There are some parents of small children here on the Dope, and I think it would be good to have an ongoing thread about raising kids. The idea is to share thoughts about the philosophies as how we implement them. This was inspired by the recent Monsters thread, but something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
By having on-going thread, we can share thoughts and ask or share advice. I haven’t really found any parenting forum which I like as well as I do the Dope.
My kids will be turning four (“Beta-chan”, girl) and two (“Didi”, boy) in October, so we’re right in the middle of some large transitions. I like discussing basic philosophies as well as specifics.
The tricky thing is to keep it out of the Pit, so there are some topics which should be kept out of it, such as vaccinations or kids in restaurants. If someone really wanted to discuss those, they could do so in a separate thread. Naturally questions about vaccinations in restaurants is right out.
It will also not be just another “Here are our cute babies, see the bubbles she blows” type either.
We don’t want to get into a “I win this argument,” and keep it more of what we each think. There’s nothing more certain than a parent who had a particularly easy child. I’m not claiming to be an expert on all children, and I hope we can keep it to sharing rather than lecturing.
Obviously, anyone who really wants to can come by and post, but we can just not engage them if it’s a hijack.
If a topic is large enough to go in it’s own thread, that’s great. The idea for this one is to be able to have conversations without spamming the board with lots of little threads.
My kids are older now (15 & 12) but here’s some stuff we did when they were little that worked well:
Offer choices, but not open-ended ones. Not “What do you want to wear?” but “Do you want to wear the green shirt or the yellow one?”
Say “take turns” instead of “share”. Taking turns is easier for little kids to get their heads around.
Try to always give a 5-10 minute warning before a major transition (like leaving the park). But then be absolutely firm about the transition happening.
Implement a zero-tolerance policy toward mean names. Calling someone “dummy” got you sent into time out instantly.
“Ask me again in a way that makes me want to help you.” Not just “Say please.” They had to say “please” in a way that convinced me they meant it.
My son is going to be four at the end of October. He’ll be starting preschool in the fall and we’ve been talking to him about it trying to get him used to the idea. He’s been in the same daycare since he was three months old. It seems like a bunch of his friends are moving so I guess that he’ll be prepared in one way, although he gets sad when talking about his best friend who he no longer gets to see. He ran into another departed friend at a party this weekend and they hugged.
We’ve also been dealing with his attempts to push back bed time by claiming he has to go poop right after we read him a bed time story. We let him go, because half of the time, he really does poop. He came out of the bathroom after having to go poop and told me that he has a present for me.
Our daughter is sixteen months old. The first thing she taught me was that God and babies laugh at plans. Anyway…
I’m into the “French” parenting books because they affirm my instincts about raising kids. I think it’s good for them to learn to cope with frustration and with boredom, to learn to enjoy their own company, to understand that other people have needs also, and to have reliable eating and sleeping schedules. Typing it out like that, I wonder how any of it could be controversial… I guess that the question of how to instill those things is where the controversy begins. Anyway, some principles that I remind myself of daily:
If she is playing happily, don’t interfere
A crying child is not a sign of a bad parent
When she approaches me and wants attention, shut the darn computer and give her attention
We had an excellent day today. She’s been cutting four teeth at once, and that misery’s almost over. She ate huge meals, she napped for two hours, we read eight books (she’s a good listener), we splashed in the kiddie pool, she transferred her whole tea set to her dad’s desk piece by piece, and she played with my hair while we rolled on the guest bed together.
I have a boy, 6, and a daughter, 2.5. My son is starting 1st grade this fall. I think we need to figure out good ways to give him more responsibility. He has chores, but they’re pretty uncomplicated. I think that having responsibility/mastery of certain self-care tasks sets kids up to continue to take on more responsibility and mastery. I haven’t yet figured out which additional chores to give him.
My daughter, 2.5, is entering her terrible whatevers in earnest. She’s a force of nature and is switching schools in late fall, which isn’t going to be fun for any of us. She was potty trained for a couple of weeks about six months ago and decided she didn’t feel like being potty trained any more. I keep reminding myself what a pain in the ass my son was to train and that she won’t walk down the aisle for her diploma in a diaper.
I’ve also just started a new job after having been unemployed and very available for my children for 3 months and it kind of sucks. I love what I do, but the frantic race to get to daycare in time to get my daughter while my husband manages our son’s pickup from camp isn’t something I missed at all.
With an 11-day old currently sleeping in my arms, I’m happy to see this thread. My husband goes back to work tomorrow, so I’ve got a couple of challenges coming up. I work from home, and my mom will be caring for my son in my house a couple of hours a day. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to let go of some control and let my mom take care of the little one so I can get some stuff done, and how I’m going to handle taking care of him alone for the rest of the 60+ hours a week my husband is gone.
One thing which I’m trying to do is to get my son to walk more. He walks around at day care all day, without any problems, but he got really good at training Daddy to carry him. In the rush to get everyone all ready in the morning, it was just so much easier to carry him around than to ask a 21-month-old to walk. Also, since he’s the smallest, I’ll carry him when we all go someplace.
