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

I totally forgot that gift bags were a thing! But now I remember getting them at parties in elementary school in the 80s. And making them for a couple of my own birthday parties. Oh, my poor single mom... But you can't deny a pre-teen girl decent gift bags at her birthday party :/ I think things were more low key back then though, like just some chocolate and jelly bracelets really.

We just booked a place and I'm already kind of too embarrassed to say how much we'll be spending, but while we were in the place we saw that there was a family having a party and we calculated based on everything they had -- basically the "super deluxe" package for a large group of kids plus every ADDITIONAL extra add-on you could have (bouncy castle, facepainting), AND some nice looking food and drinks for the adults, and we were pretty sure they spent $1200.

That's more than we spent on our wedding.

And the thing is, this was a reasonably nice place, a newly built, up-to-date gymnastics playspace where they also do nice decorations and art and music activities with the kids, but it was at a mall in Glendale Queens, which is a very middle class area.

if by chumps you mean parents then otm

1st birthday party was super fun actually, had a bunch of other parents over and we ate good food and drank and shot the shit and it was pretty great, if only to "party", if you will, with people who didn't feel like disgraces for leaving by 7pm.

Our kid's birth mom drove an hour and a half to visit too which was kind of a (metaphorical) trip; she was kind of an emotional rollercoaster (much moreso than she had expected) but for a 21 year old she fit in pretty well with a bunch of 30 and 40 something academics and a lot of our friends made a point to talk to her and be super welcoming and appreciative of her presence which was pretty great.

aw that's so great joygoat! congratulations

aw. first birthday is a real milestone, I can finally accept he's not a little newborn! I have trouble letting go of these things but I love hanging out with him now (except I can't eat anything or drink from a mug without him wanting it)

Get used to that.

dunno where to put this so puttin it here, p interesting re: pregnancy + medicine: http://mosaicscience.com/story/pregnancy-testing-drugs

“Actually, ethics

sorry, just spend too much time on that thread not to point this out.

just turned on my monitor and saw a google results tab open

search terms: "how do you have powers"

haha. awesome.

lol

haha, that is great

were powers obtained

4 bloody a.m. and I've not gone to sleep yet. how on earth am I meant to go back to work in a matter of DAYS? I doubt i'm even safe to drive there.

*watching the boys babble back and forth at dinner*
me: What are you guys talking about?
D: (very clearly) Um, cocaine!

😨 uh

lol!

It would explain a lot with my kids.

My wife is insisting he said "cupcake" but I know what I heard

So has anyone ever seen a specialist or therapist about child behavior? I'm actually starting to be a little concerned. K bit her grandmother today, pretty hard. She's almost 4. She also bit me twice on the day we flew back from my parents recently, once in the airport and once after we got home. Both times painfully hard. She's often extremely defiant and oppositional and getting anything done with her is extraordinarily difficult if she decides she doesn't want to do it. It's hard to say sometimes to what extent this is just behavior of her age, but some of it seems beyond. Often we find that no approach works, whether it's gentleness, consequences, etc

Sounds pretty normal to me. Behaviour like that can take a looong time to change. We had issues with my eldest, he was attention seeking with bad behaviour and it took a lot of positive reinforcement/ignoring of bad behaviour before his behaviour changed. My youngest is very strong willed and it's taken time to learn how to deal with her - we never give her a choice if there's an option we don't want to choose but we try to explain why we have to do something, and if she is defiant then we question ourselves over why it is we're doing it - do we need to do it? Why? and if it does stack up that we're not being unreasonable then we explain why, and what the consequences will be if we don't do it. I've found that making her feel part of the decision making process, making her feel as though she has some control, has made a big difference. Even if it's just little things, giving her a choice when we can makes her feel as though she's in charge of her own destiny and we get less defiance when she doesn't get a choice. That's not to say we don't have clashes but they're much less frequent, and we have much better conversations with her now.

As I said, it doesn't always work, and it takes a long time for any change of approach to make a difference, so even if it feels like it's not making a difference you have to keep trying.

Is it just with you and family that she's like that with? I've found with my two that they can behave perfectly fine at childcare/school, it's when they get home that they flop and behave appallingly! Like they pent up all the frustration at being 'good' and let all the frustration out on me, the age old 'I know you love me unconditionally so I can behave like an absolute shit and it won't stop you loving me' thing. If it is just with you then it's less of a major behavioural issue - still needs sorting, but should be relatively easy to deal with.

(youngest is also 4, btw)

I really should proof read before posting! When I say consequences - I mean the natural consequences of not doing what we ask - e.g. if she's refusing to get shoes on to go out food shopping, then we won't have any food in the house and there'll be no lunch/snacks for when she gets hungry, etc. I've found that creating unrelated consequences just creates more defiance and anger, threats really do not work and leave them feeling persecuted. What does work for my two is positive consequences of good behaviour, e.g. 'if you behave nicely at the restaurant tonight then I'll be able to relax and we'll have a really nice time, and I won't want to leave the restaurant before we have pudding' etc.

Ivy "rage bites," like she'll get angry and frustrated and bite something, usually her clothes, once memorably a tricycle tire. Yesterday I was putting her in the stroller so her visiting grandparents could take her to the park and she 1) wanted to walk and 2) wanted me to go with them and she chomped HARD on my arm.

