This is the thread where we judge other people's parenting

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

also basically i think it's weird to not respond immediately to any time your kid is crying, i guess the theory is you're trying to show them you won't give in or maybe teaching them independence but i think it's pretty wrongheaded. but also some people think little kids are manipulative and not merely scared!

That makes sense to me. It's like the whole mindset that you shouldn't pick up a crying baby because the baby is trying to manipulate you. I mean, the baby IS trying to manipulate you if you want to look at it that way, but only in the same way you are trying to manipulate a restaurant server when you ask for a menu and a glass of water.

xp!!!

So far, I am completely unable to not respond to our child when she's crying. "Cry it out" is right off the table for us, although I'm not saying I won't get to a point where it feels like the right (or only) thing to do.

imho i don't think it's ever 100% necessary, but then again we're a couple of hippies over here, we were cosleeping with him for two years until he decided on his own he wanted to sleep in his bed one night and then he never looked back.

I think it's a matter of what works for the kid and for the parents. If the parents are on the edge of sleep deprived psychosis because they are up until 11 trying to comfort a child to sleep, then up two more hours trying to do all of the household chores they couldn't do because they spent three hours putting the kid to bed and can't take two three hour naps throughout the day, crying it out sounds pretty necessary and is probably less harmful than having cranky zombie parents.

But I'm hoping that we won't need to do it because it might kill me.

true, we were zombies for awhile. though not really that cranky!

ha, i stopped judging parents who "cry it out" when i realized that our dedicated effort to avoid "cry it out" has probably resulted in more many more hours of crying than our friends' kids who did cry it out

We do a hybrid thing where we go in after 5 minutes and put the pacifier back in and rub the belly for a second then leave again. Then wait 10 minutes and do the same thing. Then 15. None of our three kids went longer than the 15 minute mark. Definitely lessens the blow (for me) and lets them know you are still there for them. After two or three nights they were good to go you just lay em down and they go right to sleep (for the most part). We wouldn't do this until they were at least five or six months tho. Works for us.

Same here--go in very fast the first couple of times, soothe and re-dummy and check nappy/teeth/hunger, then leave it for a bit longer the next time and usually there's calm after a couple of minutes

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 9:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also basically i think it's weird to not respond immediately to any time your kid is crying, i guess the theory is you're trying to show them you won't give in or maybe teaching them independence but i think it's pretty wrongheaded. but also some people think little kids are manipulative and not merely scared!

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is pretty much how I want to parent.

Holy shit at that whole "I am DONE WITH YOU" episode upthead. I'm about to cry fat toddler tears just thinking about it.

I know. I want to be empathetic to the mother because mothers get so much pressure to be perfect and all that and I don't know her life but it made me super sad, too.

my littlest played a "game" she called the "Old Buffet" when she was a toddler. it involved chasing us down and then biting us. we were done with that too.

also short from abuse, violence, or emotional or other kinds of neglect, there is very little i will judge a parent on. this shit's fucking HARD. i don't care how much of a hippie you are. everybody is exhausted. toddlers are demanding as fuck. it is easy to snap or be irritable if you are on such little sleep and your kid is high-strung and unrelenting.

what i will judge is people without kids judging other parents (again, short of the abuse/violence/neglect/etc). i 100% think this is something that is difficult to understand if you haven't lived it.

There are all kinds of way to be a bad parent without being abusive, neglectful or violent, though.

yea i might be overstating it a little. just saying that everybody will snap at their kids unfairly at some point, probably many times. probably even say some really hurtful shit at some point. it's not great but i think it's shitty to judge it without first having some empathy and self-awareness

Oh I'm judging everyone. Everyone!!! I never say anything though, so no one ever knows

http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/r/rare_soulrnb-here_comes_the_judge(custom_records).jpg

here, I'll do some judging, too:

Jeff and I were out and about with the kid and a woman was shopping with her toddler and presumably the toddler's grandmother, and the woman picked up the kid and I don't know what happened, but the woman yelled, "OW! Molly!" then put the toddler down and said, "I am DONE WITH YOU." And the toddler cried some fat sad toddler tears and raised her arms up to her mom, who was not having it. Grandma to the rescue.

NOW I don't know what Molly did. She may have stabbed her mom in the face with an OXO Tot baby knife for like the tenth time that day. And I don't have a toddler yet. I have a cute, squishy infant who most of the time is pretty chill and easy to handle (which isn't to say that I haven't been bitten on the nipple or bashed in the mouth with a cute little forehead or kicked in the tit so I get that babies hurt sometimes) and I am generally a big time cuddler but man alive seeing that toddler cry and reach for her mom was rough.