Day care is really good at teaching self-reliance, and they are working on helping the kids learn to put on clothes themselves. We also have (IMHO) reasonable limits, and I don’t believe we’re being overly permissive in other areas, but he doesn’t walk as much on his own as Beta-chan did when she was the same age.
I’m torn between just letting him grow out of it naturally, since I don’t anticipate this continuing that much longer, or to make specific steps and encouraging more walking.
We have two girls - 5 1/2 and (as of this very morning) 1. We have a couple of basic parenting philosophies: we’re their parents, not their friends - we try to do the right things with them, not the popular things and we never look for a confrontation with them, but if one starts, we make sure to win it. I have close friends who find it very difficult to upset their children, who consequently pretty much get away with murder.
It helps that my older daughter is bright, articulate and the single most rules-observant person I’ve ever met (I was like that as a child too). Once we’ve explained a rule to her, she just kind of obeys it. Looking back, she’s been a dream to parent so far. I’ve started to talk to her recently about the fact that everybody does things wrong sometimes, and that the world won’t collapse and we won’t stop loving her if she does misbehave. My concern is that she has also inherited my husband’s attention to detail and perfectionism and I don’t want her to put too much pressure on herself as she gets older.
Junior’s the opposite - show her a boundary and she’ll push it as far as it’ll go. She’s got a fair dose of pig in her, I think. She’s more like me - no forethought, just chuck yourself in and it’ll probably be ok. We’re starting to think she may be as bright as her sister though, so that’ll be a killer combination - smart and rebellious!
I understand about your dilemma TokyoPlayer - particularly when you’re on a deadline. If it wasn’t walking, it would be something else that you slip into the habit of doing for him. I’d say persistence is the key - put him down to walk as often as you can, without it becoming a huge deal. He’ll grow out of it without you having to make it a battleground, I’d say.
My son just turned 4. He’ll charm the pants off you when he has a mind to. But, he’s stubborn, so stubborn. Kid is half mule half elephant, stubborn and never forgets what he wants. You’ll say no to something, he’ll demand it until he throws a 30 minute tantrum, then choking back tears, he’ll come to you for a hug, exhausted, and ask you for the thing again.
On potty training, we had a devil of a time getting him to wipe his butt, or even to try. He’d stand there pants around his ankles demanding we do it for him because he can’t. After weeks of this nonsense we got the bright idea to give him a Pirate Sticker if he wipes. Compliance with that rule has increased by about 95%, practically magic.
We’re looking for more “carrot” ideas to training because “stick” doesn’t work for squat with this kid.
My kids are old, far away and too big to cuddle anyway. My advice is to always make time for your spouse and spend some (not all) of that time talking about how you want to parent. As I look over this thread I see a number of good but different philosophies of parenting. Take some time to make sure you and your spouse are on the same philosophy. It is very easy to get in the habit of tag-teaming the kids so you end up never seeing your spouse except when you change places. It could be as simple as agreeing on what should go into a lunch box or as big as working out plans for college.
My wife and I had similar ideas about parenting but there were little things that we left unspoken that ended up being important. Appropriate punishments, allowances, curfews for example - turns out we disagreed on these somewhat and were working against each other sometimes. Kids know who gives the best curfews, the highest allowances and the lightest punishments and those kinds of things can drive a wedge between parents.
While vacationing in Iceland we noticed that nearly all the parents we saw with little ones made them walk if they were able. Only infants were in strollers, and those (strollers , not infants) were very few and far between. Baby slings or those bjorn-harness things were far more common for non-walkers. Mum and Dad just seemed to take things more slowly than usual and leave more time to accommodate for little legs. A few had small wooden ride-ons with a handle off the back that the parent could steer, but nearly every toddler and small child was happily walking alongside a parent. I asked a few questions and found out that this is pretty standard there. They have legs, let them use them.
This is excellent advice. You’re not hurting him by carrying him so don’t stress about it just encourage him to walk when you’ve got time and don’t make a big deal of it.
Recently had a situation where my parents, who pick the five-year-old Torqueling up after school 3 days a week, just couldn’t say no to her, so she was getting away with stuff like eating two ice cream cones every afternoon. Oy. That had to stop.
So, I announced the new deal to both of them: one ice cream is okay, BUT, she had to work for it. The price: she first had to read one book to my parents, a different one each time. If she didn’t want to read, that was fine, but no ice cream. This has worked out well: my parents can shift the “saying-no” blame onto me, and the little Torqueling practices her reading.
My issue is a potty training one. My daughter will be three on Sunday. She is fantastic about going on the potty at home, but the minute we are out of the house all bets are off.
I have been putting her in pull ups, but today we are going out in just panties. Fingers crossed. I really hope that all she needs is to get away from the safety of a pull up. If not, than clean up on aisle four…
This thread appeared at an ideal time, because I have been mulling over a parenting question.
My daughter is 17 months old. Overall, she’s a great kid and very easy-going. Up until now, our foremost method of controlling her behavior has been means restriction – if we don’t want her to play with (as in mess with, break, swallow) something, we’ve kept it out of range.
