ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

I dig Christmas as a purely secular seasonal holiday deal and a have an almost pathological opposition to anything remotely supernatural so I really struggle with how to deal with Santa. The kid is 2 now so definitely aware of Santa as a concept but no real understanding of the mythology or anything.

Not sure how I deal with this in a way that sort of plays along enough for it to be fun but also isn't making him the SANTA ISN'T REAL kid who ruins it for others at school some day.

i just try to stay out of it. if my kids ask me about santa i just go yes well itisamystery.jpg

Re: talking to kids about death--

I'm don't do kiddo grief counseling (just adults), but a client recently recommended this kids' book about death and dying: https://www.amazon.com/Ida-Always-Caron-Levis/dp/1481426400

OTOH one of my hospice social work colleagues has a kid with ASD and she has found that kids on the spectrum benefit from something way more realistic than two polar bear pals, so she's written one herself and has publishing deal! Will post that once it is available.

Anyhow, just talking about death and not avoiding it or minimizing it or using vague stuff like "gone to be with (dead) grandad" seems to be the best strategy, at least that is what I was taught in social worker skool.

quincie my son has ASD so yea please share that when it's published!

https://twitter.com/CharlesFinch/status/823942113838542848

how long does the tantrum phase last and is there anything you can do to power/accelerate through it? am willing to consider any and all suggestions

yr kids are ...2? 3?

They just turned 3.

they mellow out a lot once they get closer to 4

my 4 year old occasionally has tantrums, somewhat related to his autism but we've been able to pin down the triggers and that helps us prevent them most of the time

it doesn't go away until kindergarten or so in my experience. It definitely doesn't just miraculously vanish when they turn 3. A friend of mine remarked once when I was complaining about "the terrible twos", "wait until you get to the fuckin' fours" and now that Judah is four omg is that the truth. It's kind of worse when they're older because they get more physically powerful and it's harder to just scoop them up and deposit them somewhere.

I think being able to talk/communicate their needs is a real big part of it. Once they learn they can express themselves/be understood verbally then they have less of an emotional need to lash out. So getting them to talk about their feelings and understand that they're being heard is a big help.

yea that's all true

tantrums for us are almost a mathematical thing, if the answers to the following questions are "no" then we are probably fucked:

1) did they get enough sleep last night/today?
2) did they eat enough today?
3) have they taken a shit today?
4) did they avoid sugary foods today?

2 was actually pretty easy aside from the newly discovered delight in just destroying everything around them; it's only in the past few weeks or so (and really only with one of them) that screaming fits have been added to the repertoire.

I have noticed that fatigue and constipation play a large part in this; the more amiable child is the one who falls asleep faster and has more regular bowel movements. I'm not sure how to really manage this aside from slipping the other one Immodium roofies.

In my experience, a kid throws a tantrum when he/she runs into certain boundaries, and uses them to stretch those boundaries. If you set them beforehand, and let your kids know what the limits are in a certain situation, you have to make sure to keep the boundaries and not give in. The screaming will stop when they find it doesn't work. Of course, that's the hardest part, especially when there are other people nearby.

Short version: kids are not the center of the universe, you set the rules, they obey. Not a very popular attitude these days, but it works.

xp - Regular sleep is very important. Our kids (age 7, 5 and 3) sleep close to 12 hours every day. They go to bed at 7 PM every night, no exception. They napped from 12 till 2 until they were about four years old. Kids need a lot of sleep.

tired-tantrums are def a thing. Judah can go into a weird violent fugue state - like, just wordless arms flailing and punching anybody in sight - if he's exhausted and not getting his way.

ok so I've got a 2 1/2 year old who does this thing now where you put him in the crib and he wants to hold your hand and sing songs and practice his entire vocabulary for like...half an hour before falling asleep. if I leave him at any point in this process he loses his mind. I can't let him cry himself to sleep but IDK what to do.

Whatever you do to change this behaviour, you should go slowly. You let it get to this point over two and a half years, so you can't expect him to change overnight. Talk with him during dinner about how you will sing three songs tonight and read one story or something. Make sure he understands. Then, when you want to leave and he does start crying, remind him of the new rules and leave. Let him cry. It will be heartbreaking if you're not used to it, but it won't hurt. He will learn.

