ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Not but, I mean "and", arrgh

And then the very day I boast about that, they announce they're cutting nurses, midwives and beds in Adelaide's maternity hospital. As you were.

ouch http://parentsonphones.tumblr.com/

man fuck that tumblr, you can take time for yourself once in a while and let your kid entertain themselves and still be a good parent. i'm not saying there aren't times when i should probably put down my phone (or book or whatever) and give my kid attention but a secretly snapped photo (which is pretty creepy on its own) shows nowhere near the full story. i wonder if the person who runs it is a parent.

maybe they're using their phone to find the nearest playground. or communicate plans with the other parent. etc etc.

it's probably parents sharing their own pictures

otm, even tho i have eschewed getting a smartphone for concerns of being sucked in (and occasionally catch myself or am caught on my laptop at inopportune times). nevertheless, unless they got full on 5 minute vids of parents gone wired while junior gets sucked into a wind turbine, i aint judging

http://parentsonphones.tumblr.com/

this is extremely fucking obnoxious

the tumblr I mean

I almost want to send an angry message, but I feel like that would just feed the person's need for superiority.

nerves have been struck

I noticed it doesn't actually have that many posts, and I found an article on slate from a while back about it, in which the author criticized the tumblr and most parents agreed. I'm sure there are plenty of overdistracted parents using their phones to avoid their families, but honestly your kids do not need (or want!) your attention every second, and not every single second in the same room with them is going to be some magical moment that you can't miss.

Like K is only 16 months and there are already so many times when I'm like "Hi sweetie!" and I pick her up and hug her and she's just like "Down. Down." and then scurries off to dismantle her toy train or whatever.

id be pretty worried if my kids when into a deep depression every time I wasn't completely focused on them.

it's a satirical tumblr not National Geographic

what is it a satire of exactly?

plus to be fair we get ignored a whole lot ourselves

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/1134/0iqj.jpg

Fucked up parents not giving their kids a phone. They're going to grow up tech-illiterate. My daughter plays on her panda apps every day. And my son sure knows how to craft mines.

what is it a satire of exactly?

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, July 2, 2013 9:59 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iphones and parenting? I dunno. Did everyone shit and go "hipsters don't look like puppies!" a few years ago?

I'm a dad with an iphone and my reaction was not even close to being as visceral as what I've seen here. Maybe the site's not that funny, but good lord the reaction.

Hey Tera I can't remember which thread you were talking about blocks on but today woot.com has the Melissa and Doug 60 piece set for $39.99

The worst thing about parenting so far is 9 year olds explaining what a movie is about.

most movies are "that guy wanted to get w that girl so he killed ppl"

No, no, no. More like "and then... And then... And then".

Like the difference between an omen plot summary and an imdb plot synopsis.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/synopsis

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/plotsummary

30 days (mathematically) until I shift into crazed sleep deprived madness on this board just fyi

i'm in that timeshift lacuna where any moment it could happen. char has taken to demanding spontaneously: 'get this baby out now.' d plainfully calls 'come out baby.'

hey whoa I didn't know you guys were expecting another?

congratulations!! :D

currently in a phase where in the space of about 30 seconds I can go from thinking i've raised the most wonderful almost 4 year old in the world to thinking i've raised the most ridiculously spoiled 4 year old in the world. maybe this is just the way almost 4 year olds are...

so happy that my kids are great travelers, because I know some kids make this a hassle. I'm not so much thinking about little ones but rather about 10+ year olds who don't want to leave friends, sports etc behind

xp I feel the same with my 16 mo old. Probably never ends.

currently in a phase where in the space of about 30 seconds I can go from thinking i've raised the most wonderful almost 4 year old in the world to thinking i've raised the most ridiculously spoiled 4 year old in the world. maybe this is just the way almost 4 year olds are...

― tylerw, Wednesday, July 10, 2013 12:33 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

9-year-olds as well, fwiw.

so much to look forward to

maybe i will raise my kid in a skinner box

helpful parental site says today baby is the size of a head of romaine lettuce

really hoping that i get an email at the 40 week mark that says that the baby is "the size of a fucking baby already christ"

lol yes

"your baby is 264 weeks old, and is now the size of Billy Barty"

maybe i will raise my kid in a skinner box
This really isn't the worst idea

i am b.f. skinner. i'm probably gonna skin again. lord forgive me.

really hoping that i get an email at the 40 week mark that says that the baby is "the size of a fucking baby already christ"

best period was "rutabaga" imho

Sometimes K is just so loud, demanding, insistent. I think even for her age. We give in to her a lot because we feel like she still can't quite understand "no" in a more conceptual way when we wants something, but I'm concerned about when it's going to be time to start putting our feet down more.

I hate putting my foot down. It's tough. Sometimes its a losing battle. I'll be putting my foot down about something for like 20 minutes until I just can't take it anymore and then it's like "o.k., we can watch one more episode of My Little Pony..."

I have no idea if I'm hitting the middle ground (maybe I should say the median) with discipline. Sometimes I feel like the kids will be writing a book about me, letting the public have a chance to exonerate them for my murder. Other times, I expect Child Services to ring the doorbell and ask me how often do I feed them circus food.

We were pulling out of the driveway, and Ham starts half-chanting from his carseat in the back "Ham can't go into the street. Ham could be hit by a car. DON'T GO INTO THE STREET. Ham could get hurt. NO. NO. HAM." like Rainman talking about the bathwater.

I mean, I really didn't want him to go into the street – I can vividly imagine it happening all too well – but maybe I went overboard that one time.

nah I'd say you got through to him on that one and it's a good thing. I mean there has to be SOME fear in a child's life, right?

i'm kind of freaked out by discipline. j's only 9 months right now so discipline basically just amounts to picking him up if he's about to grab a power cord out of an outlet. but looking at the future, i'm definitely worried that i'm going to try to put my foot down and then cave 5 minutes later.

i do feel like i'm going to need some guidance, some general principles that can help all of us feel better about discipline. there's a dr sears book on discipline that seems interesting. i don't know how y'all feel about dr. sears but i've found his books pretty helpful and they seem to fit well with the parenting style that t and i try to do.

The place I've had the single hardest time actually is with videos. Before she was born, we were like "absolutely no TV until she is __" (I forget what we even said, maybe 3 or 4?). Then someone turned us on to Baby Einstein, and H realized she could put it on the iPad and strap K in to a chair while she took a shower or fixed a lunch or something. So it became this "only once a day for half an hour max" thing. But then we realized it also stopped tantrums in the car, etc. It's not like now she spends most of her day watching videos, but maybe it's up to as much as an hour a day? And what really bothers me is that you CAN NOT TURN IT OFF in the middle without her screaming her head off.

...and they get so upset when you say "Later. Maybe."

I mean, we had a right to get upset. Mom would grab us to go shopping while "Land of the Lost" was on, and fuck - that was it until next Saturday. And for the first ten years, there wasn't any taping. And even by then, you had to find a blank tape or one that had nothing good on it. It was complicated.

Now it's "Here. It's recording on the DVR now," or "When we turn Netflix on again, it'll still be at that same spot." They have no idea.

haha

it's so much fucking harder because back in the day, you could just say, well, the electric company's not ON now. so you can't watch it. it'll be on tomorrow. but now, everything's ON all the time! the whole concept of something being "on" or not is already totally foreign to kids.