ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Yeah, our approach so far has mostly been to err on the side of feeding. Sometimes it seems like she just asks to eat so she can be on mommy, but even if so, nothing bad about that exactly.

having a really weird struggle getting the kid to say "please." she'll say "thank you," says "bless you" after someone sneezes, but won't say please, even though she knows the word. this is the usual discussion:
k: "cracker?"
p: "you want a cracker?"
k: "yeah."
p: "can you say please?"
k: "NO" (either goes back to what she was doing or starts getting mad that we won't just give her the cracker)
alternately, when we ask her if she can say please, she just says "yeah" but won't say please.
anyway, it's a relatively unimportant thing to turn into a big struggle so i think we're going to back off of it for a couple of weeks and then try again.

she also loves this terrible song, but it contributed nothing to her actually saying "please":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaZ26-noUEc

i'd say keep at the please and thank you thing -- our kid was similarly resistant for a while, but seems to have gotten it in the last couple weeks. now everything is "may i please have a snack, my daddy?" she sort of sounds like she's mocking me, but i'll take it, whatever.

yeah it's just weird how pissed off she gets when we try to get her to say it. i guess because it's just an arbitrary thing and so there's no logic to why we won't just give her what she wants? but we try to make a big deal out of praising her when she says it, which usually works.

p: "can you say please?"
k: "NO"

LOL

This is up there with the angry crib babbling for things that I am finding v. amusing that are probably not as amusing to you.

p: "can you say please?"
k: "NO"

reminds me of that Jimmy Fallon credit card commercial

I relish my status as asshole dad when this comes up.

BEEPS: I want some popcorn.
ME: Yeah? I want a beer.

*pause*

BEEPS: May I have some popcorn?
ME: … … ... Anything else you'd like to add to that?
BEEPS: PLEASE?
ME: Why certainly, my favorite daughter….

You're teaching her to be cunning and duplicitous, is that what you're trying to say? Kudos, that will serve her well in the coming apocalyptic future where street urchins rule the world.

pp, when you're ready to level up your asshole dad status, you can respond to statements like "I want some popcorn" the way my dad did: "People in hell want icewater." Or if he were feeling playful, "And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass a'hoppin'."

it also reminds me of a great lesson a friend's mom gave me about being a parent: tell, don't ask

it's harder than it sounds - i always find myself going like, "ready for some dinner now?" and that opens the window juuuuust enough to get into a big negotiation. there is actually no option. dinner is happening now. there isn't another time to have it. so why do i ASK my own THREE YEAR OLD if it's OK with HIM to have dinner?? it is ridiculous. i think it comes from wanting to give him agency, or make him feel like he has a part in what's going on, but at this point..... he has plenty of agency. more than enough.

the other lesson she gave me was: say yes as much as you can

in ref: "can you say please?", i mean

i think with the please thing i was just a hard ass and was like "IF you say please THEN you can have the fucking cookie." it's like a computer program, almost! and if he refused he didn't get it. then if he cried i have to admit i sometimes thought to myself "good, it's working"

You are so mean. I am so mean too so I know what I'm talking about.

!!!

Coulda sworn he was teaching her to phrase her requests straightforwardly ("may I have" instead of "I want"), in a way that respects and acknowledges parental authority, and uses language standards of good etiquette. Duplicity, really?!

He's teaching her to butter him up, is what I think, in a knowing way! I'm not saying this a societal evil; just the opposite.

tell, don't ask -- yeah, i am constantly like "should we put our shoes on? do you want to go for a walk? will you take another bite?" which is just wrong and rarely gets the right response, but i can't stop! need to work on it.

I don't think I was ever asked to say please. It was always "what's the magic word?" followed by a cold, meaningful look. Of course, eventually we learned to respond by saying "abracadabra" in a really sarky way, but it took a good few years to reach that point.

Has anyone used one of those co-sleepers in their bed and if so which one? Pros/cons?

we got a cosleeper but the baby never really slept in it much, she usually ended up in bed with us. but it probably depends on the baby. the only real con aside from that was that i had a hell of a time getting it to stay flush with the bed, so there was often a little gap between the bed and the cosleeper, which made me a little nervous.

we went from having her sleep in our bed, to her sleeping in the co-sleeper next to our bed, to sleeping in her crib in her own room.

I think I am confused...what do you call a small, bed like item that can fit between to people in bed? We want one of those so she can sleep between us. Having a hard time picking one since parents say they get hot, don't fit in a queen size bed etc....

I don't know, but we used to have this thing that was like basically two wedges of foam rubber covered in white cloth and it created two little "walls" that kept the baby from rolling over (and more to the point, kept us from rolling on him). Though with baby #1 we didn't have anything and we never rolled over on him. I think it's highly unlikely unless you're a heavy drinker or something. But the little wedges helped us sleep because we weren't worried about it. I have no idea what it's called.