We used to have the ten minute rule: if our oldest cried for more than ten minutes on end, we went to check on her. She hardly ever cried that long, although it sometimes seemed to last for hours.

ten minutes can be excruciatingly long in child-crying-time, yeah

setting limits def necessary. whether or not they understand limits... well that will be revealed to you I guess lol

The most important thing is to set the new rules sometime before he goes to bed, when he's calm and understands. Remind him a couple of times before you take him to bed. He will try to get back to the old situation, but you have to keep in mind your ideal of reading him a bedtime story and leaving him. Our bedtime rituals (excluding reading time) hardly ever last for more than five minutes.

its strange because he kind of did change overnight. used to be difficult to put him down, then all the sudden he was asking to go to his crib right away. he'd talk and sing to himself for a few minutes and then doze off. a couple weeks ago he asked for my hand and I gave it to him, so he's been doing it ever since

tbh I'm not sure what he gets and what he doesn't get. I think he understands more than he lets on.

like, if I say "I'll read a book to you and then I'm going to leave", I don't think he yet understands that

We used to have the ten minute rule: if our oldest cried for more than ten minutes on end, we went to check on her.

yeah this is the part that confuses me sometimes, b/c I've heard that doing this teaches the child that they get what they want if they cry long enough. but you don't wanna leave 'em in there forever.

you can also tell him that you are leaving but that you will come back and check on him. 2 1/2 is not too young to understand that concept. we've done that with our boys in the past and it helps calm their anxiety about us leaving quite a bit

I think being able to talk/communicate their needs is a real big part of it. Once they learn they can express themselves/be understood verbally then they have less of an emotional need to lash out. So getting them to talk about their feelings and understand that they're being heard is a big help.

yeah, I've found that to be the case too. Like, when my son (29 months) starts flipping out we tell him to use his words and tell us what's wrong. When we want him to do something he's not ready to do, he now sits down and says "I want to be alone" We leave him be for about 20 seconds at which point he usually says "I feel better now" and is ready to move on. I think he learned some self control from that "Calm-Down Time" book. Of course sometimes communication is stuff like Me: "I want you to put your toys away." Him: "No. I don't want to. Daddy can do it."

I tell our more frequent tantrumer that I can't do anything to help him if he screams at me. About 50% of the time he will calm down and tell me what he wants (usually to watch/hear the Big Bang Theory theme song, which is surprisingly easy to memorize via osmosis, I've discovered)

my wife said that worked - just say something like "I'm going to go pee pee" (he understands that since we're trying to potty train him), and then just don't come back, unless he starts crying I guess. didn't work for me though.

one thing I should mention, we just had #2, and though he's been very good with the little one, he's definitely been looking for our attention way more since she was born

another thing I should mention, he's growing up bi-lingual. or at least we're trying to have him grow up that way. so his speech is a bit delayed.

Being bilingual shouldn't be a problem for understanding you.

A new baby in the house does shake things up sometimes, but it usually settles pretty quickly if you make sure to give the oldest some quality time, for example during the hours when the baby is sleeping.

well, seems to have worked so far

I tell him, "ok, good night..." and walk away after a few minutes. He starts fussing after 30 seconds or so but gives up and falls asleep a minute or two later. So, hey.

Awesome, man.

just putting this story here for the parents, just wondering if you have opinions. i have some.

http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/news/a43466/mom-kids-followed-in-ikea/

sounds ridiculous to me

Her story reads like the biggest bunch of bullshit. For one thing, these guys were not sex traffickers. They were almost certainly serial killers.

they were clearly radical Islamic terrorists

Come on guys. They were ghosts and you know it.

https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/gta/2015/01/20/darwin-the-ikea-monkeys-former-owner-reportedly-living-with-two-new-monkeys/darwin-ikea.jpg.size.custom.crop.1086x678.jpg

Ghosts of her kids from the future, come back in time to warn them about their impending abduction by a sex trafficking ring.

what a coincidence that she was alarmed by reading an account of sex-trafficker stalking and then was sex traffikicker stalked herself

This harrowing dance apparently continued for the better part of an hour, so eventually, Toyos's mother made a bold move. "She made eye contact, very clearly letting them know that we saw them," Toyos wrote.

TAKEAN

"good luck" finding those guys in Ikea tbh

My mom and I decided to sit down and wait for them to move on. We had a gut feeling something was going on, but we hoped we were wrong and they would move on. So we sat in one of the little display rooms. For close to 30 minutes. And they sat too. They sat down on one of the couches on the display floor that faced us. That was when we knew our gut feeling was right and something was off. They sat the whole time we sat, and stood up right as we got up.

sorry but these are the WORST human traffickers

^^next Rob Schneider movie

"I always think, 'That could never happen to me,'" Toyos wrote, as a reminder. "But you guys, it did."

and here's why

SHOCKING: Two women and three children sit on an Ikea couch for thirty minutes near two men.

who looked at them, don't forget the looking at them part.

http://i.imgur.com/izWTd6G.jpg

hello
born may 21, a son

woohoo congratulations!!!

congrats! did u end up stayin in Japan or moving back to Canada?

also had did baby time travel back to our time from the future or what