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

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/daniel-tiger-becomes-a-boy-with-autisms-guide-to-social-life/?smid=tw-share

Daniel Tiger is very popular in our home. This morning, Jeff asked her what she wanted to watch* and she said "TIGER."

*We use TV to hypnotize her into compliance while I get her dressed in the mornings.

We noticed K's behavior is better when she watches no TV than when she watches TV, but short of that we also noticed that there's a huge difference between the days she watches Daniel Tiger vs almost anything else. We completely stopped with Disney.

Any of you guys end up with a kid who likes Billy Joel? Because FUCK this phase.

That would be tough.

I assume you have only yourself to blame. I mean where they exposed to BJ in the first place?

^ILP quoted out of context

btw, in re that disciplinarian thing upthread, we kind of had a come to jesus moment about it and realized it wasn't exactly working, or rather, we were right to be more disciplinarian but wrong to be more harsh and negative, so now we're all about trying to set limits in a more positive way, and I finally feel like this is paying off.

I got a really simple but very effective tip from a parenting magazine, for example: instead of saying "If you don't finish dinner, you can't have dessert," you say, "first we finish dinner, then we eat dessert."

I was a kid who liked Billy Joel, I used to listen to The Stranger all the time when I was a kid and think I still have my dad's copy in my vinyl collection

We are going to check out highschools. She's in fifth grade now. Seems early but the open school days are all on the same day. So we're doing a few now and the rest next year. Omg high school.
Prob going with Latin.

I assume you have only yourself to blame. I mean where they exposed to BJ in the first place?

― Οὖτις, Friday, September 18, 2015 10:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would never knowingly expose a kid to Billy Joel. He started liking it after a few long car rides with my mother-in-law, the same place he learned to like the Eagles. But apparently all the kids on his bus like Billy Joel too and they had a big sing-along to Piano Man the other day.

my eldest loves Billy Joel thanks to car-based indoctrination from his grandad. i got no problem with this, Billy Joel is okay.

there's a french parenting expert named Dolto who says they can have dessert first, it doesn't matter

we tried that for about 5 minutes before centuries of habit rebelled

"I don't care if you get mad at me because I won't let you eat Oxyclean" is a thing I say now.

If she eats dessert "first" there is no second

xpost i lol'ed

Relating directly to this thread title, PP busted Henry out in the backyard in his skivvies yelling at the daughters of our super christian neighbours right after church last Sunday.

Nice!

Last week the kid had a fever and couldn't go to day care for a couple of days and was sleeping terribly so we were sleeping terribly and it was pretty awful all around. Fever subsided as of Thursday morning but he was still sleeping pretty shitty.

I have no idea what happened but starting this Saturday he just started going to bed and sleeping all night - he's gotten up to eat just once in the last five nights, and we've actually had to wake him up in the morning lest he sleep too late and screw up his nap / daycare schedule. He also falls asleep a lot faster, though only after screaming for five minutes and then just passing out mid-scream. This is vastly better than the half hour of quieter fussing and babbling that he was doing prior to that.

Toofahs?

Words are still spordadic but the boys have definitely started making identifying sounds that mean something specific; J in particular has started going "NUMANUMANUMANUMANUMA" if he wants you to do something for him IMMEDIATELY and it's the cutest thing

Awwwww he's like a more adorable drunk grown-up!

Basically! It's really funny watching him go "...Book? Book? NUMANUMANUMANUMANUMANUMA"

I only wish my kids liked Billy Joel.

My poor son says he's been plagued by nightmares since he's been old enough to say he's plagued by nightmares. He hates going to bed, he says things as he gets under the covers "Welp, may has well get ready for the monsters," etc. It's hard to tell how much he's -- I wouldn't say "kidding", but I would some more serious version of the word. He doesn't scream at night. He's never woke up in tears. If he wakes up in a different place, it's with one of us and not in the closet from sleepwalking or anything.

But all that said, the other night he's messing around with an old PSP handheld game, looking through the camera just before bed. "See, Dad, look at this," and he hands me the console. We've got just the one lamp on, so there isn't much to see, especially on that low-res display.

