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

"thank you father. i appreciate your willingness to teach me. namaste"

that link DJP posted is fucking chilling. this seems like the nut of it:

white parents "want to give their kids this sort of post-racial future when they're very young and they're under the wrong conclusion that their kids are colorblind. ... It's in the absence of messages of tolerance that they will naturally ... develop these skin preferences."

yeah I think that's right, it's just that I feel like she's not QUITE at the age where she can comprehend this stuff. I mean I think it's good for her to see and be around people of different races as much as possible and I think it's good to talk about the fact that people have different skin colors, features, etc., I just couldn't find a way to convey "don't make fun of the way other people look" when she doesn't even really understand what making fun of someone is.

But... she does seem to understand what making fun of someone is? Maybe I'm misunderstanding how you're presenting what she is saying.

What they say and what they actually understand at this age can be a big gulf. I think when she initially did "I am a Chinese girl" I don't think she comprehended the idea of imitating someone in a mean way, she just comprehended imitating, like being "a Chinese girl" wasn't distinct from pretending to be a character from TV or a family member or something. When I tried to convey that it could be hurtful it seemed to lead to a lot of misplaced shame that didn't accompany understanding, like she understood that she had done something bad without realizing it but didn't understand why. Again, I think what I'm saying will seem clearer when your kids get to the 3 age range.

So Henry seems be reaching the peak of his pushing mortality to the limits phase (please please let it be a phase). A couple of weeks ago he tripped over nothing, busting his lip open and knocking his two front teeth clear out. Yesterday, he rammed his wombat body full tilt through a window screen, bounced off a bush, then bounced off the side of the house before landing 10 feet below and scraping his foot up pretty good. I'm starting to freak out.

agh Sunny that sounds terrifying! I'm already worried about mine knocking out the few teeth he has!

my wife went back to work about a month after #1's birth, but we're both uni teachers so our schedules were super flexible. still, those days were hilarious.

well the dentist said his pacifier usage was fucking up his teeth so that finally convinced my wife to take 'em away cold turkey and that went about as well as could be expected.

time to man up and learn how to go to sleep, little dude

how old? I am dreading doing this. He only has it in his cot but that's going to be bad enough.

approaching 3

We told the boys that we were "giving the pacifiers to babies who need them," and they were cool with it.

that's what we did, we put them all in an envelope, let him put it in the mailbox (sorry US postal service)

he was cool with it at the time. Less so upon going to bed.

like she understood that she had done something bad without realizing it but didn't understand why.

tbf this is what adults feel when they get called out on unthinking racism too

not saying your daughter is racist btw!! just that these little memes and received wisdoms can creep in from all angles and we rarely know how they got there or why - it is a confusing feeling

I have clear memories of a few times as a kid where my parents explained/scolded me on some social fauxpas or other and I remember not even remotely understanding WHY what I did was wrong, and no one ever really explaining it in a way I could comprehend.

^ heh, that happens now except it's one of my parents who's not quite getting it.

"OK, so you're telling me that Chinamen don't live in the Orient. How am I being racist then."

oh man my parents live in that can of worms, ugh

Keren today asked me if I "Daven to Hashem" (pray to god, basically, but in a formal, ritualistic way). Really getting sick of this Jewish preschool thing.

Haha well u kinda asked for it no?

yeah but idk I went to a preschool run by a conservative synagogue and it was not quite to this degree

Did N's sleep improve? Pah! She is still rubbish, by and large. We've had some improvements but she's wildly inconsistent. Last night was a good night, and she slept from 8pm to 2am, woke at 4am, and then 6am, when we brought her in with us. Last week, when Em went back to work, it was every two hours from 10pm, mostly. The week or so before that had been poor too as she'd had a cold; prior to that, we'd had a few occasions where she'd only woken twice.

Currently using 'The little rabbit who wanted to fall asleep' to try and neuro-linguistic programme her to sleep; semi-successful so far, though last night I got all the way to the end and she was laughing at me so Em then had to read it to her again from the start.