― carl agatha, Wednesday, August 6, 2014 2:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the most common mistake parents make w/misbehavior is overreacting to something a toddler doesn't understand is wrong or why it's wrong, like i think it's pretty understandable but at the same time you've got to do the calm and kind explanation thing as opposed to the verbal tongue-lashing or silent treatment or even the "time out" (which i think is kind of not partic helpful tbqh.)

― LIKE If you are against racism (omar little), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 3:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the mom. Sometimes these moves are not parenting choices in the sense that they're supposed to help the child learn something, they're parenting choices in helping the child by letting the parent step away and regroup. Saying "I am done with you" isn't cool obviously but sometimes getting a breather is necessary to regain sanity. Like a "time out" isn't just for a kid, it's also for a parent to get their shit together and figure out next steps without a kid screaming and flailing in your face.

Also parenting is really fucking hard but this tweet made me laugh

https://twitter.com/ChelseaVPeretti/status/495255649488359424

na otm xp

yeah totally otm.

It was the "done with you" followed by the crying/arms up that suggested that whatever the woman said/did to the kid reached her that got to me, probably on a personal level that I need to explore with my therapist. And like I said, I don't know what kind of toddler hell that woman had been through prior to that moment.

Being able to step away is super key. Best if you can say, "Hey grandma, take Molly here over to look at something on the other side of the store while I take a few nips from my hip flask and do some deep breathing exercises" but what's best and what we can manage are rarely identical.

Fun fact: the three main points emphasized in all of the new baby pamphlets the hospital gave us were: 1) you can't spoil a baby, so it's cool to pick her up if she cries; 2) back to sleep! and; and 3) don't shake the baby but if you think you want to shake the baby, just put the baby down in her crib and close the door and take a break.

I'm probably feeling more sympathetic because Evie was being really difficult all weekend and we had a battle over ???? that took over most of Sunday afternoon and it sucked.

I'm sorry. That does suck.

More judging:

This woman just rolled her double wide stroller into the coffee shop where I'm working and it contained THE CUTEST TWIN BABIES I HAVE SEEN.*

*since I looked at DJP's pictures of D&J.

this whole time I thought you meant you were a BARRISTER

lol

timely: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/08/mother-shakes-child-in-public-do-you-step-in

Anyone have any thoughts on those who give their 3 yr old daughters the full Disney princess treatment?

I don't know if I've ever met one of these full-fledged Disney princess kids. They must be out there. I've met enough adult Disney fan weirdos to extrapolate their existence.

My daughter's very big into Frozen and mildly into other the other princesses. I don't even know how this stuff happens. But what do you mean by the full Disney princess treatment?

Buying them a castle.

i know several daughters who full-on decided themselves that they wanted the full disney princess treatment. the moms and dads in each case (especially one of them) are basically the complete opposite of 'disney parents'

it's a difficult situation when your kid wants to explore and pursue something that you may be uncomfortable with. i'm not there yet since my kid is still not even 2 but i imagine it's hard

that said though i imagine there are plenty of parents who encourage that shit

When she was little I more actively pushed back against the princess stuff, but it's basically impossible to avoid if your kid is around other kids. I don't want to shut down stuff that makes her happy but if she wants to play princesses with me, I try to subvert it by insisting that I get to be a princess too if I want (instead of a prince), or bringing in other toys like dinosaurs or cowboys.

I don't think this is really what omar little was talking about originally but it's something I think about a lot.

carl's I'M DONE WITH YOU mom reminded me of a weird thing Mr Veg & I witness in Target recently

We were standing in line for returns, and a Young Angry Mom behind is saying in a very loud frazzled voice "NO. NO. YOU GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. NO. YOU ARE WAY TOO OLD TO BE PULLING THIS STUFF. GET RIGHT BACK HERE RIGHT NOW. I'M WARNING YOU."

From the the tone of voice I was guessing the kid must have been 4 or 5.

But I turn around and all I see is a tiny little toddler that's barely walking, standing there in a diaper and a tshirt the middle of the aisle, just staring up at her Mom like "?"

We laughed about it when we left but I did feel super bummed for her exhausted mom who's having long angry one-way conversations with a tiny little human in the middle of Target.

