out of state so, with the pandemic, we haven't gone yet. calandryll posted:Our daughter is a few months older but I'm also 40. I wish I had met my wife sooner so we could have had a kid earlier because it sucks. Our neighbors just had a kid, the husband is the same age as me and his wife is the same as my wife, a few years younger. I pity them because they look exhausted. Yeah my second was born when I was 41. I hurt everywhere. It's so much more tiring than even having my first at 35.
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Oct 16, 2020 20:22
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wizzardstaff posted:We did sleep training at about that age, a little younger. It was a week of hell and then another week or two of heck, and then she was great. I don't know how much to attribute to the methodology and how much to the personality/needs of our particular kid, but this is what worked for us: lol, very relatable. We did ours a bit earlier (unsure exactly when due to memory loss from lack of sleep. at about 8 months??) using the schedule from this https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-25/controlled-crying-babies-not-harmful-flinders-uni-study-finds/7443878 which was a bit more gradual (eg starts at 2, 4, 6 on night 1) and it's incredible how slow and painful those two minutes were. It also took about 5 days for him to work it out. Leaps & teething (  ) always ran the risk of him going back to square one but each time we did the training it got easier and easier. He's 2 now and a sleeping champ, we put him down around 7:30-8 and he sleeps until 6:30
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Oct 16, 2020 20:57
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Daughter turns 2 next week and she still has shown no desire to flip herself over the top of the crib except one wild week months ago. I thought it was totally normal for her to be trying to bust out of jail by now but this thread is giving me hope she can stay in the crib longer as we are not ready to have her busting into our room at 2 AM. She sleeps on a cot a daycare just fine so I’m hoping one day when we transition to toddler bed she just goes with it.
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Oct 17, 2020 00:06
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Our kiddo had no desire to switch from a crib to a big kid bed until just before his 4th birthday. We asked him a bunch of times and he really just loved his crib. No complaints from me. We got a lot more sleep than we would have. There's no real reason to transition a kid to a bed unless they're trying to escape. Otherwise save yourself so much pain and ride that crib train until the wheels fall off.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:01
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We are going to try moving the 2.5 year old into the same room with her 5yo sister (bunk beds) and I dunno how well this is gonna work. The younger one can and will climb the bunk ladder and it’s terrifying. The constant rejiggering of the rooms and furniture is super annoying, glad I just get cheap ikea crap I don’t feel bad about selling/getting rid of.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:05
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Trust me if my kid wasn't trying to superman off the edge he'd be in there until he physically no longer fit.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:15
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I guess it is a bad look if cribs came with top pieces, making them cages 
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Oct 17, 2020 01:27
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Haha ok thanks for all the responses. My kids staying in the crib until he fights me on it.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:40
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priznat posted:I guess it is a bad look if cribs came with top pieces, making them cages We got a crib protector because we have two very cuddly cats. It was like a giant mesh laundry hamper thay went under the mattress and over. Had a zipper door too. It worked until the kid started crawling but wouls recommend.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:42
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Blinkz0rz posted:Our kiddo had no desire to switch from a crib to a big kid bed until just before his 4th birthday. We asked him a bunch of times and he really just loved his crib. No complaints from me. We got a lot more sleep than we would have. Also team crib forever here. Didn’t transition first kid to toddler bed until 3y9mo and it was only because he was getting too heavy to lift in and out. We started asking him to climb in so at that point it made more sense to convert the bed (one side comes off). He never tried to escape and even after being in toddler bed he never fucks around his room, he used to call for us to come get him instead of getting out of bed. He’ll be 5 in a few months and I think we’ll finally give him a big bed. Don’t know if we’ll get so lucky with #2, he’s almost 2 and hasn’t managed to climb out yet (sleep sack helps) but he’s a huge kid and can already reach light switches so he may not last as long in a crib.
