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Reading that, I pretty much did the exact opposite with two kids. I'm not sure what that advice is designed to accomplish. Is it about sleeping through the night or is the fear that babies will need to be fed every minute they are awake? Eventually they get a little older and spend more time being awake without it just being a feed and a diaper change. Then you can start looking for a pattern to their day and counting on certain times of day that will be naptime. At 6 weeks, their survival is just "get nourished, get back to sleep so I can grow." Disclaimer: not going crazy, honestly confused.
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Oct 16, 2012 16:01
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People may rant on twitter or whatever but in real life, I haven't really encountered anyone who was bitchy to us because of a noisy kid. Just don't have an entitled attitude about your kid and people are understanding. In fact, many more people have been in that situation than you'd think and might even be thinking something like "I remember those miserable days." Have your 18-month-old carry his own backpack and fill it with stuff he likes (be that trains, coloring supplies). We also used the wrapped gift idea last time we flew and it worked very well. I wrapped up mostly things that were his already and for some reason that really clicked with him, but also wrapped up some m&ms. Having a lot of snacks is key and if there's something tasty that really shuts him up, no guilt. Pack it in case of a 3-alarm meltdown. One time we had a bad situation with delayed flights and travel triggering diarrhea - I highly suggest you have enough diapers in non-checked bags to make it through a full day because inside the airport diapers are sold in packs of like 3 for $10, something ridiculous.
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Nov 26, 2012 21:29
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY4bUP48RE8&t=48s YOU SIT ON A THRONE OF LIES I like to think of Santa as trolling my children a little bit. I tell you one way it's drat useful: getting them to bed on Christmas Eve. It's fun when they're little, but it really became funny when my daughter was old enough to kind of know that it couldn't really be true...but she didn't want to admit it was all fake because what if it WAS true, then she might not get anything but socks under the Christmas tree? Also - don't make the coolest present be from Santa because then that fat bastard gets all the credit.
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Dec 11, 2012 21:56
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Your husband accusing you of being a bad mother - I'd get a grip on that situation right away. That's a really hurtful, lovely thing for your partner to do. It's not healthy to start name-calling and for most mothers that's a really low blow since we have that internal voice questioning our parenting decisions all day long. Plus, siding with his mom over you - there's no way I'd let that slide without a serious conversation. I also would not want my kid eating cookies first thing and it's not unreasonable to say "no treats until after lunch". I don't think 3 weeks of cookies is going to magically turn a kid fat but like Poison Cake said, you are in for a huge whining mess when your MIL goes home and the morning cookie fix runs dry.
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Dec 24, 2012 15:52
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I don't think this comes down to parenting styles. I get there is resistance to stepping on other parents' toes but to me this is the same as letting a child get into a car with a visibly drunk parent. I think most people would step in and take a friend's car keys in that situation. A young child unrestrained in the slowest fender bender is launched like a rocket. VorpalBunny, if it were me I would approach it as an uncomfortable conversation but worth a little tension in your friendship. Someone needs to say something before god forbid tragedy happens like Twatty Seahag has seen or they get pulled over and ruin their adoption plans.  Gonna go hug my kids now.
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Feb 11, 2013 02:39
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I have a middle schooler and a preschooler. With my oldest, one thing I would do differently is be more careful about body size talk. She was on the small size and regular clothes you could pick up in Target or wherever would slip off really easily. I was a fat kid so I always felt like I wouldn't criticize my kids for being fat or do any of that passive aggressive stuff that digs at fat kids. But since she was extra skinny I didn't stop myself from fretting about her out loud and complaining about having to find "slim" sizes. It came to a head when she was in a dressing room when she was 6 and a pair of pants she liked had those inner adjustable waistbands - we put it on the tightest setting and it poofed out on her and looked awful, and she just started sobbing because she felt so different from other kids. So I would definitely check myself on that one if I could go back. She's a totally normal-sized 7th grader. Puberty is the great equalizer and I knew that, I wasn't genuinely worried about her being too skinny, and I let my mouth run too much without realizing I was making her feel like she did something wrong.
