ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

The best way is whatever way works for you and your baby.

yup. sorta feel like every baby book should just have this printed a million times on every page

and this:

if it doesn't work, you need to know when to give up and try something else for the sake of your sanity

Also we've found music super helpful for calming. A couple of weeks ago when F had his first cold and was inconsolable after choking on a load of mucus, the Guns of Brixton (which we've been playing at bed/nap time for months) stopped the crying on seconds.

On another note, WHEN WILL THIS BABY LEARN TO ROLL FRONT-T-BACK DEAR LORD.

the first few months are hell incarnate, everyone knows this but has to lie about it, it's one of the ten commandments iirc

thank you.

i've found what works best right now is just walking around with her. no idea why - but it seems to hold off the tears fairly well.

Movement is pretty key, whether it's walking or rocking or bouncing or whatever. We have been very lucky in that we have two incredibly chill babies who like to comfort each other so our hell period was very short and mostly self-inflicted.

I'm surprised I didn't wear an actual hole in the rug from walking in circles to sooth crying during the early months.

And be flexible in your thinking

The other big part of this for me is to know when to give up something entirely. They change so quickly, that the trick that worked for the past three weeks can just stop working and never work again and you have to clock that and move on.

xp definitely on the movement. F has had this terrible skill from just about birth of knowing the difference between being cuddled when you're standing up (happy, settled) and when you're faking it and actually sitting on the bed/couch (unhappy, grizzly)

our grand-baby is eating like a champ and sleeping through the night, at one month

all the mom's other child-having friends hate her right now (her pregnancy was a breeze as well although the birth was tough)

I expect the hell to arrive at any moment

my niece was a permanent-state-of-crying baby...my sister in law found a small amount of amusement in ppl who would say ohhhh I bet she just needs to be held and they would think they were these great baby whisperers and they'd last maybe 20 minutes and hand her back with these shellshocked faces like 'boy she really has got a set of lungs on her'

"I bet she just needs to be held"

The implication being that your sister was just closing her up in a drawer all day? Sheesh.

yeah i know right. it was kind of lol mostly sad with my mother in law, who prided herself on being "great with babbies", the way she told it they would all fall asleep in her arms no matter what. she would hold my niece for hours on end, waiting for her magic to kick in and this willful little babby would just cry at the top of her lungs regardless. my MiL took that pretty hard :(

A lot of the time with newborns it just seems like, if they're upset, you check the nappy, you check if they're hungry, you check if they're hurt, and then you just hug and jiggle and wait it out. There's not a whole lot else you can do.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/09/04/if-you-are-a-parent-youll-understand-the-humour-of-this-newborn-baby-photograph-4856299/

(Dan will get it, certainly)

oh man, the flashbacks

haha. The smile on that kid's face! he has awesome toes though.

http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/2014/09/the-walk.html?spref=fb&m=1
Different times.

Reminds me: The other day I saw a group of teens walking near the freeway and thought it's been a long time since I thought of or saw runaways. Kids still do runaway, right? Duh.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/09/08/college_sexual_assault_how_to_talk_to_your_kids_about_consent.html

Slate: I imagine that the idea of “the talk,” where parents sit their kids down and tell them how sex works, is pretty obsolete at this point. So when should parents start having conversations with their kids about consent and sexual assault?

Heather Corinna: I suggest parents talk to their kids about consent—and permission to touch and be touched—in infancy or toddlerhood, and certainly not as late as their teens. Even before your child can talk, you can model consent. Have you watched parents change diapers? Some of them will just grab their kid, throw them on the table and start doing all sorts of things to their body without any gesture of consent-seeking. Even with an infant without language yet, you can express what you want to do: “I’m going to touch you right now, in order to get you a fresh diaper so you can feel better, okay?” Starting early, in ways that you can, normalizes consent—rather than non-consent—right from the start. You’re not going to talk to a two-year-old about sexual assault explicitly, but you can both demonstrate and express that people need permission to touch each other's bodies. By the time you do get to the point where it's more stage-appropriate to talk about sexual assault explicitly, they are already going to know about consent and that it really matters.

I've always told my children what I'm going to do before/while I'm doing it (now let's change your diaper, now let's get dressed) but this recommendation strikes me as coming from someone who has never actually tried to change diapers or clothing of an infant of toddler. Like when they're hysterically throwing a tantrum because they don't want to get dressed, or get changed, it's not always appropriate for a parent to wait until they get 'consent,' whatever that means for an infant anyway.

“I’m going to touch you right now, in order to get you a fresh diaper so you can feel better, okay?” feels very Antioch rules distillation of the way people actually talk.

But for the most part, I think that talking to your kids about what's going on while you're doing it is just part of normal interpersonal communication. Like, do people just sit there and change diapers/clothes in silence?

I feel like I try to layer consent-messaging into my parenting. Asking if I can have a kiss or a hug. Not getting sad or pretending to be sad if she doesn't want to give me one. Doing my best to really empower my littlest kid on this front. I've been (quietly) frustrated by her older brother though. He often tries to kiss and hug her without asking and then gets all sullen when she reacts negatively. I try to gently talk him through it and some basic reasons why we ask people's permissions, but I can tell he's still upset about it. Probably because for most of his early life, he just had his mommy as a source of physical affection and they were always very cuddly. I can't imagine her not reciprocating. Not sure exactly what I need to do with him, but there's obviously work ahead.

