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

ha, mine's similar, his new pre-school was amazed that he would have meltdowns as he's very well behaved there. And in some ways fairly mature for his age. He also likes the lights on in the car. He had a dummy (pacifier) for ages until he was about 2.5? Can't remember. He only had it for naps/sleep but we thought it was going to be a nightmare to get him off it. One day he was in the bath and I noticed a crack in the rubber of the dummy so I showed him 'oh look, it's broken, we have to throw it away and we don't have a new one'. He was surprisingly fine with that (he's quite practically-minded) although it did mess up his going to sleep at night for a couple of weeks.

I know kids change loads every year but from 3 to 4 he's gone from toddler to proper kid; it's quite weird. It's also felt like one of the longest years because we've had loads of life changes. We didn't really have 'terrible twos' but when he hit three (and his sibling came along) he's really been testing everything with us.

It really is an amazing phase in some ways, because you know they're right around that age you were when you first started developing memories. One thing that made me really emotional was a few nights ago when I put him to bed and a half hour later I could hear him in there playing with his trucks, trying to be quiet so I wouldn't hear. And then just falling asleep a bit later. I remember doing that when I was around that age!!

I’m a bit astounded by 4 so far - the imaginative independent play, logical (if never-ending) questions, figuring out emotions in more nuanced ways, genuinely SHARING stuff. And if I visit with friends who have kids the same age or older, they go off and play together and we get to have actual conversations! I’m crossing my fingers and pinching myself. I’m still exhausted and stretched a bit thin but feel generally less frazzled-by-child.

We can have some terrible behaviour after school with emotions all over the place. Reading an article about Restraint Collapse really made sense - basically they have a limited amount to give when it comes to good behaviour and by the time school ends, it’s all used up. And home is their comfort zone where they can let it all out.

But yeah, I agree about four - so many amazing developments (including having uninterrupted grown-up conversations on playdates!)

re: brushing teeth, using the Disney Magic Timer app on the phone helped a lot with my kids. And both stopped needing the app after a dentist visited their preschool for a presentation (though the 4yo has since gone back to the app).

Oh man, restraint collapse. I'd never heard this term, but we have 2.5 year old twins and have been going through this after daycare now pretty much daily with one or the other, sometimes both. Thank you.

Imaginative independent play is kind of amazing - I love hearing him in the other room making up scenarios and having conversations between toys.

He got obsessed with Ghostbusters last week, watched some of the early 90s cartoon (and the insanely bad EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS from 1997 that I never knew existed) and suddenly four of his star wars figures with guns molded into their hands were the ghostbusters and every green toy or figure was a ghost or monster, and he built elaborate houses out of blocks and magna tiles for all of them and I totally remember doing shit like this when I was younger.

same here, but involves lots of elaborate tying things together with string (his stuffed animals, to a Noah's ark, to a basket of fruit) to act out stories involving sea chases, rescuing from wells, etc.

I've tripped over so many trip wires...

he asks the most impressive questions too.

I have a 3 year age gap, so I rely on a bit of independent play to be able to go off and do endless baby stuff. I don't know how people with smaller age gaps cope.

that said he asks me/ his dad to 'play with meeee' like a million times a day. Just to make us feel guilty!

omg the string traps and the hundreds of “knots” my kid has made whenever string or a shoe string meets his hands! Lol.

He hasn’t watched any Ghostbusters but he’s watched the original movie theme song video and sings “Who are you going to call?? Ghost monsters!!”
(I’ve tried to get him to say “who you gonna call” but he won’t!)

Remembering how shy and isolated I was at 3-4 it's been crazy to see my son go into unfamiliar playgrounds, libraries, etc. and within minutes have nearly every kid, even the older ones, playing along with a scenario he's created.

when your kid wants something, and you say no, and they demand to know why, do you owe them an explanation or is it ok to just say no? when my 8yo daughter gets turned down for something she really wants, she refuses to take no for an answer and wants to debate/argue about it, which turns into her nitpicking every word we use to explain why she can't have it, even though the answer is still going to be no. so sometimes i just say "the answer is no, and that's not going to change, and i'm not interested in discussing it." this doesn't really work either in terms of shutting down the argument, though, and i wonder if it's unfair to give no reasoning. on the other hand, i feel like it's better to be clear and firm than to leave loopholes.

