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KirbyKhan posted:Gonna get my kid hooked on Dungeons and Dragons to socialize my child while preventing any teenage pregnancy. Same as I was taught, same as my forefathers. Stealing this idea! On a serious note, I watched my dad play D&D when I was a kid and always wanted to join. I found a group to play in in high school but of course we grew up and apart. I would love to teach my kid to play someday.
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Apr 11, 2021 21:28
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KirbyKhan posted:Gonna get my kid hooked on Dungeons and Dragons to socialize my child while preventing any teenage pregnancy. Same as I was taught, same as my forefathers. Didn't you hear? D&D is cool now.
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Apr 11, 2021 22:59
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remigious posted:Stealing this idea! On a serious note, I watched my dad play D&D when I was a kid and always wanted to join. I found a group to play in in high school but of course we grew up and apart. I would love to teach my kid to play someday. My baby already joins us for our online D&D sessions. My husband and I co-DM. Even though we are the ones with an infant, it’s always the other people who are super late or have to go to bed early.
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Apr 12, 2021 01:16
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Nessa posted:My baby already joins us for our online D&D sessions. My husband and I co-DM. Even though we are the ones with an infant, it’s always the other people who are super late or have to go to bed early. This has been our experience too.
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Apr 12, 2021 02:50
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LOL if your baby doesn’t keep you to a strict schedule.
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Apr 12, 2021 02:55
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Thanks for the input re: parenting styles and friendship. The behaviors that kind of shocked me were mostly how physically mean the older kid was to his little brother, and how little of a reaction (if any) she had in response. I know that siblings fight, but the baby was just doing baby things like crawling around, entertaining himself with toys, standing up using furniture, etc. Then the older kid would randomly kick him in the face, shove him to the floor, repeatedly smash his head in our open baby gate, beat him with toys... and she hardly did anything about it. Me and my husband had stronger reactions, and were the ones saying “don’t hit” or “be gentle” or whatever. Maybe this is a normal boy thing, but I’ve never seen a little kid be so mean before. He didn’t hit my kid, but he did forcefully rip several toys out of her hands, and ended up throwing stuff all over our house. Like things off the counter and dishes and food and whatnot. She embraces the philosophy of having “free-range” kids, she even has a crafty sign in her house saying so, but it seems to be like she’s given up on trying to reign in her older kid at all, and she just lets him do what he wants. I have seen her punish him for doing dangerous things, like running into the street, or hitting adults while trying to hurt them, but the second he sees that she’s mad, he starts to melt down, and then she’s giving him cuddles and offering TV or candy or something. I got some sleep today thanks to my husband taking over on entertaining or kid so I could nap, and I realize that my initial post was a lot more dramatic than how I’m feeling now. Her kid is kind of a terror, but I’m a mom too and I can control the situations I choose to put my kid in.
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Apr 12, 2021 03:33
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Yeah that's not okay - and I say that as someone with a 3.5 year old boy. Mine certainly has a more intense and more physical energy than his sister did at that age, but there's no reason he cannot be redirected or told to be gentle or reminded that other people can feel hurt from his actions. It won't work without constant reinforcement and repeatition, and it sounds like your friend isn't interested. We cut out people for the same thing, and it became obvious that there were irreconcilable parenting differences right around that age.
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Apr 12, 2021 03:46
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Koivunen posted:Thanks for the input re: parenting styles and friendship. Yeah-no. Not ok. I’ve got a 2.5 son and his baby brother comes next month and I definitely won’t be allowing any of that to happen.