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Feb 19, 2013 19:41
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In regards to discipline, for me it has been getting to know my kids' personalities that was most effective long-term. That's a wordy way of saying that my two kids are completely different and what worked with one did not work with the other. The book I found very helpful with knowing how to handle my kids' personalities was "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk" by Adele Faber. It's about more than straight-up discipline but it gives you a good handle on how to react to your children other than just conflict after conflict. Another great parenting book I recommend to anyone is "Nurture Shock" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It's kind of the Freakanomics for parenting culture. As long as I'm on a book roll, for anyone with tweens, I have gotten some good insight from "Our Last Best Shot" by Laura Sessions Stepp. I found it especially helpful for the chapters on dads and daughters. Edit: Systran, I think Nurtureshock -and the Faber book too now that I think about it - is a good read for answers to these types of questions. Really what it boils down to is motivation and teaching your child to be self-motivated. There's a lot of temperament involved, but you can choose what language you use with your kid to subtly encourage them to want to continue themselves. In Faber's book they use the example of a kid drawing a picture. They show it to you, and you react with, "Oh, how pretty! You're so clever!" -- well, that pretty much wraps up that picture. If you were to say instead, "I like how you used the brown on this side" or something that is more of a commentary rather than praise the child is more likely to sit down and work on it some more. hepscat fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Feb 19, 2013 |
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Feb 19, 2013 21:31
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Mezzanine posted:I might have posted about it before, but she was diagnosed early on with "light autism". This is Japan though, so I took that with a grain of salt. That's called "scripted language" when they repeat phrases like that. My son doesn't have an official autism diagnosis but he is about a year older than yours and those behaviors were enough to qualify him for assistance - he's getting behavior and speech therapy which has made a really big difference. Not being able to answer questions was one of our biggest obstacles. As far as potty training, what worked for us was that I found a really cool pair of underwear he liked and one Saturday we put them on in the morning and he was so thrilled he never looked back (in fact, it became more of a problem to get him to put them in the laundry at the end of the day). I mention it on the off chance our kids are similar. He gets a little obsessed with favorite clothes. Edit: \/\/ for me potty training is a "whatever works" situation and if flat-out bribes work, it's worth it. Bribes are what turned the corner for my older kid and she's well past toilet training age without being broken. On the other hand, my son couldn't have been less interested in any sort of reward or prize for using the potty after the fact. hepscat fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 26, 2013 |
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Mar 26, 2013 17:37
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Mezzanine posted:Another thing if it happens to help anyone with a similar kid: I bought her a set of little 20-piece puzzles that she seemed to like, so I got her a 50-ish piece the other day and she took right to it. The problem is that, according to her teacher, she sees it as a task rather than a toy. She would start to get bored with it and stop putting pieces in, but she would start screaming if you tried to put it away before she finished it. When she (or my wife) finished it, though, she'd start right at it again. That goes in the closet for the time being, I guess Definitely sounds familiar - for us it's taking apart locks and latches, then putting them back together again. What we have done for this type of thing is made it into an incentive for him ("if you cooperate we can get out the special toy/activity when we get home"). He is a little older so maybe your daughter is not quite ready for it, but he has gotten so much better about delayed gratification even in the past 6 months. He's 4 yrs 4 months. One of the things that pushed us into getting him evaluated was that he could focus so insanely on something if he wanted to and took it seriously like a task, not so much that it's fun. He's taken off the door handle on our front door, stripped many cabinets of their hardware, taken apart and put back together every flashlight. The only lock we've found can stop him is a flat-out cable tie. We have a game cabinet that locks with a key and somehow he has found that drat key no matter where or how high up I've hidden it and can open it with the key no problem. We have a latch on our front door but he just knows to push over a chair. I know even just describing this it sounds like I must be the most inattentive parent ever, but all these things happen in the time it takes to make him a sandwich for lunch or go to the bathroom. Little bugger. Except the front door thing, that was with a room full of adults chatting on a summer day with the door open, thinking he was harmlessly occupied.
