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

we've been trying to get our 1-year old to sleep through the night and while we've had some success in getting longer stretches of sleep he is now basically waking up for the day at like 4:30am. before he would wake up every 1-2 hours but be up for the day at like 6:30am, now he's often sleeping straight through from 8pm-4:30am but fuck 4:30am really?

sick of this bullshit tbh

I feel you. we've at least got Judah pushed back to around 6:30am now that he's um... three and a half.

Youngest is suddenly mad into this batch of fuckin my little pony movies, called the Equestrias or something? OH GOD THE HORRIBLE SONGS MAKE THEM STOP PLEASE.

Do you guys ever experience panic over the possibility of your kids getting hurt? Lately every time we drive I suddenly have the terrible feeling that E (the baby) is not strapped in propertly. Yesterday I was roughhousing with K and she was kind of tumbling upside down over me and I was flipping her around a little and I heard a crack from her neck, and she goes "did a bone break?" Fucking shit. (she was completely fine of course and it was presumably just fluid popping or whatever)

E also is like super physical now and super into climbing/pulling herself up etc., and she's always banging herself. Very hard to prevent.

All the time. I live in total fear. My oldest's stated life goal is to become a stuntman. My younger kid is equally adventurous . Haven't had a big accident from either of them in a while. Guess I better knock on wood.

On a separate note, do we have any other preteens/teens who are experiencing mood swings? Because holy shit this weekend was a nightmare. Three or four separate melt-downs, including breaking stuff. I'm guessing and really hoping that it was puberty-related. My wife and I were completely and totally unable to de-escalate, no matter how calm and patient we were. I don't think there have been many times I've felt inclined to read a book or even a parenting blog to find solutions for our troubles, we've had it so easy. There were times this weekend when my wife and I looked at each other like "we didn't know it was going to be like this."

bf's oldest is 11 now, and starting to get moody and self-righteous "why the hell should I do that, you do it!!!" sort of shit. I'm not looking forward to his teens, not least because as Ive mentioned before, my idea of discipline is to straight up loud-voiced tell someone off when bratty, but theyre not my kids, so...

Yeah, I've found that tactic to be incredibly unhelpful. I try to strike a balance between stern parent and listening, supportive parent. Neither of these techniques worked but "listening, supportive" worked better, but really only for a while. Then I'd be sitting there trying to give him calm, reasoned advice and his volume and intensity kept ratcheting up. Eventually we just decided to back away and give him some space. Let him chill out in his room as long as he wasn't breaking things anymore. It was no fun. He's been doing a little better in the last couple days, but I don't look forward to the next time this happens.

By the way, I've had this stuck in my head ever since your last post, so thanks, Trayce:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4WLuR70ZO4

I actually really like Daniel Ingram's songs from the first few seasons of MLP:FIM, but the movie was a little bit of a turning point for me. My girl likes it though, so I guess that's what counts.

Being an adolescent is really really hard. I remember some of that. At some point after having come out the other side, I thought back and realized it made the most sense to consider myself temporarily insane during those years. The way I felt and experienced things in that time was just so different, it barely connected to my post-teen reality at all.

Yeah, I completely remember behaving similarly with my parents, sadly. I was tantrum-prone both as a younger child and as a teen though. Since he hasn't been much of a fusser up until now, I was just optimistic that we would continue our smooth emotional sailing. I guess there's no getting around adolescence though.

on the topic of adolescents, I started this thread some time ago, though it's never seen much action (like our ados?)

my two ados have mood swings, sure, but they're mostly funny to watch. We are very much not tight asses about anything and the tantrums don't really have marks to miss, let alone hit. They cuss like sailors, but not in English: French, Créole, Arabic, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, sure, those are all ok, they pick up hilarious expressions at school, and they fly freely at home, as do middle fingers and general horsing-around "violence" amongst themselves.

my little one, about to turn tween, is having mood swings right now, which could very well be pre-pubescent. They're more alarming since she tends to amp up the threats, I gather just to get her point across when the older two dominate discourse. We find letting them run off and be sullen for a while is the best way to go.

There is some neurological evidence to suggest adolescents are genuinely mentally different--they develop a temporary autism-like inability to read other people's faces and moods properly, or consider others' needs before their own

LOL I remember stoutly informing my mother I would NEVER be a terrible bitch like all those teens I saw on TV, when I was pre-teen

Then of course I was a horrible bitch in my teens.

last night my little one, the near-tween, was crying because a lot of kids at school have suddenly gotten into "summoning spirits". Evidently they write yes and no (well, oui et non) a few times on a piece of paper, set up some pencils in a stack, then chant a song about Charlie and see if the pencils end up pointing to yes. If yes then Charlie the spirit is present and everyone panics. My daughter doesn't want to believe in it but everyone's scared by it and yet big crowds of kids keep doing it.

I remember at around the same age doing similar things, going into the bathroom with other kids and turning off the lights, then doing some weird "ritual" around the garbage can to talk to the dead. as I told my daughter, it's probably rooted in a desire to control things that seem uncontrollable, the possible permeability of the material world; what I meant was awareness of death but I didn't want to put it that way.

she was pretty spooked!

Dude!

She was worried about whether to tell on the kids and I said go ahead, probably there's a bunch of spooked kids. Evidently there was something similar at my older kids' school last year (also in France) and it was banned by the teachers. Maybe it violates laïcité? Or it just ends up with kids who haven't slept enough because they're worried about "spirits".