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Apr 12, 2021 06:38
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Koivunen posted:Thanks for the input re: parenting styles and friendship. Yeah my partner and I know a lot of hippy types, and it's a recurring problem where people (generally not people we're close to) want to be so "free-range" that they never provide their kids with boundaries. Kids that age get anxious when they have completely free rein, and start acting out (like this kid). And (going by some of the kids we've seen) they can end up with a lot of behavioral and mental health issues later on. Like, sure it's good to be "free-range" in the sense of fostering independence and not being a helicopter parent, but kids also need structure to backstop that. (And yeah, if I were in your position, I'd be keeping my kid away from that kid too.) External Organs posted:I remember a friend of mine holding her less than one year old over the toilet trying to make the magic happen. Oh yeah, it's a thing. We've been loosely following "elimination communication", where you start offering kids the toilet or potty pretty early, and start trying to get communication going with them over that. Our kid was peeing/pooing on the change table a lot, so we started offering him the potty at two months. He really took to it, and if you put him on the potty he will fairly reliably at least try to go. So now we offer it every time we change him, and try to watch for his cues. Maybe half his pee and most of his poo goes in the potty, and we'll sometimes even get dry diapers. He's 5.5 months. We have friends who also did this, and had their daughter fully potty trained at 18 months. Hadlock posted:I don't think our baby has ever woke up from deep sleep due to every day noises. I guess if we dropped a pot or pans in the kitchen and then screamed really loud she might wake up Lol our kid came home from hospital just in time for Halloween weekend, in the last year when fireworks were still legal in our city. So for two of his first outside the womb he got to experience an accurate auditory simulation of being in a warzone. Since then he's been generally pretty chill about loud noises.
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Apr 12, 2021 07:28
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Koivunen posted:Then the older kid would randomly kick him in the face, shove him to the floor, repeatedly smash his head in our open baby gate, beat him with toys... and she hardly did anything about it. Between our 4 and 1 year old, if the older one pushes around or otherwise gets too rowdy with the little one he gets disciplined WAY away before escalating anything described here. Like if he's hassling the little one he'll be told to leave him along and play something else, and we'll just move them apart if it continues... one time he pushed him into into a toy playpen thing we've got and thankfully didn't hurt his head, but the older one was in a poo poo LOAD of trouble from doing such a thing.
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Apr 12, 2021 14:04
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Yeah kicking and hitting a baby sibling is not normal boy behavior. Our 2.9yo’s baby sister is due like, Monday (inducing) and from about 1-2mo preggo we’ve been teaching him how to be gentle with babies and prepping him for his baby sister. We got him a baby doll and he walks around holding her, rocking her, and feeding her and telling us, “we gentle with baby sister.” He’s a high-energy kid himself and can be challenging at times (like this morning when we said it’s toy cleanup time and he brought out his giant foam blocks and dumped them put while looking me right in the eye after being told explicitly not to do that, and got a time-out for it) but he’s generally a good-natured boy, and the rest we nurture good behaviors and reward them.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:10
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Our 2 year old really likes trying to pull the baby’s pacifier out so she can sweetly and helpfully put it back in. We’re shutting it down, but man, toddlers are tough even when they mean well.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:21
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Yeah, we try some free range stuff, but that's some bullshit there. So is "Boys just hit people." Neither of our kids, boy or girl, just hits people. They're kids, so naturally they've tried at some point but that's gotta be shut down.
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Apr 13, 2021 17:22
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Hitting is a thing toddlers in general do, and when they start to do it it’s not necessarily out of malice, it’s just a way of expressing themselves when they don’t know how else to do it. It should definitely be quashed lest they learn that hitting is okay, but I basically ignored it when it started and didn’t react. Now we are more intentional about reminding him not to hit—even though I can count on one hand the number of times he’s hit either one of us in the past year and a half. But I hate the stereotype of “boys do this” and “girls do this.” If one looks closely, toddlers have lots of behaviors they have in common and those having nothing to do with their biological sex as far as I can tell. Like if someone tells me, “my toddler hit a friend at school,” unless they identified it, I wouldn’t be able to pick out and go, “Oh that must have been a boy/girl that did that.”
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Apr 13, 2021 17:59
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I mean, all I can say is that despite my efforts to raise them as gender-neutrally as possible, my son and daughter differ from each other in temperament and interests along pretty stereotypical lines. Aside from the fact that my son is comfortable in pink and dresses, I guess??