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Mar 28, 2013 19:46
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Just got to echo again, it's not weak. Geez with both my kids the only way we got through the night was side-lying nursing, co-sleeping. Once we got in that pattern my breasts adjusted and I only gave milk on one side at night. We all got so much sleep. I know there's a big push to get kids to go to sleep by themselves but on the other hand, if your kid nurses to sleep that is a powerful weapon if you need them to get to sleep. I mean it's not like my kids are nursing now (13 and 4) and they go to sleep just fine. I wasn't on the internet with my first kid and there wasn't anyone telling me it would ruin her to nurse her to sleep so we had the boon of easy nights without the guilt of people telling me my baby should self-soothe. Hey something Finnoulla said reminded me - my nephew had this little mini-animal from IKEA that my sister-in-law sewed to a little soft baby blanket. Not really sure how that evolved but it was the best lovey because it had the little animal head he loved and he could cuddle it because it was a small blanket, too. A few years later I was in a baby store and someone has "invented" this very thing. http://www.amazon.com/Carters-Child...ASIN=B0013PUS1W
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May 24, 2013 15:31
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Ironsolid, as someone who went through abuse as a child I would feel wrong if I didn't say something. Extreme behavior such as eating entire jars of peanut butter - or multiple jars in one sitting - is something that you should bring up to a doctor or psychologist. That is a child who is acting out and extreme behaviors can be a sign of abuse. I highly encourage you need to sit down and examine yourself closely and honestly. Abuse isn't just about hitting or violence. If there is no "reason" for him to act this way that makes seeing a doctor just as important. In the meantime, I would track everything he eats over a few days and try to document what is going on. Remember, lying in a child is normal. Lying for a child going through abuse is more than just normal, it's a survival mechanism. Focusing on whether he's lying is not helpful and missing the point. His behavior is screaming for help, and you need a professional to help both of you get through this.
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Jun 9, 2013 20:11
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I would mention it to your doctor, especially if you think it's affecting his breathing. It could be asthma - one of the symptoms is coughing at night. It could also be sensitivity to dust or something in the room. It's not rush-to-urgent-care kind of thing unless the baby is struggling to breathe, but it is worth a call to the doctor.
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Jun 11, 2013 18:34
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Late to the TV talk but what I found works really well with my 4-y-o is using a kitchen timer. For us it's not TV, but playing with the tablet. When that beeper goes off, tablet goes off and for some reason it's absolute magic and he's never even protested it. I've done things like come out of shower, realized his dad has given him the tablet, I set the timer for 2 minutes and say "when the timer goes off it's time to eat breakfast" and lo and behold when it goes off, he sits at the table and eats even though he only got two minutes to play.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:01
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Working from home can be managed and with a commute like that it sounds worth it to try if you're lucky enough to have a job that lets you do it. So you need some clear ground rules about it - a clear time schedule. Most places of work don't begrudge you a coffe break, but maybe tell your wife you can't have more than 15 minutes every 3 hours. As your kid gets older and more aware that you're in the next room, it helps to have a home office with a door you can shut. Instead of little spurts with your kid every hour, make your lunch hour or half hour time with your kid and eat at your desk afterwards. But stick with a defined time if you can. I wouldn't let your kid get used to you being the one to get him up from a nap. I'd encourage your wife to get him outside every day in some shape or form. Playgroups, park - that's uninterrupted time for you. edit: whoops, how did I miss you saying you have a home office. So that part's good. Take advantage while you can if you have a boss that doesn't pepper your evaluations with things like "needs more face time" 
hepscat fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jun 14, 2013 |
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Jun 14, 2013 02:34
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My mom was raised as a socialite in New Orleans in the fifties. But when I was expecting my first baby, she told me some friend of her mom's was always telling her to put the baby to bed at 7:00 every night, shut the door, and don't go in until 7 the next morning. The point being she thought that was ridiculous and cruel advice and that I should expect to be up a lot with a baby until we learned to nurse in bed. This idea that in the old days kids behaved and knew their place is more like a meme than reality - I think a lot of us with kids realize that. I have a hard time believing everyone ignored their crying babies as much as you hear, too. It comes out as sympathy, not advice. "those first weeks are so hard" etc.