Last week we pretty-much co-slept, actually, by the end of the week. Path of least resistance.

The US maternity set-up is just insane. I can't comprehend it.

Also Nora has no teef yet, at all, and no sign of them. Em took her to a dentist (when she had an appointment, not especially!) and they said N would be at least a year. Crazy! All her baby contemporaries have teef.

God, that sounds hard. Literally the only thing that has helped me feel 'normal' and vaguely sane again has been his sleeping getting more consistent (sorry, no bragging). Nursery seems to be a massive upheaval with my friends' kids too, what with viruses and general unsettledness. I'm assured it gets easier once they settle in, although also told it can take at least a month.

xp at least a year old? Mine has 6 teeth and I'm sure the next 2 have been moving around in there for 2 months on and off. I'm glad the first ones are out of the way but I guess one good thing is that when they're older you can tell more easily that something's up, with mine he was kind of temperamental generally when really little so I had no idea what was going on.

Turns out that after a course of antibiotics a mild nappy rash can turn into the most unbelievably painful-looking thrush virtually overnight. Poor little guy was totally miserable at 3am.

Slathering on the canestan helped quite quickly, incredibly glad we had a tube handy.

I know for a fact I would have cried all day and lost my mind a little bit if I'd gone back to full time work 3 months after giving birth. The word "barbaric"is not hyperbole re: US maternity leave. It's not only anti-woman but anti-health! Ah I know these things have been said many times before - I just have to register my outrage again...

I think I could've gone back to work full time around 9 months, but still would've felt not quite right. Now that Alden's a year old it feels different though. He started daycare at 11.5 months old, so about a month and a half ago, and it's AMAZING. They do a slow integration there, where I went with him for a week for a couple of hours a day (so weirdly exhausting though!) and then he went by himself for a hour or two at a time with that time increasing over a week and then half days for a few days and then pretty much 9-4 every day - and he loves it. (He still nurses when he wakes up and before bed, and sometimes after daycare.) I miss him by afternoon but know he's having a good time playing and eating and napping etc. I think if I had a job i didn't like (which is most jobs to me haha, prob why I'm freelance) I might feel differently, but mostly I feel a modicum of freedom that has really helped clear the postpartum cobwebs from my head.

My wife took 9 months off from work, attempted to negotiate a part-time schedule for 6 months while working full-time, then flipped her boss the double-bird and quit to be a stay-at-home mother. One really nice side-effect of this is that she has been able to take the boys on extended trips to her parents'/sister's houses that would not have been possible had she been working. The down side is that we lost half our income and doubled the size of our family so we've effectively lost the ability to save money. I had joked about getting the boys modeling gigs when they were infants but am now about to broach it again with a full execution plan because I see no way for us to be able to move into a bigger place, do the upkeep we need on our current place in order to sell it, pay off our existing debts and save for both retirement and the boys' education costs (which might start as soon as 3 years from now) without increasing our income stream somehow and I really, really like the idea of the boys doing things now to give themselves seed money that can pay for higher education later.

We've vaguely thought about modelling N, mainly prompted by a friend who constantly goes on about how she could be a model (her own daughter has done some modelling), but we have no idea how to go about it.

God, the ability to save money would be nice.

Cecil had a stretch of sleeping fully 12 - 13 hours every night without waking up, then went to a week of waking up 3 or 4 times a night and throwing fits for 45 minutes before falling back asleep. We realized he had a low-grade ear infection and some teeth coming in and once the antibiotics were done and the top teeth finally poked through (five months after his bottom ones) he's back to waking up once, eating, and immediately falling back asleep. Which is pretty great all things considered.

I'm still amazed at how fast he changes, how much he can do now, how he's turned from an animal to a human and can communicate and all that. He points at trees now and says "truh", says "uh-oh" at times where it actually sort of makes sense, signals for milk or food and tells us when he's done, is much more open to other people now (thanks to being in daycare), is almost walking, and is just constantly yelling and babbling and furrowing his brow and crawling over excitedly to see me when I get home or pick him up at daycare. It's so great.