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Apr 14, 2021 05:24
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cailleask posted:I mean, all I can say is that despite my efforts to raise them as gender-neutrally as possible, my son and daughter differ from each other in temperament and interests along pretty stereotypical lines. Aside from the fact that my son is comfortable in pink and dresses, I guess?? Yeah you can try and be as gender neutral in your treatment of your kids as you like, but they'll be getting cues from media and society reinforcing cis-heteronormativity. In the end the best you can do is be supportive and receptive as they figure out their gender identity through all of that.
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Apr 14, 2021 06:48
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BTW, chiming back in at 2:27am to say that I’m not at all attempting to make a grand social or political statement about gender-neutrality or whatever else ITT...just saying that toddlers have some things in common behavior-wise that don’t necessarily create a distinct dividing line between boys and girls. I don’t think hitting, for example, is a “boys do this” thing—it’s seemingly pretty common with toddlers in general. That said, not every toddler does it.
life is killing me fucked around with this message at 07:36 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 07:34
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life is killing me posted:BTW, chiming back in at 2:27am to say that I’m not at all attempting to make a grand social or political statement about gender-neutrality or whatever else ITT...just saying that toddlers have some things in common behavior-wise that don’t necessarily create a distinct dividing line between boys and girls. I don’t think hitting, for example, is a “boys do this” thing—it’s seemingly pretty common with toddlers in general. That said, not every toddler does it. This is the right answer regardless of political views. Psychologic research shows that: 1. Personality traits are normally distributed. This means there are boys who display more "feminine" traits than some girls, and vice versa. So, "boys on average" have more masculine traits than girls on average, but it says very little about any particular individual. Acting or judging based on those averages is what we call prejudice. Instead we should strive to see and respect each child's individuality. The reasons for why boys and girls are different, now that is a topic for political opinions... 2. Children's personalities and identities are fluid. We should be careful about labeling a 3-year-old as "feminine", "introvert" or "rowdy", because if allowed, their personality may move in a completely different direction over time. (Notably, as teenagers, things can move pretty rapidly.) Psychologists do not consider personality tests to be valid until someone is out of their teenage years. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 08:07
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Got a 2.5 year old who just took my vaccine card out of the drawer, took it out of the ziploc bag, and drew on it. Every time something like this happens I think "what would my parents have done? I can use my experience being a kid, to inform my actions as a parent! Oh... They would have smacked me... right. We don't do that". Very annoying that I have a wealth of absolutely useless experience.
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Apr 14, 2021 17:59
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The sleep regression continues for this insane 16 month old child. For the last week she hasn't slept more than 30 minutes during the day and cries anywhere between 1-3 hours at night before finally passing out. She's skipped all her naps today so that's a cool new first too. I have no idea what to do at this point, we've tried all kinds of different waketimes, anywhere between 3-7 hours after waking up. She's teething a bit, starting to get better at walking around on the push toy, talking a lot more. It feels like an explosion of new skills at once. I want a bullet to explode in my brain.
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Apr 14, 2021 19:30
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nachos posted:She's teething a bit, starting to get better at walking around on the push toy, talking a lot more. It feels like an explosion of new skills at once. I want a bullet to explode in my brain. Yeah that sounds like the culprit for those sleep issues tbh
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Apr 14, 2021 19:53
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My toddler has a razor thin range of being not tired enough and overtired and if you end up in either side god help you!!
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Apr 14, 2021 20:29
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priznat posted:My toddler has a razor thin range of being not tired enough and overtired and if you end up in either side god help you!! Thread title should just be "God help you"
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Apr 14, 2021 20:46
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We baby sat my nephew His mom left him with a bunch of toys and snacks etc Door closes, proceeds to very dramatically flop on the floor with eyes shut right and scream NOOOOOO for a solid half hour. We ended up just leaving the room because I'm pretty sure he was causing us both permanent hearing damage Eventually he realized he was playing to an empty room and started playing with his toys and was fine the rest of the night Edit: I ordered 3M earplugs designed for the gun range for the next time he comes over Hadlock fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Apr 14, 2021 |
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Apr 14, 2021 21:02
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We’re in the middle of pre-k screenings and even the public school half day has a tuition in our town (~$3k). We also need alternatives just in case he isn’t chosen in the lottery system. A loving lottery for school. Anyways local accredited Montessori is about 3x the price, which sucks, but it’s highly regarded and doable if we want to skip the dog and pony show. My question for anyone who are familiar is how is Montessori’s play based system at the age 3-4 level functionally different than daycare? Is any pre-k different than daycare?