"What, what do you want me to see?" I ask.

"You see all that dark stuff coming out of the walls? THAT'S the stuff that comes to me in my nightmares."

And he's talking about the lousy artifacts you get on a bad camera. This pic doesn't do it justice, but you know what I mean.

http://i.imgur.com/0Rz0VN9.jpg

And I say, "Son, that's not real. It's what the camera 'sees', but that's just because it's trying to hard to show you something."

Which I admit would be confusing to even some adults I know.

He just nods, says ok, and takes the camera back from me. Again, I try to explain how there's not really a roller coaster on the PhotoBooth app, etc., but clearly, I'm just a sheeple who's not ready to hear THE TRUTH, according to him.

"You see all that dark stuff coming out of the walls? THAT'S the stuff that comes to me in my nightmares."

Oh poor kid.

Even though we have foam bolsters on our bed to prevent this from happening, Ivy either fish flopped out of our bed onto the floor or tried to climb out of bed in her sleep and fell last night. Being woken up from a sound sleep to a loud THUMP and then a BLOOD CURDLING SCREAM emanating from the tiny human you love more than life itself is jolting to say the least. I gave out this weird series of high pitched hooting screams that I seriously think were some kind of primate brain stem "MY BABY MONKEY FELL OUT OF THE TREE" danger sound that my monkey-adrenaline-soaked, sleep fuzzled brain spewed forth instinctively.

Luckily she was unbruised and no jaguars ate her, but it took me a long ass time to calm down and go back to sleep, and the spent the rest of the night on high alert, jerking awake every time she moved.

poor ivy! i remember those screams, my brother used to fall out of bed all the time when he was little, it's so scary!!

and poor henry, those nightmares sound O_O

As recently as a year ago, my son was reporting only having ever had nightmares. And it was pretty regular to hear him moaning in the dark or jerking bolt awake.

My daughter reports that she doesn't dream most of the time, but when she does tell me about a dream, they are pretty dark. "We had to fight bears and they were evil and had red eyes." But she's never seemed distressed in telling me about them.

^^ very similar. I'm not saying he's completely chill about it all, but he is certainly very matter-of-fact about his demons.

http://www.citydadsgroup.com/nyc/2015/09/daddy-i-want-makeup-so-i-can-look-pretty/

I'm having a dumb facebook argument about this article right now. Tell me if you agree or if I'm being obtuse -- I think this dad is just being overly anxious about something his three year old doesn't really get yet and projecting his own fears about self esteem. I don't think a three year old girl saying "I want make up so I can look pretty" means that the three year old thinks she's not pretty without makeup, that just doesn't sound to me like how a three year old mind works.

As we walk into the bathroom to brush her teeth, I hear something I was not prepared for:

“Daddy, I want makeup so I can look pretty.”

I instantly recoil at what has just been thrown at me, then my mind races to determine where our toddler got this idea. Who told our child that in order to look pretty she needed lipstick, blush and mascara? Was it one of her friends at daycare who maybe has an older sister that said this in passing? Did one of the cartoon princesses she adores take a trip to beauty school in an episode she watched? Or was it in an article from one of the Toddler Cosmopolitan magazines that I see lying about in her room. I’ve been meaning to cancel that subscription, and perhaps this was a sign to do so. Then I remembered: my wife let her put on makeup to calm her down and give her something to do while they were both getting ready for a recent weekend getaway. I doubt my wife actually said something this absurd to our child, but now it appears the seed has been planted and we needed to do something about it.

I feel you on this - she's probably just made the (perfectly unconscious) observation that some women that look pretty also wear make-up and she is curious what that involves. Even so I wouldn't put makeup on a three year old. I think Veronica's aunts did this with her once when she was around 4 or 5 as a fun rainy day activity, which I was not really into, but it does not seem to have had any lasting effect. She does like getting her nails done, but that's something she does with her mom, which is what makes it "special" for her I'm sure.