And that said, he moved to a basket next to our bed after like... two weeks probably?

yeah our daughter was in the cosleeper next to the bed within a few weeks iirc. even in our tiny bed we never rolled over onto her (she slept in the middle), I think that the odds of that are pretty low tbh - unless parents are really huge and/or drunk I guess. part of it was that we were only sleeping for a few hours at a time (at the most) so it's not like we ever got into a deep sleep, and the other thing is that subconsciously our bodies seemed to register DO NOT CRUSH BABY even in our sleep.

We've been kind of going back and forth btw bed and co-sleeper. Pediatrician suggested that it's not too early to at least get her somewhat used to the idea that you sleep in the cosleeper, not in mom and dad's bed. Obviously she still winds up sleeping on us for at least part of the night. But I am terrified of the crushing thing -- I have already woken up multiple times with the sensation that the baby is inside my pillow and I am suffocating her, like I really think this for about 30 seconds and am horrified.

My wife has also been on painkillers so that's an added crushing concern.

btw Ken L I've been meaning to ask you -- why would you have guessed that Keren would be the name?

Just that it is a really common name for Israelis- maybe the most common name for girls these days?- and it is the name of the wife of a friend of mine who my aging brain sometimes confuses you with.

Hmm interesting. I checked a list of top Israeli girl names and it's not in the top 10, thankfully. One of our choices, Noa, was #1.

We got the idea from the artist Keren Cytter, who my wife likes a lot.

It basically met all our checks: works in both Hebrew and English, sounds good with my last name, not laden with biblical weight, nice meaning ("ray of light"), etc.

Thanks, that's a much better explanation than mine:)

Can someone explain this to me?
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7203/6933170213_eaf360cc29_z.jpg

I believe that's the shirt you get for your baby boy when he bangs a bunch of chicks and writes a book about it?

lol

sooooo

how do you tell another parent - one that you like and that you've known since your kids were in diapers - that their kid needs professional help

am considering some kind of group-intervention-style scenario

Why do you think the kid needs professional help?

shall I list symptoms? Kid is 4.

- until fairly recently, vocabulary was quite limited. would express frustration with furious arm-flapping (he is speaking a bit more now, but still does this as well)
- can't hold or draw with a pen, crayon, or pencil
- throws tantrums/fits on a regular basis. full-on wailing/flailing/punching & kicking fits.
- has very specific fixations/obsessions in terms of what he will do/play, limits play to a small number of social activities.
- physically combative, emotions/reactions of other children don't seem to register.
- won't eat anything except peanuts, prunes, some other fruits and I think crackers/bread.
- refused to relinquish pacifier until just a few months ago

that's all I can think of right now. I have noticed that a lot of these types of things are commonly cited in autism studies. but I am not a professional, I just see how this kid interacts with our kid and as he can be disruptive/abusive these things have caught our attention.

I imagine his parents have to have thought the thoughts but haven't had to face the facts yet.

I think every time they've been confronted with these issues they have just switched schools (he is on his third preschool)

ugh, that's bad news. Do you think he might be dangerous for other kids to be around?

Shakey Mo, I have no experience in breaking that kind of observation to parents. But I've worked with a lot of kids of that ilk and... you should tell your friends to send their kid to a screening. Not a professional, mind you, but just a kind of neuropsych check-up. For the kid's benefit. All the signs you observe are, indeed, flags (although for autism or something else is super hard to predict) but allowing the parents just the possibility of a screening as a release, and a maybe transitional step toward greater intervention. If they're resisting, it's likely they know that something is wrong, and fear medicalizing/diagnosing/Rxing/stigmatizing their kid, and that pointing them in the direction of a specific pathology may make them resist more. IOW just kinda say 'better to do it now and be reassured or risk the possibility that maybe maybe there's something time-sensitive you aren't catching, and w/o early intervention these situations can rapidly degrade.'

no WmC I don't think he's dangerous. I mean, he's only 4 he's not really capable of inflicting serious damage on anyone (besides himself I guess). and it's not that he's mean or cruel or abusive it's just kinda like other people don't, I dunno, exist to him, in some ways...?

and thx Remy - yeah at the moment what we're wrestling with is how to convince the parents, without ruining our relationship with them (we like them! they are nice people!), that this is maybe something that they should check out, and the sooner the better. But I think even broaching the subject is problematic, we don't want to appear like we're disparaging their parenting or stigmatizing the child or anything like that. it's... tricky.

id be really v. surprised if a caretaker hasn't brought it up already.

theres no way you can broach this and come out unscathed. its their kid after all.

I don't know, but we used to have this thing that was like basically two wedges of foam rubber covered in white cloth and it created two little "walls" that kept the baby from rolling over

yeah, ours was called the "lil snuggler" but it may not be sold anymore, saw something similar called the snuggle nest. should be able to get one fairly cheap.

Thanks, Buzza and Hurting...putting it on the list.

FINALLY easy, convenient compostable diapers: http://www.earth-baby.com/summary.php?go=products

the whole toxic-disposable-diaper thing really bothered me