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Apr 14, 2021 22:54
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life is killing me posted:Yeah that sounds like the culprit for those sleep issues tbh We put her down 30 minutes early today and it seems to have at least helped with the crying before bed part. Only 25 minutes of yelling at the top of her lungs before passing out after 12 straight hours awake. Hoping some extra sleep helps with the overtiredness.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:32
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nachos posted:We put her down 30 minutes early today and it seems to have at least helped with the crying before bed part. Only 25 minutes of yelling at the top of her lungs before passing out after 12 straight hours awake. Hoping some extra sleep helps with the overtiredness. Good luck! Our toddler didn’t take a nap today and woke us up twice last night. He’s grown an inch the past month, though. He’s a poo poo sleeper all around, honestly, but it feels like he’s always going through something that makes his sleep even worse. And then he’s a crank butt. It’s a vicious cycle.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:56
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Diva Cupcake posted:We’re in the middle of pre-k screenings and even the public school half day has a tuition in our town (~$3k). We also need alternatives just in case he isn’t chosen in the lottery system. A loving lottery for school. Anyways local accredited Montessori is about 3x the price, which sucks, but it’s highly regarded and doable if we want to skip the dog and pony show. Depends on the Montessori program? Some of them are super regimented and are definitely nothing like daycare - in normal times I’d suggest you do a classroom visit. I don’t know what alternatives they can give now. Some places use the word Montessori very loosely, and some don’t. A ‘real’ Montessori classroom is like 15 3-6year olds all very quietly engaged in ‘work’ of their own choosing (with teacher guidance) - sometimes teaching each other as well. It can feel eerie if you’re not used to it.
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Apr 14, 2021 23:58
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life is killing me posted:Good luck! Our toddler didn’t take a nap today and woke us up twice last night. He’s grown an inch the past month, though. He’s a poo poo sleeper all around, honestly, but it feels like he’s always going through something that makes his sleep even worse. And then he’s a crank butt. It’s a vicious cycle. Ours is napping maybe twice a week now. poo poo sucks.
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Apr 15, 2021 00:01
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Diva Cupcake posted:We’re in the middle of pre-k screenings and even the public school half day has a tuition in our town (~$3k). We also need alternatives just in case he isn’t chosen in the lottery system. A loving lottery for school. Anyways local accredited Montessori is about 3x the price, which sucks, but it’s highly regarded and doable if we want to skip the dog and pony show. Is that 3k a month?
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Apr 15, 2021 00:10
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iv46vi posted:Is that 3k a month? Daycares around Boston are $3k per month. He’s never been to one.
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Apr 15, 2021 00:19
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nachos posted:The sleep regression continues for this insane 16 month old child. For the last week she hasn't slept more than 30 minutes during the day and cries anywhere between 1-3 hours at night before finally passing out. That age was tough. I think that’s when our kid consolidated to one nap. At night it took sometimes up to 45 minutes of singing and back rubs to get her to sleep without crying. And she’s a good sleeper. Sea shanties are the way to go. Lots of verses and they are easy to sing.
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Apr 15, 2021 00:46
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Our dude is accepted to a Montessori beginning in September, it’s a steal at only $22k a year. At least it’s five days a week and goes till 4pm, some of them charge that for three days 9-12pm.
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Apr 15, 2021 03:48
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Just a heads up to y’all entering Montessori - my daughter had a really tough time transitioning from that to public school. She was there ages 3 to 6. Obviously there’s some covid impact there too - I suspect if we had moved her over during Kindergarten it might have been easier for her. The ways they train the kids to interact with each other, the classroom, and the teacher is pretty different from public school expectations.