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Jun 22, 2013 12:00
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Even if you buy a seat, you can't assume you will be allowed to strap a car seat there. They are very picky about the size of seat and sometimes they just seem to decide these things arbitrarily at the gate and not according to what you might find on a website. The last time we flew with a car seat they would only let us strap it by the aisle seat even though we had all three seats, and that didn't make sense to me at all. I've heard of people being told they have to check the seat, although that hasn't happened to us.
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Jul 19, 2013 23:38
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ChloroformSeduction posted:I'm apparently hard at work turning my son gay again. On Monday we were running some errands, and we needed to get some pullups. I try to let him pick his own stuff, and this time, for whatever reason, he wanted the Disney princess girl ones (he also picked out a Thomas the Train picture book.) I know how his dad feels about these things, but completely forgot about it on Tuesday when his dad picked him up for dinner, and I got a sternly worded email afterwards. Picking a color has nothing at all to do with sexuality. In fact, 100 years ago pink was considered a manly color. Even more irritating to me is a parent who thinks their kids' sexuality is something they have to keep from going gay. I don't know your home situation - sounds like you are separated - but I'd address that idiocy with the dad and do whatever you can to bring your kid up in an accepting environment. You can also tell him that it's creepy to sexualize your kids but I imagine that will probably alienate him. Look forward to a future of pushing your son into manly pursuits, I guess!
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Aug 26, 2013 19:15
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Breastfeeding is great and all but if your baby is passing blood in their stools that should take priority. You shouldn't just settle for blood in the stools now and then. Gaining weight and not spitting up as much is great and you're on the right track, but don't just ignore passing blood. Your doc was the one who brought up the formula so I wouldn't be so quick to say the doctor isn't concerned. If nothing else think of how much happier and calmer your baby will be if she has a happy digestive tract.
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Sep 17, 2013 22:26
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My 4-year-old is going as the Matt Smith doctor. Fez, suspenders, bowtie.  My 13-y-o has some sort of cosplay she's doing with friends and she's on her own with that. I'm not going down that rabbit hole. Dwemer I have a restricted diet for a medical condition and I did think of two things that haven't been mentioned that helped me a ton when my babies were small. First, no breastfeeding mother should ever get hungry. Whatever snacks or foods you can eat that don't require preparation - make sure you have a ton of them around so that you never get hungry. Sure, it's not an amazing meal but it will get you through until you have a little more time to think about making something more complicated. Second, forgive me but I can't remember if you are a single parent or if you have a partner, but if you do - farm out cooking to your partner for a while until you feel adjusted to your new way of eating (whatever that is, I don't know enough about elimination diets). It can be a huge help to be free of that burden of having to microanalyse what's going into your food. Edit: \/\/ don't have your husband eating that in front of you, for starters. It's his baby, too. hepscat fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Sep 18, 2013 |
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Sep 18, 2013 18:19
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My husband basically goes out with his friends at lunchtime and has whatever lovely food he wants that I can't eat specifically so that he doesn't eat it in front of me. It's not that big of a thing to ask of him.
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Sep 18, 2013 19:04
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/\ Thank you for that. Old Navy has some incredibly cute costumes for toddlers and infants, and they're never more than $20 brand new. http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=98187&mlink=51375,6912188,DP_Major_Baby&clink=6912188 Just look at that flower. Another thing you can do if you're more of the practical mindset is to buy costumey pajamas instead of a costume. Then they won't just get worn once. http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=98530&vid=1&pid=650722002 I have to say though if your town is like mine you have opportunities to wear that costume all month long. Pumpkin patch visits, parties, playgroups, fairs - we never just wear it on the day.