I don't think I'd go out of my way to do it, but K has just been overwhelmingly fascinated by makeup and dresses since she was old enough to notice, even though her mom is more or less tomboyish. So at some point I let go and said to myself "if this stuff gives her so much joy, why should I inject any negative feelings into it?" We never tried to put makeup on her but she kept asking for it, so she has a little lip gloss thingy. And dressing up is one of her favorite things to do. It's a tough line to walk, but it seems like in trying too hard to avoid traditionally feminine stuff you can actually wind up stigmatizing traditionally feminine stuff.

Like to me if your three year old says "I want makeup so I can look pretty" and your reaction is horror, that kind of sends the message that there's something inherently bad about makeup.

yeah at 3 yrs old i think that equation is more like, "mommy's pretty & wears makeup, i want to do that too"

I've been pretty surprised at how gender identities assert themselves with little to no guidance from parents/peers, it's kind of crazy. Both our kids, with zero prompting from us or concentrated exposure to gender norms, gravitated almost instantly to trad boy/girl stuff. Judah is way into trains and cars and construction and shit like that, and it sure isn't because of me or anything I keep around the house, and this presented itself well before he had spent any serious amount of time socializing with other little boys.

xp

You really think that's happening without "concentrated exposure to gender norms"? Are you suggesting that interest in trains is an inherent genetic trait of masculinity?

I can't explain it tbh

literally the first time he saw a train it was like "THAT'S FOR ME!"

It's probably more in line with autism being more prevalent in males than females.

I can - you're underestimating how pervasive and impactful gender norms are in our society.
xpost

I see N/A's point.. there's no Teresa The Train Engine show.

Yeah I definitely think that is part of it. And I actually feel like we've regressed a good deal in that regard since I was a kid in the 80s -- everything only seems more gendered to me now in terms of toys, clothes etc.

Anyways it's near-impossible to avoid gendering of interests in the U.S. no matter how hard you try, and I don't think it's bad per se to let your daughter play with make up or your son play with trucks bc like you say who wants to be the sourpuss who's discouraging their interests, but I also think it's ok to be honest and sad about how these interests are pushed on them by everything around us.

*sigh* well I predict this thread is going to go in a fun direction thx for being patronizing

xp

I think there are probably subtle ways we do it in our parenting without realizing it too, e.g. there are studies on how parents are more likely to ask very small boys questions like "how many ___ do you see in the picture?"

Nonetheless, my daughter is enthralled by certain kinds of "girly" stuff, and I'm not going to discourage her. She also loves banging on drums fwiw.

Anyways it's near-impossible to avoid gendering of interests in the U.S. no matter how hard you try, and I don't think it's bad per se to let your daughter play with make up or your son play with trucks bc like you say who wants to be the sourpuss who's discouraging their interests, but I also think it's ok to be honest and sad about how these interests are pushed on them by everything around us.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Tuesday, September 29, 2015 3:28 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is p much what I think. "constructs" are real, and you can wage a one-family war against them but you'll never completely win.

She likes pretty dresses, so I'd rather teach her that you can like pretty dresses and still be a lawyer or doctor or scientist (or ballet dancer or fashion designer or w/e) rather than discourage what she likes.

like your formulation assumes a) a child identifies with a certain gender and then b) associates various characteristics or products or whatever with that gender and then c) adopts (b) because they see it as being consistent with (a). Now, in the case of my son I'm talking about when he was between 1 and 2 years old. Pretty much any child development expert will tell you that children at this age do not really have any concept of gender, they don't understand what it is, they don't readily differentiate between what is for boys and what is for girls. This happens a bit later, and is driven very much by socialization, exposure to peers etc.

I can't explain why my 1 1/2 yo boy would like trains. I didn't have trains around the house. He'd never seen or been on a train. He'd never watched television. There were probably trains in some of the books we had, but I'm sure they were just one of the many other random objects that typically fill up toddler books. He hadn't been around older boys with trains. And yet he was *instantly* super-excited about a toy train. I remember it pretty clearly, it was baffling.

xp

That doesn't really square with all of the times I've seen you and G yelling "BE A GODDAMN MAN FOR ONCE" to the boy, but whatev...