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Oct 17, 2020 01:47
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Wowzers. I had posted about this and we’ve had a hell of a time up until recently so we are not experts at al and my opinion would probably vary from others. How old is your son? We bought a bumper specifically designed for toddler converted crib beds that goes under the sheet, good thinking on the towels to achieve the same effect. We also got a mesh “gate” (forget what it’s actually called, maybe that) is high installs via Velcro under the mattress and flips down when needed, it’s childproofed so your kid can’t flip it down, and that has been good peace of mind not having to worry about our son rolling out. As to getting them to stay in bed: gently caress. We tried everything. We started our staying with him in his room silently while he fell asleep and grew very tired of this because he’d often take his sweet time doing so, trying to stay awake, grabbing things, scratching the mesh gate, kicking the back of his crib, everything. It was exhausting when he’d take extra long to sleep. Both my wife and I decided we would start trying to get him to stay in bed without us having to be in there, and we started with just explaining to him we were going to walk out and that he had to stay in bed. Our son is almost 2.5yrs, so he understands a lot but we realized he probably didn’t understand what we were saying totally (even though he’d nod his head and say, “yeah”) and so as soon as we even so much as turned our backs to walk out he’d be slipping right out of bed. Sometimes he’d stay in for a minute or so and then get our. The first night we started trying this we must have put the little gremlin back in bed like thirty times, no eye contact, no talking to him. He’d get out every time. We were closing the door at that point, then the next night we decided to leave it open and see what he’d do. It worked that night (only made the decision after 10-15 times we had to put him back in bed), we thought we were on to something. The night after, leave door open, he’s getting out of bed again. It was that way until my wife read something...I don’t know what or where, but it revolves around a reward system with stickers. So we bought some toys to put in a box we would keep where he can see it, and he has to stay in bed all night from the time he crawls in to morning when he wakes up. If he does this he gets a sticker on a chart, and three stickers (what we settled on) gets him a prize of his choosing from the box. When he gets a sticker by staying in bed we make a big deal out of it and praise him. When he gets a prize we make an even bigger deal about it. There was something about not making it like 1-2 stickers or 5-6 stickers for a prize because they will lose interest, and I think one poster a few pages back ITT said they’d done something similar and their daughter eventually just stayed in bed without needing the associated reward anymore, so that’s what we’re hoping for. I don’t know if your kid is old enough to care or understand a reward/basically bribery system in order to get him to do certain things like let you loving sleep for the love of God, but so far it’s been working pretty well for ours? Like, every so often he’s been waking up in the middle of the night sobbing and getting out of bed to go to the door, but we child lock it so he doesn’t come running in to our room or getting into poo poo somewhere in the house, so he screams and screams. We tried putting a cot in our room early on so he could sleep there because this kid rolls around and moves all over the place, decided we were teaching him he could come into our room whenever, and stopped after one night because he kept whining and wanting into bed with us. Other times we tried waiting him out and seeing if he’d crawl back into bed. He did fall back asleep in front of his door, which was nice—then he woke up two hours later bat poo poo pissed that he was on the floor and we hadn’t come in. When we used to go in during the night he’d loving not need anything half the time, just wanted us, but we couldn’t stand the screaming. Other times he’d just get our of bed silently and we’d wake up to sounds on his monitor of him playing. He figured out how to turn the overhead lights on. Like, we were at a loss because he was waking up AT LEAST every other night and screaming for Momma and then I’d go in and he’d get even more pissed because I’m not her. My point is, he still does this occasionally, but somehow he now has the motivation to stay in bed, so we kinda feel like he understands enough to realize that if we simply tell him he has to stay in bed, he doesn’t actually have to do it, he just has to outlast our resolve. But if he knows he gets a cool toy at some point, he stays in. If he wakes up and gets out of bed (there’s no scenario where he wakes up and stays in bed to go back to sleep, ever) he doesn’t get a sticker, but he asks us about it and we have to act disappointed and tell him he didn’t get one. If what we’re doing is wrong and bribery, so be it. We neeeeeeed the sleep because he’s a bad sleeper, so we neeeeeed to train him to at least stay in bed before our daughter is born and the cycle starts over again. Edit: also chiming in to agree that kids forcing parents to switch them to a toddler bed at a specific age seems to be the exception and not the rule. We’d hoped ours would be in the crib until AT LEAST 3-3.5yrs, but nope. He was trying to pull a Houdini from that motherfucker at 18-19mo and it never stopped. life is killing me fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Oct 17, 2020 |
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Oct 17, 2020 01:56
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priznat posted:I guess it is a bad look if cribs came with top pieces, making them cages I grew up with a crib like this. Bunk bed on the top, drawers on the bottom, another bed in the middle with removable bars that fit over the open side. Being the older brother I got to sleep in the top bed though.
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Oct 17, 2020 05:38
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Related question- how did you make the transition to sheets/blankets? Our kid has been in baby sleep bags, and will be until whenever we have to go to a toddler bed or if it interferes with potty training, but like... she spins all over the place so uh how does that work?