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Sep 18, 2013 22:56
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My son has ASD so it might not work with a neurotypical kid, but we use a visual schedule for mornings and it cuts out the fighting like magic. He has a chart with what is going to happen in the morning (go pee, pet the cat, breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth & hair, socks & shoes, backpack). For us it takes the arguing out of the morning ("I'm not hugry/I don't have to pee"). I wouldn't use it for everything but if you find yourself having the same fight at the same time of day, you might try something like that. It works well with a kid like my son because sticker charts, pebble jars, etc. aren't motivating for him. He's more motivated by completing the cycle of a chart finished in the proper order. But you could up it a little by something like if he does the chart without complaints three days in a row he gets a sticker or a cookie or whatever you think motivates him.
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Sep 19, 2013 18:31
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ChloroformSeduction posted:I know there's been a few other parents with kids who have an ASD diagnosis... I guess my question for anyone who has been through this is how much to the diagnosticians rely on their own observations, and how much on what the parents report? Hey I saw this and forgot to add my two cents. How old is your son again? We are still going through the evaluation process but the first evaluations do definitely incorporate the parents' comments. We had to fill out pages and pages of questions about his behavior and our concerns. Some of it was just free-form but there was another part that rating his actions on a scale, like how likely is he to ____? They also had his preschool teacher fill out the same forms. That part of the assessment (the parts not done by trained experts, but by parents or other caregivers) came out with findings worked like "autism - likely" "autism - possible". So they are taken into consideration because of your close knowledge of your child, but as just one factor in the whole picture. And definitely not considered a diagnosis.
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Sep 21, 2013 05:54
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I wouldn't call it discrimination, it's more that mom's clubs (at least the ones I've ever been exposed to) were founded as social groups for the moms, not the kids. The kids are secondary. Like if you are sick and can't make it to playgroup for a mom's club, you wouldn't send your husband in your place. I have an older kid and the mom's club in the town I lived in when she was a tot had separate playgroups by age and by divisions like stay-at-home mom or working mom. Either way, no nannies were allowed to attend and it wasn't grouped for the benefit of the kids other than similar age. The idea was to meet other women in your near-exact situation as opposed to social groups we're all in that are more family- or kid- oriented like churches, sports, etc. Last time I checked that same club had lifted the working vs. non-working requirements - probably because the economy tanked! But still there was a no-nannies rule.
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Nov 15, 2013 23:05
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Yeah, and I definitely disagree with it philosophically (divisions like working vs. non-working moms) because it cuts out people for no good reason. I have some great friends still from that time but between us we've all gone back and forth with working, especially since the economy tanked. On the other hand, if everyone in your group is always home in the mornings, it's nice to have a group of people you can call if you need to swap babysitting. That was the original intent. There's more SAHM dads than ever so keep an eye on meetup.com for something more welcoming, or start your own. One of the worst things is being stuck at home with kids, feeling isolated from other adults. Even if you're an introvert before kids, it's not the same as having to deal with kids and their energy all day.
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Nov 16, 2013 21:36
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If it's at all possible (i.e., not life-threatening) to delay surgery until your baby is older, I would do it. Anesthesia is serious in kids that small and you should only have surgery if there's a dangerous condition that would outweigh the risks of anesthesia. Especially general anesthesia: http://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/news/20120820/anesthesia-may-harm-childrens-brains
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Nov 20, 2013 03:09
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The thing that makes me give it a second look is that the children in their study had relatively minor surgeries such as dental fixes, not that they were severely ill children. For me if it's something that can wait until their brains are little more developed, I would wait.
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Nov 20, 2013 03:47
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Do you mean that he never participates in singing and activities in general, or just kind of freezes up on stage? If it's the latter, I wouldn't worry. Not every kid likes doing those things in front of an audience and that could just be his personality. That was pretty dickish of the grandparents behind you to talk about a kid on stage. I wouldn't chalk it up to more than that unless you think he never wants to do group activities at all.