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Apr 15, 2021 03:53
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The oldest had a similar experience the transition from our montessori-like school to a traditional school structure. I think it helped that we let them know when we were sending her to a public kindergarten, and the teacher worked on more structured time with the kids that were also going. As far was the benefits of Montessori to cost for daycare, I think what's most important is that the daycare has a childcare philosophy that aligns with what you want. In my area there are a few actual Montessori programs, but then numerous others that are montessori-like which are less expensive. We found that these other ones don't follow certain principals is Montessori philosophy so they won't get certified as Montessori, but they probably follow what you want out of a Montessori school. Like the one we went with has a lot of focus on freeplay, and outdoor work, and child lead learning, but they also do more structured, and more teacher leading. They don't consider their educational philosophy to align with Montessori, but from the outside, and outcomes for daycare, I can't see the difference. They also cost less than any Montessori in town... though they are still pricy compared to other daycare options.
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Apr 15, 2021 04:31
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I think the aim toward autonomy and self-learning is definitely something I would respond to but I also don't want to project my leanings onto my son. My wife thinks he'll need more attention and guidance. She's also concerned with the inevitable transition to public/private afterwards. Our concern with the individual freeplay concept is just his attention level for things that aren't specifically in his wheelhouse is almost nil. He might be very bored in Montessori if it's essentially the same concepts and play activities for the next 3 years. He's 3. Right now, he's very content to do basic arithmetic workbooks and counting exercises all day. They're his favorite thing in the world (right now). Through no fault of our own, he can also read at a 1st grade level so another 2 years of learning what letter is what is probably not going to grab him much. He has almost no interest in art or coloring exercises, crafts are hit or miss. He does like building blocks but generally moves on pretty quickly. We'd like him to learn how to work with and play with other kids better. Like everything else parenting related, I'm just trying not to screw him up too badly. Diva Cupcake fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Apr 15, 2021 |
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Apr 15, 2021 12:14
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Oh, and transition issues to kindergarten took like three weeks to resolve themselves. Almost certainly every kindergarten teacher has dealt with worse transitions. Maybe a quarter of the children in my daughter's class had been kept at home/didn't go to daycare, and their transition seemed worse. While Montessori might not prepare a kid for the same learning environment as kindergarten, I think it's fantastic at giving them tools to interact with their peers, and develop conflict resolution skills that will make dealing with other kindergarteners easier.
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Apr 15, 2021 12:44
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Programs of course are going to vary, but I wouldn’t say that Montessori is “individual freeplay” in the sense that all the kids are silently doing their own thing. One of the big things is mixed-age classrooms where kids can learn from each other by working alongside younger or older students of different abilities. I would not expect your kid to be doing the same thing for three years, definitely.
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Apr 15, 2021 14:01
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There are also montessori programs that go past kindergarten. My school district has several schools that run montessori from PK3-6th grade, and then they have a regular middle school for 7th/8th before you head off to regular high school, but PK3-8th grade is all in the same school, so I'm sure the teachers handle whatever transitionary pains there are pretty well. My kid started in PK3 at one and really likes it, although covid obviously messed it up pretty good, but having the same teacher for 3 years straight is really nice. ETA: They run classrooms in 3 year chunks with 21ish kids in each room spread between the ages, so PK3-K, 1-3, 4-6 are all together.
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Apr 15, 2021 15:54
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nwin posted:Ours is napping maybe twice a week now. poo poo sucks. Jesus. Don’t know why they do this to themselves. I can’t wait until my child can somewhat be reasoned with and exercise rudimentary logic. He can kind of be reasoned with for now, but nothing is long-term. Like we can get him to stay in bed sometimes by saying that he is being a good big brother by not coming into our room and waking us and his baby sister up, but the next night it’s like that never happened and he’s in Auto Toddler Mode (run: progenitorbdrmwakeupprotocol.exe, logic?=1)
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Apr 15, 2021 15:57
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