I find long-winded semi-nonsensical explanations to be the best option

I just wrapped up my first pass-the-parcel and I need a stiff drink.
Lessons have been learned.

when your kid wants something, and you say no, and they demand to know why, do you owe them an explanation or is it ok to just say no? when my 8yo daughter gets turned down for something she really wants, she refuses to take no for an answer and wants to debate/argue about it, which turns into her nitpicking every word we use to explain why she can't have it, even though the answer is still going to be no. so sometimes i just say "the answer is no, and that's not going to change, and i'm not interested in discussing it." this doesn't really work either in terms of shutting down the argument, though, and i wonder if it's unfair to give no reasoning.

it's not unfair to give no reason, and "I'm not going to discuss it further" is a fine answer. this is how some parents get to "because I said so," which I consider poor, but I bet I say it at some point soon to my four-year-old.

this is only with a nearly-4-year-old but we sometimes say 'ask the question you want to ask' to avoid loads of 'why' and might make them think about what they actually want to know (if anything)

We do the "asked, and answered" response if the kids try to start negotiating.

I just walked out of the kids room after once again arriving at the point where some sort of ambiguous request with myriad clarifications and qualifiers ends with me saying TELL ME YES, OR NO over and over in a monotone until he gives up and gives me a straight answer.

mine just ignores us when he feels like not answering which is infuriating

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/a-pink-baby/

Scik, lovely photo and piece!

I hope this is a (gradual, to be sure) turn for the better.

<3

Question for parents of older kids: how (or do) you limit phone time? It's easy to knock them off wi-fi, but short of taking away the phone or other screen, how do you stop or slow them down when they're on the same unlimited data plan as you?

Should note this is not a terribly huge issue for us. But we have friends with boys that have had more trouble, particularly (sign of the times) when they just watch hours of Fortnite videos. Google I know offers a really good free family manager for Android phones, but my friends with iPhones are unclear where to turn. I guess most phone services have a sort of family manager service you can tack on for more $$?

The latest iOs has ScreenTime which let's you set all kinds of limits.

A parent at my school shared an app last year that you put on your phone and pair with your child's phone and you can control their access to everything: the internet, certain programs, and set specific times, ie that mom had set her children's phones not to access the internet at all during school hours (lol). Let me see if I can figure out what it was called.

Circle?

I'm late to the toothbrushing question, but there's a really cute audio show (podcast form, or if you have an Alexa you can ask it to play it for you) called Chompers. It's two minutes long, the narrator tells the kid when you switch quadrants, and then they share interesting facts or tell dumb jokes in between. It's good to keep Ivy focused while brushing, as she tends to get distracted pretty easily (or suddenly have something extremely important that she needs to tell me (spoiler alert: not important at all) that can't wait two minutes).

Also I think debating with an 8-year-old can lead only to madness, and actually it's pretty important for a kid that age to learn that no means no. Maybe think of it as setting boundaries.

ALSO I'm so happy and hopeful about Casper.

The Elmo brushing song has definitely helped...he holds the phone so it keeps his hands and face steady. Even better that the next one is Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4" which he absolutely loves. Crazy to think it wasn't originally written for Sesame Street

My very favorite of those real musicians doing songs on Sesame Street is Usher's ABC Song. I listen to that of my own free will when no children are in ear shot.

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/01/05/christmas-with-childhood-cancer/

Here puberty is in full effect. Grades slipping. Compared to five yrs ago, I'm much much stricter. Turned into the bad cop. Heh.

my daughter (who is almost 2) had a seizure at day care and had to be given an ambulance ride to the hospital. getting a call in the middle of a workday from them saying "your daughter's not breathing, she's turning pale, we have an ambulance on the way" is not something I ever wanna live through again. thankfully it was just a reaction to a fever she had and apparently benign but holy hell is it scary - she had another one at home that night and it's freaky, they go stiff and pale and just sorta go unresponsive...it only lasts a minute but it feels so much longer. Mr Southall I can't even imagine what you're going through.