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Nov 24, 2013 22:50
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Chandrika I'm confused, do you as a family unit actually need more money or is it quibbling over the fact that money didn't actually go through his fingers as it was spent? I've heard lots of reasons for going back to work but I have to say I have never heard of anyone going back to work because one partner thinks their salary shouldn't go towards groceries. I'm not sure that would solve your problem, anyway. For example, let's say your kid wants to take a gymnastics class. Would your partner consider that taking his money? If you were working, would it come out of "your" money or "his"? Honestly, that would be incredibly hurtful to me because it's negating all the work that goes into watching children - plus it sounds like you're supposed to be requesting an allowance or something. You're not the nanny or an errant child, you're the mother of his child and an adult capable of making decisions.
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Dec 21, 2013 00:54
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I realized I forgot you were asking how other people handled it: we used to have separate finances but made a joint account when we got married (well before kids) and magically ever argument or disagreement we ever had about money went away. Also, my husband has a PhD and although he had stipends and grants, mostly in his field he could only get loans. Instead of going into heavy debt I was the breadwinner for the years it took him to finish. I never thought of my salary as MY money, we were a team investing in his education so that he could turn around and get a lucrative job. I suggest looking into childcare costs before going back to work to at least have a realistic handle on the whole financial situation.
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Dec 21, 2013 01:02
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When my son was 3 he was not a great plane traveler, but the trick that worked for us was wrapping up little tiny things like small toys and tiny candy bars and saving them for the worst parts of the trip when you absolutely need distraction. We even took some of his toy trains and wrapped those up and he was utterly charmed to discover them as a surprise.
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Jan 8, 2014 06:45
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By two way conversation, I take that to mean back and forth? Like answering a question, or asking you a question? That sounds like pragmatic speech delay which is often associated with ASD. My son has ASD and this was probably our biggest clue. No question he was verbal and had a large vocabulary. It's not enough to count how many words a kid has or understands. It's the social aspect of language that is the biggest clue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_language_impairment#Characteristics Like everything to do with ASD, my son only hit a few key things on that list at age 2, not all of them. For him he most clearly had: - Repeating words or phrases ("scripted" language. It often felt like he was saying something close to what he meant but not exactly what he wanted to say) - difficulty with pronouns or pronoun reversal ("I" versus "you" is practically impossible to explain to a toddler, by the way.) But that's the thing with checklists. He liked kids, he loved jokes, he spoke in sentences from about 18 months. He answered factual questions, or simple choices, but if you asked him if he liked something he couldn't say yes or no. I don't know where you live but for us it was a very lengthy process to actually get a diagnosis of ASD. We were on a waiting list for over a year for an initial appointment at the very large, prestigious Autism center that our insurance insisted we use. However, early intervention did observations of him and did not have to diagnose him in order to get him in programs that helped him, so that was within a very short period of time. I guess my point is that you don't automatically get a diagnosis, you have to push for it, so I wouldn't worry about your child being pigeonholed.
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Jan 16, 2014 06:57
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General tips about yes/no communication - kids tend to hear and respond to whatever you've said last. Even if it's not what they want. Also, I remember at that age when my kid would say no to something I knew was really a yes, I would repeat it like this: "blueberries yes or blueberries no?" Kind of reinforced that they had to listen to what I was asking and what they were saying no to. And it was more likely to get an answer rather than a knee-jerk no.
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Jan 23, 2014 23:05
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Y'all are going to be changing your tune in a few years when you can drop your kid off at a party.
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Mar 25, 2014 17:03
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Is he in a preschool or daycare? Peer pressure can be a big motivator, plus a chance to see the right behavior modeled by kids his age. 4.5 is a little late for outright defiance when it comes to the potty. Forgetting because they're into something - setting a timer works really well. I also just have certain times they have to go, like if we're going to watch TV, potty first. Going out somewhere, potty first. At first it's a fight but pretty soon it's just second nature.