My kid has mentioned that game. I guess it's worldwide.

Ouija boards and the like were a thing when i was a kid in 80s england and probably for decades before

Hasbro makes them...

Well yeah. This is like half ouija board, half Bloody Mary.

Maybe it violates laïcité?

loooooool

It was probably banned because it was annoying

I can't believe there's anything that harmful in this sort of thing, it's kids experimenting with being scared when there's no actual scary thing present, which has to be kind of even good maybe?

yeah. my daughter told on them today, but the teacher just said she'd keep her eyes open. apparently kids in the class above hers did it again today and all ended up crying because they got freaked out.

Maybe yr daughter needs to clue them in on Slenderman and up the ante.

Candyman candyman candyman

xp: looool. good strategy, imo.

This weekend, I checked my kid's search history prompted by Tracer's story. I came up clean! He could be using some sort of "Incognito" mode though. I wouldn't put it past him because he's pretty savvy, but I didn't worry about it today.

I did find out that he has a YouTube channel though! He makes videos of himself playing Call of Duty and other games while telling little stories about his life or trying to be funny. His history of liked videos was mostly the same. Anyway, there wasn't any worrying content in the videos except for at one point he inadvertently doxxes one of his friends from school, who also has a channel doing the exact same thing: "Oh, and let me tell you about [channel] name. His name is [the kids' full name]..." *sigh* The video doesn't have enough views though for me to be worried about it though.

Anyway, just wanted to share the results of my snooping.

Yeah it seems young boys are massively into those Lets play type videos. Mo watches them 94/7. God knows why.

so my wife suggested Charlotte's Web for the kids to watch last weekend and you know what turns out I hate that fucking movie. Looks terrible, the songs are terrible, the story (what there is of it, anyway) is nonsensical and the "message"... well, what the hell is the message anyway? Don't kill whiny pigs? Always rely on the skills and sacrifices of those more capable than you? Aspire to be a lazy, incurious slob?

SOME PIG

Spekaing of snooping kids search history made me think of this:

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/i-looked-my-sons-google-search-history-and-it-was--2265

6 yo wants to know how buy Pokemon schwag online

rip

Anyone have any luck teaching an older sibling how not to harm baby? 4 and 1, 4 year old defies instructions not to handle baby in certain ways and is always pulling/pushing/lifting etc. Today we had a huge scare bc she somehow managed to pull the high chair over face down with baby in it, by pulling on the baby's arms (I wasn't home but this is what I heard) -- it's a pretty heavy, sturdy Keekaroo chair and IDK how she managed to do it. Baby was miraculously fine but it was the kind of thing that could have led to severe injury or even death. Scary as fuck. We made a pretty big, serious deal out of it, major consequences and a lot of talking about the job of being a big sister and why it what she did could have hurt the baby and put her in the hospital.

It honestly seems like she is looking to both push the limits wrt potentially harming the baby and get a rise out of us. This is tough.

Aaaargh, sorry, that sounds awful. We're having similar issues with 3yo girl and 14yo dog, but at least the dog can get up and leave the room

Positive reinforcement (I sound like a broken record, sorry) and plenty of quality one on one time with you both, so she's not jealous of the baby. Try giving her tasks she can do to help with the baby, maybe task her with keeping baby amused during nappy changes, etc. so she has supervised fun interaction.

^^^
also 4 years is old enough to try to explain why she's doing it. are you sure trying to harm the baby is what's going on?

I mean she isn't "trying to harm the baby" in the sense that she actually knows what that really means, but she is definitely acting aggressively toward the baby.

So....yuppiest thing I have ever done: run a criminal background check on a potential babysitter via care.com.

Result: she was convicted of conspiracy to commit credit card fraud. She saw that we ran the check and messaged us "I fell in with a bad crowd." Ok, genuinely wish her the best but it's not gonna happen.

That's kinda wild

I just gave a potato chip to my 3 year old and feel like I just ruined his life

Today's manifestation of severe sibling envy -- K smacked me in the nads super hard, and after I walked into the other room so as to avoid lashing out in anger, she came in and said "Daddy, I did something really funny to your sunglasses." She had snapped them.

I'd have... not dealt with that in a sane parental manner I have to admit :/

Marin is currently at the height where every time I pick her up her feet are in the perfect position to kick my nads, whether intentionally or by accident. I think I need to get a cup.

yeah, already happens to me a lot by accident but this was p clearly on purpose. Like I said, I walked into the other room to avoid raging, but she clearly wanted to get a rise out of me and was disappointed by that. They were nice Ray Bans too, the first and only "nice" pair of sunglasses I ever owned. But even in the moment you remember (hopefully) that a four year old has no concept of what that means, and they're only sunglasses anyway.

Welp, we decided to take all the refined sugar sweets and empty carb snacks out of the house. Wish us luck.

baller move

It was H's move ultimately, although tbf I had originally suggested we not buy them at all. We had the old debate a couple years ago of whether it's better to just not have them around to avoid the habit vs do "moderation" so they don't develop some weird relationship to the foods. I advocated not having them at all at the time but H convinced me that we should try to just do it with rules and boundaries. H now has rethought that -- the rules are too easy to let slide and they become a crutch for the parents as well, like basically you bend the rules so they'll shut up tbh.

I think seeing that even the one-year-old was getting addicted to "veggie straws" was sort of the breaking point.