Yeah, those fever fits are horrible. My niece used to get them a lot when she was younger. Best wishes!

Bought my 4yo a helium balloon, he loved it
Was in the kitchen when I heard 'just going outside'
Approx 0.5 seconds later I heard this panicky shrieking 'It's gone up into the sky and it won't come back!!'

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(His dad thought I'd OK'd him going outside with it and had tied the balloon to his wrist and talked about how he mustn't let it go)
Teachable moment I guess
The sight of it rapidly disappearing over the rooftops was actually quite distressing tbf

at the dinner table

my 4yo: Daddy, raise your hand!!
*raises hand*
my 4yo: What you want?

lmao

^^^

lol

We've been through the mill, yeah, but it's chronic rather than acute, essentially; we've never had anything as heart-stoppingly awful as a febrile seizure sounds, never had a call saying "your baby isn't breathing". That sounds awful too.

Another blog post, cos its world cancer day, and tomorrow Casper turns 1: https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/world-cancer-day-caspers-birthday/

at least we made the infamous Sheboygan Scanner:

4217 kadlec dr - child not breathing

— Sheboygan Scanner (@sheboyganscan) January 21, 2019

child breathing, has better color, coming around

— Sheboygan Scanner (@sheboyganscan) January 21, 2019

50xx green meadow pl - 2yo girl had seizure

— Sheboygan Scanner (@sheboyganscan) January 22, 2019

really hope things remain "well"..."We also don’t know, for sure, how many more birthdays he will have" is a gut-wrenching sentence to read

Our friends have twins. One scored pretty low on her iq test. (Low 90s) The boy also has issues but they are stalling. (I get it: as soon as he has a "file" and/or "label", you end up in the system.) it's pretty sad to witness.

:(

This seems minor in the scheme of things, but I wish there was a way of banning all the blind-bagged collectable tiny plastic crap things marketed at kids now. Ooshies! Lol Surprise! Shitnuggets!

Cosign, and add to this Happy Meal toys, stocking stuffers, birthday-party goody bags, and everything to do with Valentine's Day.

Group crafts - even "upcycled" crafts - skate by with a warning, and a limit of four per year.

Sometimes it feels like the world is a giant hose aiming a stream of clutter at the house.

For reals. When I'm alone, I clean up. Otherwise there'd a shitpile.

:(

This seems minor in the scheme of things, but I wish there was a way of banning all the blind-bagged collectable tiny plastic crap things marketed at kids now. Ooshies! Lol Surprise! Shitnuggets!

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Saturday, February 9, 2019 8:21 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We definitely went through a big phase of buying blind-bags when my daughter was younger. But the problem was that she would want specific ones, so I'd have to keep going back to the comic store and risk that we would get the one we wanted and not one we already have. After so much frustration from getting duplicates we didn't want, I realized I could have just gone on ebay and bought ones that people had pre-opened for you. In general I think the practice is totally stupid, and suspect that it wires the brain for gambling.

By the way, now that I've got a 14-year-old, I have to deal with questions like:

"Can I go to a bonfire tonight?"
"No."
"Come on, my friend's 18-year-old brother (who we know) is going..."
"No. You were out until midnight last night, anyway. We want you in."
"Please?"
"Do we know whose house it's at?"
"No, it's in (a rural area about 15 miles away)."

Also, on the weekend of the snow storm last month, he asked to go snowboarding at a ski resort with his buddies. Just travel up there for the day and come back. His mother and I were seriously considering letting him go until we remembered about the impending storm. His response? "Well if it was snowing too hard, we could just stop and get a hotel!" Also, he called us up to ask this in the middle of one of our only big "date nights" of the year, which we had planned for months in advance.

Fun times!

Argh my oldest is menstruating. Halp. It's so weird: no longer a kid. 😭