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Mar 26, 2014 17:20
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Papercut posted:You mean death mobiles? No, they don't. The remodels are pretty amazing but I miss this thing in Delores Park:  People have been talking about "free-range children" for a while, but one thing I did find to be a new thought in that Atlantic article was the idea that kids never have a space where they feel totally unwatched. That really is true now because even if you're permissive enough to let them roam their neighborhood, you most likely give your kid a phone. I admit some of the stuff we did as kids in the 70's seems crazy to me now, like we had all these paths through the apartments like "duck through this laundry room, jump onto this balcony, land on the grass on the other side of the wall" that our kids will experience. My kids have never climbed a chain link fence or a barbed wire fence, for that matter (which we did so we could look for bullets behind the shooting range). But did that not sound insane, like something you'd never let your kid do? Because it was! There were a fair amount of bad things that came along with that like getting beat up and not to mention felt up by older kids. And yet a parent who wouldn't have let their kid out to roam would have been frowned upon because that wasn't the cultural norm. We've moved on as a society.
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Mar 27, 2014 21:41
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VorpalBunny posted:I remember a big field behind our housing complex was a construction site where more buildings were being built. As 6-year olds, we would wander around the machinery, climbing through the pipes, and generally being idiots around really dangerous stuff. No way in hell my kids are doing such stupid stuff, and I marvel at the fact that no one was seriously injured (as far as I know). You just brought up a memory that I used to ride this scooter thing in the construction site down the block from my house and I remember my mom telling me not to leave it there because one day it was going to get covered up by the new building, and sure enough - one day I went out and they had poured concrete and I forever thought of my scooter being buried under the new apartments. I came home one time with a 5-6" slash down my stomach because we had made a "slide" in the construction dirt and I had slid down on my stomach over a shard of glass sticking up. Again, as a parent - WTF? I still have a scar. THANKS MOM. Why are merry-go-rounds on the poo poo list? Not only were they loads of fun, they taught kids about physics. Ron Jeremy posted:I Not just a mom, but one from the 1950's. 
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Mar 29, 2014 05:09
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quote:I'll be moving into a new place which won't be able to accommodate my daughter on any sort of continual basis (as in, 50/50 custody so to speak I don't know what this means but I strongly suggest you change that as soon as you can so that your daughter does not feel like an unwanted guest in her dad's apartment. She's a person and she deserves space in both your living spaces that is solely for her, not a night or two on the couch. I've seen "amicable" divorces go nasty so many times I am very cynical about it. If you don't actively work to make it completely neutral to your daughter in every way possible, it will get nasty. No one actually does a cartoon villian job trying to turn their kids against the other parent, it's a side effect. Keep your head and take the high road with your ex. Remind yourself over and over that she did not choose either of you and she is her mother's flesh and blood as well as yours, so that every jab at your ex feels like a jab at herself. If you don't end up sharing custody now, don't expect that to last. Papers will eventually need to be drawn and if you're wishy-washing it up with not being able to provide a place for your daughter, you will get reduced time and more child support that has to be paid.
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Apr 7, 2014 08:04
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUwjNBjqR-c Someday your daughter isn't going to give a gently caress where you are on your business trip. If you don't want to be pulled out of the hotel bar to skype just give her a quick phone call, sheesh. They grow up fast. There are some other things you can do. Since I have a teen now we were navigating the world without skype at that age, and it was mostly me who had some travel. I would sit down and draw a little cartoon showing me driving off in the car/plane, a picture of her home with the cats & her dad, with how many days I'd be gone. Kids aren't too good on the phone but it really helps if they hear your voice. Just a good night, I love you, I'm back tomorrow.
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Apr 19, 2014 06:19
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 23:01 |
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Social life together or just socialization with adults in general? I agree with finding a babysitter and working a regular date night into your routine. But since you emphasize how hard it's been on your wife, I'm taking that to mean how can she get out and around other people. I had good luck with my local mother's club (cringey as that name is). A really good resource is your La Leche League. The nice thing about groups like that is you can show up with your breastfeeding infant and be completely comfortable having to nurse on demand, or have another adult watch your older kid while you change the baby. And just so it's clear - these groups are for the parents, not the kids. Yeah, it's good to socialize your kid but by far the reason they exist is to talk to other human beings who are going through the exact same struggle you are. I also meant to say: NO, it does not just have to be like that.
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Apr 27, 2014 17:25
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