So no solutions but some commiseration.

J bites when he's tired. It's pretty painful but also a good indicator that we need to hurry up the putting-to-bed process.

not biting, but tooth-related! my daughter has her 1st loose tooth and it is totally terrifying to her, no matter what we tell her. kind of strange, though i guess the first time would be pretty weird...

that reminds me of the first time Veronica saw poop comin out of her butt and she *freaked the fuck out* (obviously this was around potty training time)

the idea that a part of your body is now no longer a part of your body, not hard to imagine how traumatizing that might be

it was like all those hours of reading Everybody Poops were for nothing

since we've talked about this a lot here (altho I can't remember on which thread):

https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/10/president-obama-signs-first-federal-free

Holy crap, guys. Henry was sent home today because LICE. *shudder*

being bald has its advantages

oh man

my cousin had lice when we were kids. my aunt freaked out & shaved his head bald, it was a weird time

my wife is SO paranoid about lice. I probably shouldn't go into it.

the little combs & head-medicine & general panic always freaked me out

I got lice from my friend's kiddo! I know all about the lice! Ask away!

The best part about my lice story is that I hired a company called. . .

Lice Happens

https://licehappens.com/

My coworker's kids got lice on Thursday. Apparently half the class was infected because they went to a birthday party at a laser tag place and used the dress up stuff there.

Anyway her husband took her kids to a salon that specializes in lice removal for $75/hour.

We happened to have our firm holiday party that night and she opted to go despite the fancy lice salon saying she probably had lice, too. None of us would sit next to her.

Lice don't jump! Unless you planning on rubbing heads with her, you'd be fine.

Our housesitter and her newphew ended up getting lice this summer like two days after they left our place - so it was possible but highly unlikely that they would remain active and catchable. My nephews have had lice a couple of times and my sister was pretty unfazed when I asked her for advice but it was an unpleasant couple of days while we were waiting to see if we ended up getting them.

being bald has its advantages

I pointed this out to my wife, like "hey at least I'll be safe, I'm bald!" which did absolutely nothing to make her feel better about the situation.

Too bad their isn't a kid/lice equivalent to the gel that goes on the back of cats' necks to keep fleas away

My dad told me on his recent visit here that my mom didn't send me to a private elementary school on scholarship because when she went to visit there was a lice breakout and she was grossed out. We got lice anyway in public school! Thanks for being squeamish and ruining i mean altering the course of my life, mom (I also don't really trust my dad's memory tbh)

A has been in daycare since September and I have had all the colds and yet they still keep making more

I did suggest shaving his head but he freaked 'all my friends will laugh at me!!!' The vanity of a 6 year old. We did the whole medicated shampoo and then the live comb. There were only about 10 of them but at least 100 eggs so I guess we got it before it got really nasty. PP took him to a hairdresser yesterday who said its illegal (!!) for them the cut hair with live in it so she did a thorough check a said there were no bugs but some eggs are still there so she cut his hair anyway. He has the most terrible terrible bites behind his ear and at the nape of his neck, poor kiddo. Has stopped us from calling him 'bughead' though. Anyway we have to repeat the whole medicated shampoo deal in 10 days. And you should see out laundry right now. Clothes a bedding and pillows piled 6 ft high.

I don't know why my autocorrect changes 'lice' to 'live'. Maybe my typing was just crappy.

Oh Robyn some Frontline would be awesome :)

Quince....how long until you were live a egg free??

CLEAN HAIR! Lice like clean hair, at least that's what my mum promised me
All kids get nits, right? /realengland

A has been in daycare since September and I have had all the colds and yet they still keep making more

truth bomb.
J has been in about 4 days and this has overlapped with eternal cold, ear infection, me and OH having eternal colds, teething, no healing sleep for anyone so double eternal colds, plus separation anxiety crap and me going back to work on 3 hours sleep.

I am genuinely considering giving up work, life's too short for this crap, but then we'd have to move and no.

Sunny, I caught my lice waaaaaay early. Like, the day after I getting home from visiting the adorable little vermin carriers. I have really dark hair, and a couple of nits right along the hairline of my forehead stood out. I could not believe it! Of course I freaked and spent a gazillion dollars to have a Lice Happens lady come to my house and manually comb through--I went with that option after reading the American Academy for Pediatrics treatment guidelines. No medicated stuff, just an extremely thorough nit-picking.

The lady only found one buggie and not very many nits. That little lice bitch must have hopped on me preggers and gotten started laying right away. I followed up with daily combing for 10 days as recommended by Lice Happens. That did the trick. It helped that I hadn't been in my house with lice for very long, also I was living alone at the time and didn't have to deal with the pass-it-around-the-family situation.

lice are pretty fascinating, they only have to be impregnated again and that's it for life, they can keep laying and laying.

We just use a nitty gritty comb and conditioner now, we had a period of pretty much immediate reinfestation as someone else in A's class wasn't being treated, so combing every bath time was the only way. I dread Molly getting them again, having to comb her long curly hair was quite literally torture, the only way we got through it was by her mainlining youtube while I did it. Had to learn to switch off so cookie swirl C didn't send me loopy.

This seems to have kept them at bay since she started school (famous last words....) http://www.nittygritty.co.uk/products/54/nitty_gritty_defence_spray/