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Oct 17, 2020 11:22
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Thanks for the suggestions everyone, particularly life is killing me. Our boy is turning 2 in a month, so I don't think he's quite able to grasp bribery yet but I know it won't be long until the mental cogs tick over there. We know his comprehension is very good but he doesn't have many words to express himself with yet - he'll shake his head instead of saying no, hold his hands out palms up for a hug etc. This evening he went to sleep before 10pm! Only at like 9:45pm but that's progress. He also did it without one of us being there. If we can get this happening 2.5hrs earlier and without 30 instances of putting him back to bed, we'll be back to where we were! Hooray! I also didn't even know how to start approaching his daily nap with this bed arrangement and didn't have 3 hours to spend in conflict over it, so we had a lie down together and both went to sleep. The virtue of a super king bed is I seriously don't care if we have to go through an intermediary period of co-sleeping. Tamarillo fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Oct 17, 2020 |
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Oct 17, 2020 12:01
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Today's arbitrary tantrum brought to you by.... Tongues! More specifically, why can't we lick them together daddy?
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Oct 17, 2020 17:16
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BadSamaritan posted:Related question- how did you make the transition to sheets/blankets? Our kid has been in baby sleep bags, and will be until whenever we have to go to a toddler bed or if it interferes with potty training, but like... she spins all over the place so uh how does that work? Our kid rejected swaddlers at 6 weeks. Had to sleep with her arms out. We used footie PJs since and gave her a small sleeper blanket at 1. The blanket frequently ended up elsewhere and still does. So long as they can sit up on their own and untangle id just throw it in there.
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Oct 17, 2020 20:06
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I’ve been enjoying this YouTube channel (Clint’s Reptiles) where he talks about reptiles and other strange pets (arachnids, amphibians etc). I don’t have anything more exotic than cats or dogs and no interest in getting anything else but it’s a fun channel and the guy’s enthusiasm and humour is really great. Anyway I saw he had a “review” of kids (with his kids in it) in the same style he does for the other pets where he breaks it down into categories and thought it was quite a funny and cute video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFx9wDjlC-s
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Oct 17, 2020 23:22
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Chili posted:Today's arbitrary tantrum brought to you by.... Kids are the best.
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Oct 17, 2020 23:51
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Chili posted:Today's arbitrary tantrum brought to you by.... When my son gets hurt, I kiss the owie and make it better. The other day he dropped a toy in his lap and loudly asked me to kiss his penis. He also had a cough and wanted me to kiss it better somehow.
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Oct 18, 2020 00:38
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Tamarillo posted:Thanks for the suggestions everyone, particularly life is killing me. Our boy is turning 2 in a month, so I don't think he's quite able to grasp bribery yet but I know it won't be long until the mental cogs tick over there. We know his comprehension is very good but he doesn't have many words to express himself with yet - he'll shake his head instead of saying no, hold his hands out palms up for a hug etc. I wrote all that poo poo, and last night my son woke up three times. My wife went in, fell asleep on the floor by his bed, then woke up and came back to our bed. Then he woke up again, I went in and he kept turning over intentionally to check if I was still there, trying to pass it off like he was just getting comfortable. I finally got to go back to bed and he woke up again about an hour after. I said gently caress it and brought him to our bed because we need sleep. I was writing that long rear end post, and he knew.
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Oct 18, 2020 02:32
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Sesame street has a new special about racism. It's pretty blunt. It's crazy to see a kids special tackle the topic and be straightforward and not pussyfoot around.
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Oct 18, 2020 22:44
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Sesame Street has always been pretty good about tackling tough issues. The episode about Mr. Hooper's death from the early 80s is a really good example, and closer to now, they had an episode on dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. There's also characters now like Karli who is living with foster parents while her mother deals with addiction, Julia who has autism, an HIV-positive character on one of the African versions, etc.
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Oct 19, 2020 05:49
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Sooo.... I had a baby on Wednesday. So far there’s been a lot to learn, but I think it’s going well. I can function okay on little sleep and my milk has finally come in. Baby will still be getting a lot of formula as needed though. My husband has been an absolute champion at taking care of me and the baby. I wouldn’t be faring so well without him. Baby gave me a third degree tear and I’ve been loving my donut pillow for recovery.
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Oct 19, 2020 10:30
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Nessa posted:Sooo.... I had a baby on Wednesday. Congratulations and good luck! Remember you will soon be too sleep deprived to properly remember these coming days. Take pictures! Take solace in the fact that nobody, not you, not the baby, nobody, will remember any mistakes you make because of the aforementioned sleep deprivation.