I mean, I'm imagining it's not solely about playing dress-up. My daughter doesn't play dress-up too much, although she has a couple cheap plastic tiaras and a growing collection of fairy/butterfly/bumblebee wings that she'll throw on once in a while. When my son was her age though, he wore superhero outfits every chance he could (when not at daycare, basically). He had several and would change them repeatedly throughout the day.

During our pregnancy, we intended on raising our daughter as a rugged tomboy. No pinks! No purples! No princesses. But even very early on, we felt like we noticed her displaying and being attracted to what we thought of as stereotypically feminine behaviors and traits. But we keep it balanced, to be sure.

xp:

Heh. I was yelling at my son in the grocery store over the weekend. But it was a lighthearted kind of yelling. He was acting like an insufferable smartass (an unfortunate aspect of his current developmental stage or whatever) and I was joshing him about being ready to smack him or how he was cruisin' for a bruisin' or whatever. I have never hit or even spanked either of my kids and he totally played back with the joke. Then we go over one aisle and we run into one of the librarians from his school. I don't know if she heard us or was paying attention, but I reallllllly hope she didn't get the wrong idea.

But what do you mean by the full Disney princess treatment?

i'm talking about like a dozen princess dresses worn all day in and out of the house, princess bday party with cinderella in attendance, frozen and cinderella in constant rotation, disney trips all the time, and so on. i realize it might actually be pretty common and some of those things probably aren't too bad and perhaps some people might think it's okay, it just seems a bit overboard to me.

One of our relatives works at Disney and is suuuuuuuper into it and got Ivy a little Disney Princess dress and bloomers that said "DISNEY PRINCESS" on it and involved tulle and sparkles. It was a summer outfit and Ivy outgrew it before the weather cooperated but I'm not sure if I would have put it on her anyway. I'm cool with pink stuff and things that read as "girlie" because those kinds of things comprise only part of Ivy's wardrobe* and her room, toys, books, and other baby accessories are pretty much universally gender neutral, plus when she starts having opinions, I want her to know that being a girlie princess is a viable option. Like, it's not bad because it's girlie and princessy. It's bad because some people insist that is the only option available to girls.

Howeverrrrrr I have issues with Disney as a media company in general with the gender essentialism and racism &c so for that reason, if Ivy shows tendencies towards princessness, I will probably try to steer it towards generic princess and not Disney Brand Princess (tm). I only have so much energy, though, and I would prioritize deprogramming her from a bazillion other bullshit messages she's going to get as a female** over a love of Disney-specific princess stuff, plus I am totally going to take her to Disneyland when she's tall enough to ride all the good rides so who knows.

*plus a lot of Ivy's clothes come from my mom, who definitely digs the girlie pink look.
**Every day on the bus: "What a pretty little girl! Smile! Smile for me! Can you smile?" and I really want to snap "My child is not a performing monkey and she doesn't have to smile if she doesn't want to!" and just generally liking it when people say positive things about my daughter. I am not cool when strangers touch her but I'm not sure what to say about that.

the only people who will randomly touch my kid are middle-aged ladies who like to pat him on the head. my kid on the other hand likes to walk up to other people, put his hand on their knee, then run away. on occasion, he likes to pat women on the leg or slightly higher when we walk past them. : /

"What a pretty little girl!"

I try to smooth this stuff out by referring to her as "kid" as much as possible, for example "Oh, you are my sweetest little kid!" In sorta the same tone as the "pretty little girl" comments. But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something. I think about this stuff a lot.

punctuation went out the window in that paragraph. sheesh.

Oh, and I didn't even finish my thought either. Need a nap.

But then sometimes I know she'll want to be complemented on her looks, like if she put effort into combing her hair or picking out an outfit or something.

So I'll give her more girly girl complements. She has a special way of saying "girl" - sounds kinda like "girl-ah" - which she delivers with a little bit of sass. I'll throw that back at her to let her know that I think she's as pretty as she wants to be.

When Ivy's keyed up, she definitely likes to reach out and touch people on the bus. More often, she'll just stare. Like, intense, minutes long eye contact that has prompted more than one person to remark with some discomfort, "She's staring into my soul."

We ride the bus with one of her daycare classmates who just turned 1 and he is a hilarious and adorable ball of energy who spends the entire ride climbing all over his amazingly patient mother and grabbing people or people's bags. He and Ivy actually held hands for a about 15 seconds the other day (and then he got excited and yanked her arm) and it was cute as fuck.