That might sound like we went crazy with the child-proofing, but really, we’re pretty laid back (either that, or most of our stuff is crappy) because with the exception of real choking hazards and a few expensive/hard to replace items, we’re cool with letting her mess with most stuff in our house.
But I noticed recently on a visit to my mom’s, where there are a lot more enticing things to get her grubby little hands on, this means she doesn’t have a lot of experience with “no, don’t touch” or “no, give that to me.” It did not go well.
So I’m thinking it’s time to start enforcing the “no, don’t touch” instead of simply removing the item. Obviously, we have been saying “no, don’t touch” WHEN we remove the item, so what I’m talking about is really expecting her not to touch something based ONLY on the verbal instruction.
Too soon? If she really can’t grasp the concept, it seems like it will lead to frustration for everyone. But if we keep waiting, she will go to college and still be grabbing stuff that doesn’t belong to her.
Our son turns 9 months tomorrow. He’s very cheerful and laid back. My husband stays home with him full time. I am home most of the time right now, because I am a teacher and it’s summer.
At the end of this week, my husband is going to a conference for a week and I am taking the boy to visit friends and then go to a family reunion. The boy hasn’t ever been separated from us for more than a few hours, and now one of his two major people will be gone for 9 days while he is being exposed to all kids of new people and places. Any advice?
Delphica–I really adhere to advice I read in either Spock or Leech (can’t remember which), which is… your child can tell if you don’t want them to touch something because it’s genuinely bad for them or because you just don’t want them to touch it–and hopping up immediately to separate them from it is how they tell. If you want them to really believe they shouldn’t mess with something, behave as if it’s a knife or a live wire. Make sure you include a grave “no no! don’t touch!” while you’re doing it. Eventually, the association will build and you can stop hopping up…
The French parenting books suggest that you explain to them exactly why they shouldn’t touch things–the things aren’t theirs, they don’t have the right to touch them, and they would make a mess than someone else would have to clean up, which isn’t fair. In my experience this isn’t enough to get a toddler away from something, but it makes them less likely to mess with it in the future.
And when you separate her from something she wants, it’s natural for her to cry. She is frustrated. She needs to experience frustration in order to learn to cope with it. So separate her and let her cry a little.
Having said that, I started out the grave no-nos and and head-shakes and brow-furrowing as soon as my daughter started to crawl at seven months. At that point, that was enough to make her leave things alone, and nine times out of ten it still works.
We JUST did this in preparation for a long trip where she really needed to be out-of-house potty-trained. I hate to tell you this, but it was potty training all over again for a couple of weeks – making sure we’d be out of the house during a time when she’d probably want to use the potty, sitting on the potty for a long time, nothing happening, rinse and repeat until either something happened on the potty or she wet her pants. But the Little One was 2.5 at the time… hopefully a 3-year-old will have a little more understanding.
A couple of things that helped:
-It turned out a great deal of her reluctance had to do with not wanting to flush the toilet. Once I assured her that she didn’t have to do this, her compliance rate went up dramatically.
-We got a portable potty seat (this one, in particular) and used it both at home and out, so it was a little more like home. …Of course your kid, being 3, may not need a potty seat anymore? (Please say yes! I’m getting tired of dragging it everywhere! )
My daughter is 21 months old. She’s smart and funny and talks nonstop. I absolutely love this stage. She is a blast to play with! Who knew pretending a toy cup is a trumpet or making a toy farmer ride a cougar could be so much fun? Not as much fun is listening to “If You’re Happy and You Know It” six times in a row. It does not make me feel happy.
As far as childproofing goes, I’ll be honest: We were too lazy to do much of that. I’ve found that eventually she just loses interest in things she isn’t supposed to touch. I also try not to overuse the word “no.” I save that for really important stuff like touching a hot stove. When I say it, she knows I mean business. Usually if she’s getting into something I’ll just say, “Stop, those are mama’s books” or something along those lines. I’ve also got one of the “startles easily” models (just like me), so a lot of times if I just say, “HEY!” it will make her jump and she will stop what she’s doing immediately. Heh heh.
We’re just starting to dabble in potty training. It seems to be one of those issues where people can have very strong opinions: “all kids should be potty trained by age 2” vs. “your child will be permanently damaged if you potty train too soon.” When my daughter was 18 months old, a friend was surprised to learn that my little girl wasn’t potty trained yet. This friend is a mom whose 3.5-year-old had just gotten potty trained at the time. I was confused. So far our method has been to start talking about it and, if she asks to sit on the potty, we let her. No pressure. Hopefully she’ll be trained by the time she graduates high school.
Sattua gives good advice. The “scared face” works wonders, since they only want to explore, not hurt themselves.
One thing you can do is offer an enticement. Wee ones get very frustrated if there’s nothing they can fiddle with at all. So, have them clear out a bottom cabinet in the kitchen and fill it with non-breakable stuff, like Tupperware and big wooden spoons. Let her know that that’s her cabinet, and she can pull all the stuff out and bang with it as she pleases. It’ll help divert her from all the other alluring stuff, and she’ll have the feeling of being part of the action, instead of being put in a remote corner with her toys.
)