The NSPCC's Pants page is spot on imo. http://www.nspcc.org.uk/help-and-advice/for-parents/keeping-your-child-safe/the-underwear-rule/the-underwear-rule_wda97016.html

I just love that there is a "Pants" page

we had the "where do babies come from" talk with Veronica last night, prompted entirely by questions about hereditary diseases (specifically celiac disease). things didn't get TOO graphic, but it was the first time the whole "a man has sperm and a penis and a woman has a vagina and eggs/ovaries; put them together and the magic of reproduction happens" thing. time to get some books I suppose.

I'm already thinking about that talk, since putting a penis and a vagina together did not result in the magic of reproduction for us. "When two people love each other very much, and one of them has decrepit eggs, they spend a lot of time on the phone with their insurance company and go to a place called a fertility clinic..."

"When two people love each other very much, they give their entire life savings to a placement agency and a pack of lawyers"

we talked about that stuff too since we have plenty of handy examples among our friends (lesbian couples w kids, couples that had to go through fertility treatments etc.) We were just emphasizing the science of it, egg + sperm = baby; most people have sex to get the egg and the sperm together, other people need the help of a doctor etc.

Fed our daughter her first bite of fish last night. She had been highly resistant to the idea ever since we stayed adding fish back into our diet earlier this year. We had tried all kinds of persuasion "Pingu eats fish, you'll be just like Pingu!" No luck. I guess she was out walking around with her mom a few days ago and remarked about how much she wanted to eat a squirrel. So we told her that I had caught and killed and cooked a squirrel. And she ate it.

Farmed Atlantic Squirrel

OMG

i think i need to introduce a level of bald-faced lying into my parental routine

*takes notes*

You need to give them something they can post on the thread of 'childhood myths you believed into adulthood' in 20 years' time. It's a public service!

True fact: I ate actual squirrel as a child. It's terrible.

It's not very good. Too much squirrel stew as a kid.

Squirrel brains, however, are fucking delicious

Our son spoke his first word today: BUM.

YAY

I guess I haven't liveblogged K for a while, but K started preschool this week which is pretty crazy. We actually switched her school at the last minute because we found out the preschool we were putting her in had no dedicated teacher (the main one was going on maternity leave and they didn't have a sub), that they were going to shuffle the kids around between other classes, and also that they were still renovating heavily and it wasn't clear they were going to be done.

Our second choice, which was a little more expensive and a little further away, had awesome teachers, a smaller class, and a great director, so we last-minute switched her and are super happy. The second day, our friend who stayed in the other school told us that when she picked up her daughter they had forgotten to put a diaper on her.

gettin kinda concerned about my 22-mo old son is not really talking - he has a couple of syllables that he'll fixate on (one of which is "dada" hooray for me, the other is "uh oh") but other than that it's a lot of consonant-less grunting and babbling. he does a couple sign language things (for "more", "boo-boo", etc.) I dunno how much we should be worried about this - he seems perfectly normal in all other respects, he clearly understands what we say to him, he follows directions, insists we read to him etc.

otoh doctor says by 18 months kids usually have between 5 and 50 word vocabularies. this he does not have.

I would trust the doctor first in re what to be concerned about.

5 to 50 is a big range for what kids "usually" have. I think a lot about this - what's pathology and what's the "normal" range of developmental diversity. And by normal I mean non-pathological, not necessarily what is charted as normal. I also think that developmental charts provide an accurate picture of trends, but don't do very well at charting where an individual kid should be. I don't have answers/suggestions, but I'm not sure I would worry if there doesn't seem to be anything actually wrong.

I would assume that it's more important that he's able to communicate/be understood than it is that he meet a specific vocabulary word count.

Having said that, I will probably enroll my kids in a special class if they don't have 100 word vocabularies by 18 months because I am crazy.

Dude, your kid was performing Shakespeare soliloquies at three months.

I'm assuming the other was a later bloomer and didn't start until five months.

http://itsliketheyknowus.tumblr.com/

My wife and MIL took them out shopping yesterday and apparently J was flirting with the ladies hardcore; like, looking around for them, smiling and baby-talking them when they noticed him, turning the cute factor up to a billion, etc. My wife was amused and slightly concerned.

gettin kinda concerned about my 22-mo old son is not really talking - he has a couple of syllables that he'll fixate on (one of which is "dada" hooray for me, the other is "uh oh") but other than that it's a lot of consonant-less grunting and babbling. he does a couple sign language things (for "more", "boo-boo", etc.) I dunno how much we should be worried about this - he seems perfectly normal in all other respects, he clearly understands what we say to him, he follows directions, insists we read to him etc.

this is pretty similar to my son, who will be 2 in a couple weeks. he's probably got 20-40 "words" but his pronunciation of them was a little alarming to our doctor, who recommended we see a speech pathologist. turns out that he does in fact have a significant speech delay which has manifested not in the number of words but in how he says them. we got him evaluated and are now getting free assistance from the state, including a woman who comes to our house and works with him once a week, plus play/learning sessions twice a week somewhere else. it may not end up being much of a problem at all but i am grateful to live in a state (MA) that has free programming like this

Οὖτις it might be worth it to get him evaluated. it might not be anything at all but there are folks who are experts. with my son i just wanted to say "he'll grow out of it" but in fact it could be a problem that worsens if it's not addressed, so i am happy now that we are dressing just in case even it amounts to nothing

http://itsliketheyknowus.tumblr.com/

― carl agatha, Monday, September 15, 2014 11:20 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha Sarah just sent this to me.

Me, too!