My favorite interaction was when we sat down next to a rough customer looking at his phone. He looked up at Ivy, who was staring at him like she was trying to read his thoughts, nodded and said, "Hey little man," then went back to his phone. I liked that he was basically acknowledging her humanity without making a big deal out of it, plus I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

my daughter went through a princess phase around the ages of 3-4. It never got that out of hand imo - she got a couple princess outfits that she would dress up in for parties or special occasions, she would draw lots of princesses etc. We took her to Disneyland and she was v excited to meet Cinderella. She seems to have mostly grown out of it by this point (and moved on to superheroes - if she dresses up these days it's usually wonder woman although she still has loads of other dress-up clothes of various types). We did nothing to really encourage the Disney stuff, iirc one day she saw some coloring books at a friend's house and it was like "yup! that's for ME!" and then I humored her by sitting through a few Tinkerbell movies and whatnot but it didn't really bug me or my wife.

xp

I just really like it when people call babies "little man."

lol this is what I call any male child under the age of 16 tbh

one time i was sitting outside with my kid at a cafe when he was maybe a year old and he was just staring at this woman opposite us and she looked at him and looked at me and said, "the combination of you two is making my hormones act up."

I see parents bringing their kids to school in the freezing drizzle in winter here, and the kids are wearing shorts while their parents are wearing several layers of insulation.

My wife, who has our children wear longjohns if the temperature drops below 20°c, has to be persuaded not to tell them off in the street.

It is very possible that this is the result of a long negotation between kid and parent where the kid is like "It's not cold out, I don't want to wear a coat" and the parent ls like "it's 40 degrees and drizzly, you need a coat" and finally the compromise is that the kid goes to school with a coat stuffed in their backpack, the coat never leaves the backpack, other parents silently judge

I have a friend, who is me, who that happens to every day

I am pretty ok with kids wearing lighter clothing than what other parents would demand. My 14 yo didn’t want to wear a jacket the other day. She’s rarely cold.

It snowed here last night and I had to explain to my almost five year old in great detail exactly why he couldn't wear shorts and a t-shirt to preschool today.

One of my kids hates wearing jackets too. To his credit he never comes home and complains that he was cold all day.

I try to think, what would I wear if I were going for a run? Because they’re moving so much. I’m frequently the picker-up and carrier of the coat when we’re out.

I hate wearing jackets, coats, long sleeves in general, so I am sympathetic with your kids. I dress the same whether it's 100F or 45F : long pants, short sleeves. colder than 45 F, I'll reluctantly go for long sleeves or maybe still short sleeves + a jacket, because it may be cold outside but it'll be hot inside (in buildings, on trains + buses) and I'll be inside more than outside, plus once I'm outside for like 10 minutes I'll be hot and sweaty even if it's freezing outside.

my boy is like me but my girls are not.

I judge the writer of this letter. They can fuck right off.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/16/a-letter-to-our-neighbours-with-a-baby

Haha, as a doting parent i wholeheartedly concur. Not certain how I would have responded back when I was a single child free antinatalist but I don't think I'd have been much more sympathetic. Why didn't they move their bedroom?

depends on the house doesn't it. all of our rooms share a wall with at least one neighbour. ofc everyone should be as considerate as possible but if you don't want to hear other people buy a detached house in the middle of nowhere

seething with hatred at your neighbours for three years but doing nothing to mitigate the problem and not saying anything to them = real england

some of the parents of my daughter's friends let them stay home from school "just because." which i was never allowed to do and none of my friends were allowed to do. you should at least have to learn how to fake being sick imo. then you're developing a skill.

but it is annoying because we don't let our daughter miss school without a good reason so she whines about how her friends can take days off and she can't

one of the families, the mom has weird work hours so i think some of the "just because" days are so she can have time with the kid, which i understand. the other family that does it just spoils the hell out of their kid and so i judge their parenting

We get the attendance committee on our asses every year and we only keep our kids home when they are actually sick. Don't know how these scofflaws get away with it.

yeah you would get booted out of your spot at school if you tried this in SF

schools in CA have their budgets approved based on student attendance!

My mum used to let me take a couple days off a year. She would have been beyond pissed if i had faked sick tho.

Honestly, I don't see a problem with it. One of my kids is very introverted and shes in middle school. I can see how being around that many people in a social setting exhausts her. Its all over her face. If she asks for the rare day off I'm inclined to say yes.

Here's where I judge my own parenting:

I realized a couple of months ago that my children DON'T KNOW HOW TO CROSS A STREET. They're 10 and 13. WTF.