Have I mentioned that J is obsessed with animals? When we took them to the apple farm, every animal he saw got a delighted "OOOOOOOOOOOH!" followed by machine-gun giggles. He also tried to touch everything, including some loose geese; we obv didn't let that happen.

D was kind of over it but enjoyed being carried around.

N is obsessed with our two cats. Luckily they are the most placid, cuddly cats in the world, or she'd have been shredded months ago. She has, at least, stopped shrieking when she sees them.

there is some photo studio down the street from us that has open casting calls on the weekends and I'll just say that the gaggle of parents that haul their babies/toddlers to those things are p blech

cool story

I think I could've gone back to work full time around 9 months, but still would've felt not quite right. Now that Alden's a year old it feels different though. He started daycare at 11.5 months old, so about a month and a half ago, and it's AMAZING.

I'm so glad you said that! At 9 months my friends were beginning to start going back, and I was like 'no way nooooo what about when he wants his mummy and I'M NOT THERE waaah'. He would have started at 11.5 months but I've actually pushed it back so it's just after his first birthday, (!) so psychologically that seems way better, and already in the past few weeks I've seen how much he enjoys being independent (crawling around etc) and getting bored here, so in loads of ways it'll be brilliant for both of us.

our ideal situation at this age would be me and OH both being part-time with maybe a couple of afternoons somewhere like nursery, but that won't happen either. I love weekends so much when we're both around.

and yeah, the communicating! I find it amazing. He obviously can't say anything but he understand so many words and tries to tell me what he wants in his own funny little way.

When we put the boys into daycare at 9 months, they didn't care one little bit; there was no crying or concern that we were leaving them somewhere. We've scaled back to one day a week when my wife left work in July (primarily so she has the opportunity to do other stuff she wants/needs to do without going insane) and they've only just started showing some separation anxiety in the past month.

IMO the best thing is to do some legwork/research and find a place you really feel good about, even if it means a little more money or taking them a little further. The peace of mind you get will be worth it.

"loose geese"

i just like those two words together - "loose geese"

What if I wanted to rent just one of those birds?

ugh, school problems.... S is in first grade, is generally ahead of the curve w/ academic stuff BUT is having trouble socially. she hasn't really bonded with any of the kids in her class except one of them, and today that kid's mom told us that S is being "smothering." she's always been more the type to focus on one friend, rather than be a part of a group. not sure exactly how to deal w/ it. typing it out, it doesn't sound like that big a deal, i guess. but sort of stressful! i don't know, first grade has been kind of a bummer so far.

That is totally a big deal. What are you supposed to do? Tell S not to talk to her friend so much? Did it sound like the request came from the kid or the parent? Beatrice is the same with focusing on one person instead of a group.

I was very much like that as a kid. For most of my childhood, I'd have one friend per year. Interesting phenomenon. Seems strange for the other parent to bring it up instead of just letting the kids work it out on their own and develop their own senses of boundaries.

i think this particular friend is having adjustment issues of her own, so I don't really blame the mom for bringing it up. i think we just need to tell Sylvie to try to mix it up a little with some other kids.

K has a tendency to kind of be in her own world at preschool, we've heard.

She also has some issues asserting herself. The other day the teacher let us know that she was happy that K had told another girl not to tell her what to do. We told K we were proud of her, and she got weirdly ashamed and ran into the other room. Again, 3-yr-old psychology is so weird.

My wife and I don't want our kid (11) to play pickup games of tackle football in the neighborhood. To me, this seems like a lofty ideal and our dreams are bound to be shattered. "Sounds great on paper - it just doesn't work in reality!" When all (and I mean all) the other neighborhood kids are playing tackle football, do we just give up and feed our kid into the maw? We don't even let him play organized football, with pads and stuff, because we know enough other kids who have had concussions, etc. Are we over-reacting?

i'd bet any amount of money that pickup football with no pads is miles safer than organized football with helmets etc