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Oct 19, 2020 11:00
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Nessa posted:Sooo.... I had a baby on Wednesday. Congrats! Sounds like you’re pretty level headed and things are going well! Note: don’t freak out if you start to have a rough time with anything. It’s the sleep deprivation and everything else talking. You’re more than likely doing completely fine.
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Oct 19, 2020 11:18
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Tamarillo posted:We know his comprehension is very good but he doesn't have many words to express himself with yet - he'll shake his head instead of saying no, hold his hands out palms up for a hug etc. 2 is old enough to learn baby sign language. Ours didn't ever learn a ton but it's nice to have some for clarifying common stuff like "more," "done," "milk," "water," etc.
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Oct 19, 2020 14:56
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Whoever mentioned the thing about the 90 minute alertness cycle last month sometime THANK YOU. Did some more reading about it and shifted 5 month old’s bedtime around to “the first time after 7 when he seems to act tired” rather than “bedtime is 730” a couple weeks ago and it has paid off in spades. Bedtime fights are much rarer now he’s actually loving sleeping well. This past week I got more sleep than I have in any week since he’s been alive by a huge margin. Thank you mysterious parenting thread poster I’m still too tired to go back and find, you are the best. Onto the bad part though, he’s learned to throw things, like on purpose and now has a 2 track mind: eat, and GRAB AND THROW ANYTHING NEAR ME ACROSS THE ROOM. I know you can’t really teach them at this age to not throw things, but man is it tiring to have to get up every 5 minutes to rescue the toy he just threw away and now wants and is sobbing about.
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Oct 19, 2020 14:59
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How do y'all handle Santa? I would like to do something like "he's not real, but we pretend he is because it's fun" sorta thing, but I don't really know how to handle that or if I need to do that yet since my son is only 2.5
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Oct 19, 2020 15:39
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Slimy Hog posted:How do y'all handle Santa? I would like to do something like "he's not real, but we pretend he is because it's fun" sorta thing, but I don't really know how to handle that or if I need to do that yet since my son is only 2.5 My vote is for don't even really worry about that until 4 or 5 at the earliest edit: My reason for that is that I think at 4 or 5 you'll be able to get them to understand that other kids still believe in him and we shouldn't ruin it for them (but even then that might be early for that)
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Oct 19, 2020 15:45
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Slimy Hog posted:How do y'all handle Santa? I would like to do something like "he's not real, but we pretend he is because it's fun" sorta thing, but I don't really know how to handle that or if I need to do that yet since my son is only 2.5 My son turns 2 next week and we plan on just going with Santa being a thing for a while. Let him have fun with it and we can tell him a few more years down the road. I think I was ten when I found out, which I think is too old, and I was pissed at my parents for “lying” to me, so we’ll probably tell him a few years?? Before that? Plus he’ll have a sibling that he will need to have fun with too. I dunno-I guess my point is just let them have fun with it now and worry about shooting straight later? Curious on others thoughts-that’s just what I think.
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Oct 19, 2020 15:47
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What a relief my toddlers won't be talking to any other kids for like 2-3 more years.
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Oct 19, 2020 15:47
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Slimy Hog posted:How do y'all handle Santa? I would like to do something like "he's not real, but we pretend he is because it's fun" sorta thing, but I don't really know how to handle that or if I need to do that yet since my son is only 2.5 I remember reading something about keeping the Santa myth but when kids start getting curious, the explanation is something along the lines of: "we're all Santa, and one of the cool things about growing up is you get to be Santa too and do this really nice thing for other people who are littler than you!"
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Oct 19, 2020 15:55
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Bollock Monkey posted:I remember reading something about keeping the Santa myth but when kids start getting curious, the explanation is something along the lines of: "we're all Santa, and one of the cool things about growing up is you get to be Santa too and do this really nice thing for other people who are littler than you!" It might've been this thread where I read that we give gifts as Santa because it's about the joy of giving instead of taking credit, or something.
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Oct 19, 2020 16:10
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One of our 3.5yo twins got sent to his room for poor behavior and to calm down, so the other one went to his own room too in solidarity.  
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Oct 19, 2020 16:17
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With the Santa stuff we hope to treat it like the Easter Bunny, it's a fun story and game to play around the holidays but there is not an actual giant human sized bunny running around. We have a few years before we really have to worry about it though.
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Oct 19, 2020 16:26
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